Page 59

“I know.” His composure is wrecked and rubbed raw. “I know.”

He stands long enough to shove his jeans and boxer briefs down his hips, kicking them off without ceremony, and the sight of him fully bare in the morning light, flour streaked across his chest, his cock stiff and straining, nearly undoes me.

Kneeling on the bed, he catches my ankle and tugs me toward him until my hips meet his. No reach for the nightstand. No pause for the practicalities of protection. Either he doesn’t have anything or he doesn’t want a barrier. I don’t want one either. I’m desperate to feel all of him.

“Sit up.” His voice is a croaked command cloaked in desire. He draws me upright and into his lap, my thighs straddling his, our chests flush. In this position, we’re eye to eye, with nowhere to hide.

“Stay with me.” He slips a finger under my chin. “Don’t go anywhere else.”

I nod, breathless. Then he grips my hips, lifts me, and eases me down onto him.

The stretch is familiar now, but no less devastating. A low moan spills from my mouth as I sink lower, taking him deeper, my body remembering what my mind spent weeks trying to forget. His head falls back, the cords of his neck taut as he releases raw, loud groans that vibrate through my chest.

“Dio.” His fingers press into my hips hard enough to leave prints. “You feel like the only thing I have ever needed, though until now, I didn’t know to ask for.”

Then his careful tenderness burns away. I raise one hand to grasp his good shoulder for leverage, and I begin to roll my hips in a rhythm he matches from below with upward thrusts that steal my air. The room fills with the wet, urgent smacks of our bodies meeting, and flour drifts from the sheets around us like snow shaken from a branch.

His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the swell of my breast. He bows his head to take a nipple between his teeth, and the resulting jolt arches my spine, changing the angle of his cock inside me until he pushes against a spot that whites my vision at the edges.

“Right there.” I gasp against his hair. “Don’t stop.”

He drives into me harder, one arm banded around my waist, the other fisting in my hair to tilt my head back. His mouth covers my exposed throat, and the combination of being held open and filled completely sends me past the edge.

The orgasm rips through me in a single, blinding wave. I clench around him, my nails raking down his back and his name breaking apart on my tongue. Moments later, the tension in his body crests and snaps. Warmth floods me as he moans into the curve of my neck, his breath hot and shuddering against my skin. His lips move against my pulse, shaping a word I barely catch—“mine”—and I cling to him tighter.

He eases us down onto the mattress, careful to land on his uninjured shoulder, though a wince still flickers across his face before he buries it against my hair.

“Your shoulder.” I reach for it.

“Worth it.” He catches my hand and presses it to his chest instead.

I relax against his side, my fingers tracing lazy lines across his stomach.

The kitchen’s a mess, the sheets are ruined, and I’ve never felt more seen.

“I should warn you…” He chuckles. “I’ll never be able to forget what we did today whenever I see a speck of flour.”

I laugh against his skin.

“No regrets.”

He pulls me back against his side and rests his injured shoulder against the pillow to keep my weight from aggravating the injury.

After a few minutes, buzzing from the nightstand breaks the spell we’d cast together. Marco’s arm tightens for a fraction of a second before he reaches for his phone. I keep my eyes closed and my breathing even, giving him a polite moment of privacy.

“Yeah?”

His voice slurs, rough and thick with the remnants of what happened between us. His gravelly tone vibrates through his chest where it presses against my shoulder blade.

A pause. “Enzo?”

Enzo Ricci calling Marco right now can’t mean good news, so I stop pretending to sleep.

Marco doesn’t pull away from me, but his body stills and he grows alert, like a wolf catching the scent of blood on the wind.

“When?”

The next pause is long and tense, punctuated only by the muffled crackle of a voice on the other end.