Page 33 of From Italy With Love

“You’ve destroyed me,” I said, and it was the truth. “Completely. I can’t think about anything else. Can’t focus on anything else. All I want is you. All I need is you.”

She tightened around me at those words, and I groaned. I could feel the pressure building in my spine, but I didn’t want this to end. I wanted to stay inside her forever, connected like this, feeling her warmth and her softness and her trust. Reaching between us, I found her clit, circling it gently, and she gasped. I could feel her getting close again, could feel the way her body was responding despite her soreness, and I increased the pressure slightly.

“Come for me,” I murmured. “I want to feel you.”

She did, her body convulsing around me, and the sensation pushed me over the edge. I came deep inside her, my face buried in her neck, her name on my lips like a prayer.

We lay there afterward, still connected, our breathing slowly returning to normal. I should have pulled out, should have let her rest, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave her body. Not yet.

“I don’t want to move,” she whispered.

“Then don’t,” I said, kissing her temple. “We have nowhere to be.”

And that was when I realized: I meant it. I had nowhere to be. Nothing mattered more than this moment, this woman, this feeling of complete and utter contentment.

My phone had been buzzing periodically since yesterday. Giovanni calling, probably, or Luciano, or someone from Chicago needing something. But I hadn’t checked it. Hadn’t even looked at it. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care about the business. Didn’t care about the family obligations, the deals that needed to be made, the problems that needed to be solved.

All I cared about was her.

We spent the entire day in bed.

I ordered room service around noon. Eggs and bacon and fresh fruit, and coffee, and we ate in bed, naked, feeding each other bites of food between kisses. She had a smear of strawberry juice on her lip, and I licked it off, which led to me kissing her, which led to me laying her back against the pillows and taking her again.

This time was different, too. Playful, almost.

She was getting bolder, more confident, her hands exploring my body the way mine explored hers. She traced the scars on my chest. The bullet wounds, knife wounds, the evidence of my violent life, and I waited for her to recoil, to be disgusted. But she just kissed each one.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, her fingers gentle on a particularly nasty scar near my ribs.

“Not anymore,” I said. “That one’s old.”

“How old?”

“Ten years. Guy came at me with a knife in an alley in Chicago. Thought he could take me.”

“What happened to him?”

I looked at her, waiting to see fear or judgment in her eyes. But there was only curiosity. Only acceptance. “I killed him,” I simply replied. She nodded, as if she’d expected that answer, and kept kissing her way down my body. When she reached my cock, already hard again, because apparently I was insatiable when it came to her, she looked up at me with those beautiful winter eyes.

“Can I?” she asked, and I nearly came right then from the question alone.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she said, echoing my words from last night. “I want to taste you.”

Christ.

I nodded, not trusting my voice, as she wrapped her hand around my cock. Her touch was tentative at first, exploring, learning the shape and weight of me. Then she leaned down and licked the tip, and I groaned, my hands fisting in the sheets. She took me into her mouth slowly, carefully. The sensation was almost too much. Hot and wet and perfect. She didn’t know what she was doing. I could tell from the way she was experimenting, trying different things, but that somehow made it even more erotic.

“That’s it,” I groaned, my hand moving to her hair, not pushing, just holding. “Just like that. Fuck, baby, your mouth.”

She hummed around me, and the vibration made me see stars. I could feel the pressure building embarrassingly fast, could feel myself getting close, as I tried to pull back.

“I’m going to come,” I warned. “You should—” But she didn’t pull away. She took me deeper, her hand working what wouldn’t fit in her mouth, and when I came it was with a shout, my entire body convulsing with the force of it.

She swallowed, which nearly killed me, and when she pulled back, she was smiling, proud of herself, pleased with my reaction. “You’re going to destroy me,” I said, pulling her up to kiss her.

I could taste myself on her tongue. It was obscene and perfect.