I take her hand and lift it to my lips, placing a kiss on her palm. “I didn’t think I was capable ofcaring for someone so deeply that their wellbeing affects mine. Your childlike wonder, the way you see the beauty in the ordinary, makes me believe that anything is possible. If you can live through the sorrow you have, overcome the betrayal of those meant to have your best interests at heart then pick yourself up and move to a new country to chase the life and career you want despite it all, you deserved to be fucking worshipped, cherished, and adored. I may not always get it right, but fuck if I don’t want to try for you, because when you smile at me, when you show me the soft and imperfect parts of you, I start to believe that maybe you’re the one sent to make me feel whole again.”
She’s stifling her sobs now, and I can feel my own chest heaving up and down, cracking with every confession of my truth. I hold her tight, skin to skin, and I wish I could take every hurt and betrayal she’s ever felt and make it my own.
She places both hands on my cheeks and trains her emerald-green gaze on mine so intensely I feel it in my bones. “You keeptrying to make me believe you’re not the gold standard. That your hurt, your flaws somehow tarnish you beyond redemption, making you unlovable, but Raf, you are everything I didn’t think I would find or have,” she says, looking at me with so much love and hope. “You may want everyone else to believe you’re abrasive, but every time I’ve needed grace, you’ve given it to me, along with your patience, which is the balm for my panic. I’ve survived a lot, but I can say with my whole chest that knowing what it’s like to have you only to lose you is not something I’ll be able to come back from.” She pauses and takes a deep breath. I can feel the anguish in her words. I know she’s telling the truth, but the fact she’s yet to tell me about her run in with Alessandro niggles. Call me stupid, but I decide this is not the time to get answers and let her continue. “So please, this is your chance. If you’re going to regret it in the morning, let me go now. I surrendered my body to you and that’s one thing, but if I surrender my heart only for you to chew it up and spit it out, I’ll never recover.”
I kiss her in lieu of words, hoping that she can feel the desperation, understand just how much she’s turned my life upside down and inside out in a way I never expected but needed.
“Chiara, you are my salvation and my damnation,” I admit. “We both know it’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to figure out how we can make space for each other in the complicated lives we both have. No one has been able to silence the buzzing in my brain the way you do.” I gently wrap my hand around her throat and stroke her cheekbone with my thumb. “My control may be the antidote to your chaos, but your unbridled joy is the light in my darkness, and all I want to do is bask in it for as long as you’ll let me.”
“What if I say forever?” she whispers.
What I want to say is, I’d spend forever trying to become a better man for her. The type that promises to be by her side for the good and the bad. Better and worse. Except I can’t bring myself to admit it. She deserves better than more lies and betrayal. Until I can give her the commitment of forever with a clear conscience, I won’t make empty promises. I swallow hard, because if only she knew how many times I’ve turned this scenario over in my head since AJ called me out over it. His words filter through the heavy silence. Until I have a ring on her finger or her belly is full of my baby, I have no claim over her—even if she completely owns me.
She looks up at me with her big green eyes filled with so much emotion, so much trust. For me. The man who has sworn love can’t be trusted. I wish I could flip a switch and automatically revert to the person I was before Victoria ruined my faith in love forever.
“I—I…know we’re legally married. And that’s not some sick joke to me. I want nothing but for you to live your biggest, most audacious life, to be able to spread your wings, not have them clipped by a man who has no respect for you or your dreams.” I swallow hard. “I can give you the marriage on paper and live by the boundaries and limitations it sets. It’s black and white when it’s legally binding. I can clearly give you my body and pleasure. It’s just my distrusting heart and tortured soul that are the problem. I’m just not sure they’ll ever work the same. If they’re too dam?— ”
“Shhh. Shhhh,” she says, placing her finger over my lips. “I’m not going anywhere, so let’s just make the here and now count. Besides, tomorrow is never promised. I of all people know that.”
I pause, taking a deep breath. “No, I need to tell you this. My trust issues run deep, Chiara. I wish I could say that time heals wounds, but I think for me, time allowed resentment to festeruntil I convinced myself that I wasn’t cut out to love or be loved. Let alone be good husband material.”
“Sophia mentioned things ended badly with your ex, but she insisted it wasn’t her story to tell, and I won’t push you to tell me if you don’t want to…but if you do want to talk, I’ll listen.” She runs her hands through my hair, and I close my eyes, relishing the way her nails scrape against my scalp. I feel her face come closer until her lips are on mine. Soft and tender.
“If she was the one who made you believe that you are incapable of loving, then let me be the one to tell you that even in the moments when you were trying to fight what we felt for each other, you made me feel cared for in a way no one has before. Not one bit of you is unlovable—not even the grumpy bits,” she says with a smile against my lips. “They just make it more fun when I have my way with you.”
From the moment she crashed into my life, she’s been the light to my shade, not because she’s trying to downplay my feelings but so she can create a space that feels safe enough for me to lay myself bare.
I take a deep breath and open my eyes so I’m looking at my future while I speak of a past that convinced me to close off my heart to the possibility of ever finding my person.
