Page 166 of Dial F for Finance

It’s not long before he flips us and pins me beneath him, his grease-smudged hands framing my face as he plants desperate, grateful kisses along my jaw and down my neck. He shoves my bra aside with zero patience and takes a nipple in his mouth, biting just shy of too much, and I gasp, arching into him.

By the time he settles between my thighs, he’s hard again against me. He mouths at my breasts, marking me, and I twist under him, needing him inside, now.

“Still want the shower?” I murmur, breathing it into his hair.

He laughs, breath hot against my ribs, and leans up, eyes dark with intent. “Not if it means waiting to fuck you.”

I open my legs wide for him and guide him in, the first push making me gasp, the second stealing the air. He’s huge, and maybe it’s the ten days of not touching, or maybe it’s the emotional pileup in my chest, but I swear it’s the thickest, hardest he’s ever felt.

He buries to the hilt and pauses, forehead on mine, letting us both breathe.

“I love you,” he whispers. “I love you, Jen. So fucking much.”

“God, Dominic,” I gasp as he starts moving inside me. “I love you too. I love you. I love you.”

He rocks into me, slow at first. His hand knots in my hair, the other on my waist, greedy even as he’s gentle. The friction is almost unbearable, too much after so long without, but I don’t want mercy. I want him to take every last piece of me and admit he needs it the same as I do.

He kisses me, open-mouthed and messy as he picks up the pace. I meet him thrust for thrust, locking my ankles above the small of his back. Sweat slicking our skin, the residual grease on his fingers smearing black along my ass and thigh as he fucks me harder, faster, the rhythm so relentless I have to bite into his shoulder just to stay braced in the world.

“Oh, fuck—Jenna, I’m—” He breaks, cutting off his own warning with a snarl.

“Do it,” I whisper, clawing his back. “Don’t you dare hold back⁠—”

He comes with a sound that might be my name or a curse, filling me deep. It pulls my own orgasm out, raw and unplanned, my body clamping down around him so hard he gasps, damn near collapses. We both dissolve, all the tension in our bodies erupting and then draining out, leaving nothing but tangled limbs and a soul-deep sense of belonging.

We don’t move for a long time. He rolls off, pulling me with him and tucking me against his chest, both of us sticky and marked up and absolutely right.

There’s a warm, easy silence. I run my fingers through the sweat at his hairline, tracing the angle of his stubbled jaw, the arch of his eyebrow. The sharp, tinny taste of blood and oil still lingers, and I savor it. The mess of us, the fact that—after all that calculated distance—we’ve chosen to stay in the dark, messy middle.

“Jenna,” he rasps. “Are you gonna hate it if I say I want to wake up with you every day for the rest of my life?”

I consider it. The million ways vulnerability used to land like an AMBER ALERT in my system. And then I look up at him.

“No,” I whisper. “I think I’d hate the alternative.”

He laughs, and it seeps through my bones, warm and dangerous. I want to keep it. I want to keep all of it. Him.

I rest my chin on his chest and brush my thumb over the two gold bands on his left hand—the ones I slid back into place downstairs.

Not the worst thing.

A little over two months ago, I thought the only safe future was one I could model in advance. Now I’m lying in a ruined bed, covered in sweat and literal grease, with no idea what the next sixty years will look like beyond the man holding me.

For the first time, the uncertainty feels like freedom, and I really like the way that feels.

I shift upward, pressing my lips to the steady, thumping pulse at the base of his throat.

“Just in case I didn’t make myself clear, I’m not going back to Queens,” I murmur against his skin, the finality of it settling perfectly in the quiet room. “Except to visit Ma. And maybe to retrieve my actual luggage, since your packing job, while wonderfully carried out, was possibly a little pre-emptive.”

His chest rumbles with a deep, rich laugh, his arms tightening around me like a vise. “I’ll hire a service. Or I’ll drive the cargo van myself. Whatever you want, partner.”

Partner. The word settles somewhere deep, no longer a negotiation but a home we’re choosing together.

This marriage may have started on a whim and a dare. But the rest of our lives is a decision we’re making on purpose.

Of all the deals ever closed in this city, ours is the one I’m never walking away from again.

CHAPTER 48