Luca holds me through it, both hands steady, and stays there until the last wave passes and my knees have made good on every threat they filed.
Then he's on his feet before I've finished shaking, his hands sliding under my thighs, lifting me like a decision he made some time ago and is only now executing.
He pinsme against the wall with one arm and gets his belt with the other — fast, efficient, no wasted movement — and I hear the fabric drop and feel the heat of him, and my breath stops entirely.
Luca fills every inch of my vision.
My legs wrap around him. My brain registers this as a poor decision and immediately stops caring.
He stills.
Not hesitation. Calculation. The specific, frustrated pause of a man who has just hit a wall he didn't see coming. His jaw tightens. Something moves across his face that has nothing to do with want.
"I don't—" He stops. Tries again. "I'm not carrying?—"
I almost laugh. Luca Moretti, undone by logistics.
"I'm on the pill." I hold his gaze. "Have been for years."
One beat. Something releases in his face — relief, then something darker, something he doesn't name, and I don't push him to.
"Tell me to stop." Same voice. Same seriousness.
"I will literally haunt you to the end of your family line if you stop now."
Then he pushes inside me.
It's not almost anything.
It's complete. Devastating. A full-system override that takes every coherent thought I have and scatters it across the floor. The stretch of him. The solid certainty. The way my body opens around him like it's been waiting. I make a sound that is deeply undignified and entirely involuntary, and I do not care at all.
"Dio mio— my God." His forehead drops to mine. His breathing has gone rough. Uneven. The controlled, lethal man who took apart three professionals an hour ago is barely holding himself together with me in his arms. The knowledge that I did that — that I am doing that — hits me like a second wave. "You feel—" He stops. Swallows. "Serafina."
"Don't stop." My nails find his shoulders. "Please don't stop."
He doesn't stop.
He moves, and I move with him, finding a rhythm that doesn't feel negotiated — just inevitable. He's generous in ways that surprise me — his hand sliding between us, thumb working slow, deliberate circles until my breath stutters and my hips move without my permission. He watches my face the whole time like every reaction is data he intends to use.
"Look at me." Low. Rough.
I look at him.
The eye contact is almost worse than the rest. Dark eyes, fully present, no wall between us — just Luca Moretti watching me come undone in his hands like I'm the only thing in this room worth looking at. Like I'm the only thing he's looked at in years.
"Sei bellissima," he breathes.You are so beautiful.Unplanned. Ragged at the edges. Not a compliment. A surrender.
I shatter for the second time.
This one doesn't hit like a verdict.
It hits like a confession.
He follows moments later — my name rough and reverent against my throat, his whole body taut and then releasing — and for a handful of seconds neither of us moves, speaks, or pretends to be anyone other than exactly who we are.
We're still pressedagainst the wall, still breathing hard, still tangled in ways that have no clean resolution, when three sharp knocks land on the study door.
Still.