“Remember that day in my office when you looked at me and asked who hurt me? Well that was the first time in a long time I felt such an intense gravitational pull to someone. When you stared me down and asked me that, it struck like lightning. I felt called out, like an imposter in my own life. I had the accolades, the wealth, the promise of being the future of Princi Law & Associates, and yet I couldn’t even make her stay.” I swallow the taste of pride. “I was positive you could see the shame and embarrassment of being discarded like trash written all over my face.”
“If you think that’s what matters to me, or makes you worthy, then I need to tell you none of that means fuck all to me. What matters is your fierce loyalty to the ones you care about, the way you never shy away from putting yourself on the line—like you did that day at AJ’s, like you did when you brought me home after the gas leak, or when you heldme in the bath. That’s what a worthy man looks like to me.”
I pull her close to my chest and hold her there, pondering how someone so young, but who has endured more heartache in her short life than most may ever experience, can still find a way to see the worthiness in people. In me. If I’m going to demand honesty from her about Alessandro, then I need to start by being honest about my own past. I kiss the top of her head and start from the beginning.
“Her name was—is—Victoria. We started dating in my final year of college. We met at a young lawyers event and instantly hit it off. She was confident, unafraid to be herself, and no pushover—you are very similar in that regard, which is another thing that scared the fuck out of me,” I explain honestly. “Once we were both fully qualified, I joined my dad’s firm, and she went to work in entertainment law at another firm. We moved in together one year after dating, and at first everything was great, but as time went on, we started living separate lives. Both our careers were demanding and on upward trajectories. I would never begrudge her for wanting what I myself was striving for. We were lauded as a power couple and made some of those stupid lists and society pages every now and then. She started coming home later and later, working weekends, but I didn’t think anything of it because she was working a big case. I missed her, but I understood. I knew once the case was over, things would go back to the way they were. Then I was sent an anonymous tip-off about aShhh Don’t Tell Daddyblog scheduled that suggested she had been unfaithful with acoworker. I leveraged every power I had to stop it from going to print and issued a permanent cease and desist of sorts, threatening to take legal action if either of us was ever featured on that blog again,” I explain ruefully. “She swore she had never been unfaithful, that it was a smear campaign from her biggest rival. I believed her, not even a doubt in my mind. Her hours returned to normal—still long—but not like in the months before. She started talking about marriage and babies. I thought she was all in. It was the next logical step for us after all. So I jumped in with both feet. Proposed with the massive diamond ring. Had the engagement. The wedding planner. No expenses spared.” Chiara runs figure eights over my bare chest with her fingertips, soothing me, letting me know she’s still here even if she hasn’t said a word in a good ten minutes. Letting me get it all off my chest.
“On the day of our wedding, she sent me a text. She told me she couldn’t go through with it. That she was confused because she loved me, but she didn’t know if she loved me enough to be with me forever. She returned the ring via courier and took a job in L.A.—to be closer to the guy she was fucking. As it turned out, the blog wasn’t lies after all, and if I hadn’t done everything in my power to stop it, I would have seen the pictures that might have saved me a whole lot of grief.”
“Raf, that must have been devastating,” Chiara says, tears lining her lashes and little shudders bouncing in her chest as she tries to hold them back for me.“I promise, if you let me, I’ll love you and never stop.”
I bury my face in her neck, inhaling, filling my lungs with her, hoping it will relieve me from the anxiety she hasn’t hinted at needing to come clean about her run-in with Alessandro, and the guilt gnawing at me for keeping things from her as well. Like, despite my dysfunctional heart and soul, I think I might love her too.
Instead, I take a play out of her playbook and throw light on the shade. “Baby, I know you said you wanted to wade in the messy with me—and as much as I love knowing that’s my cum dripping out of you—I think I much prefer putting it in you,” I say, looking down to my lap now well and truly messy with us.
She giggles and loops her arms around my neck. “Hmm, does my husband have a breeding kink?”
I squeeze her ass firmly, and she squeals as I stand abruptly and wrap her legs around my waist, striding towards my bedroom. “I think it might be safe to say I have a bratty wife kink.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Can I Get Your Wet Signature
Chiara
We don’t makeit to the shower. Instead, Raf throws me on the bed and pins me with a stare so feral I crab-crawl backwards. He drops onto the mattress and crawls towards me, catching me and lying on top. I writhe underneath him as he claims my mouth with hungry kisses before taking one nipple in his mouth, sucking and swirling his tongue over my peaked bud before biting down hard enough to send a zing of electricity through me then continuing the beautiful torture on the other side. I get my hand between us and curl it around his thickening cock, running my thumb around his crown that’s coated in us and a fresh wave of his pre-cum. His velvety skin is hot against my palm, his length heavy. The weight of him sends another wave of arousal surging through me. I bask in the fact that I’ve only seen him lit up like a volcano for me, the icy reception he saved for others completely incinerated.
He pushes up onto his hands, taking some of his weight off me. “Use me like your personal toy, sweetheart.” He grits out, his voice rough and gravelly as I tighten my grip around his thick shaft. I fucking love it when he calls me sweetheart, the tenderterm of endearment usually at odds with the wicked ways he brings me pleasure.
