With rough, perfect hands at my knees, he parts my legs.
“Take ‘em off,” he growls in my ear. I grip the elastic band at his waist and yank them down, eager to see his cock at full mast, a deep shade of red with his own pumping blood and need. We take one glorious moment to stroke our naked legs against one another, mine smooth and his rough, mine small and slender and his like massive tree trunks.
I hitch up my knees and wrap my legs around his, my bare pussy beckoning him to come closer. My arms around his chest tighten, and for one agonizing second, I can’t breathe from the anticipation.
His lips join mine as he glides into me. I sigh with relief as jolts of pleasure ripple through me. The first thrust makes me cry. By the second, tears flow freely down my face. He kisses the trail of tears with kisses that anoint me, and trembles before he thrusts again.
“Fucking perfect,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “Christ, woman, I’ll never forget this until the day I die. I’ll remember this. Fuck, I’ll remember…”
My legs tremble with need when he thrusts again, spasms of electric perfection tingling my limbs and arms and pelvis. His thick cock fills me to beyond capacity, but when he rocks his hips, the too-full feeling dissipates to a cloud of utter bliss that covers every inch of me.
“Santo,” I say on a whimper, when he thrusts again. He throbs inside me, as if holding himself back.
I feel as if we’ve waited this long, I can’t wait another minute.
My need to climax rises with my rapid breathing. I scrape my nails along his back and he grips me harder with every firm thrust. The rhythm of his movements sends blissful awareness through my body, every nerve ending electric and pulsing.
“Come with me, baby. My sweet Rosa.”
There’s something about a man like Santo melting to gentleness that makes me yearn for him. My heart beats along in time to the tempo of his thrusts, until my head falls back and the Earth shatters into a million brilliant shards around me. Bliss floods my limbs in perfect time with his own hoarse breathing and hips melting into me. I come so hard I can’t breathe, stars blinding my vision.
He curses in English and Italian, his words incomprehensible, prayers or curses or a mixture of both, until we lower back to Earth, panting and grasping each other as if we hold each other here with our frantic embraces.
“I love you, Rosa Rossi,” he whispers in my ear, and I swear I hear pain in his voice when he whispers again, “and I’ll love you until the day I draw my last breath on Earth.”
His damp forehead meets mine. I barely trust my voice in this magical realm somewhere between heaven and Earth. I pant my own confession in the quiet stillness. “I love you, Santo. I love you. I always have, and always will.”
We lay there in the darkness until our breathing slows and our damp skin cools. I shiver, but he still lays atop me, still in me, our bodies joined. He finally slumps onto an elbow but still keeps my fingers entwined in his.
As if releasing me will make the moment vanish forever. We stay like that until I’m half asleep, my eyes too heavy to hold open. We stay like that as if it’s our last night on Earth, and tomorrow, we’ll be torn apart forever.
“I love you,” he says as he cleans me up and tucks me in, as if now that he’s said it, he can’t stop saying it.
“I love you,” I whisper as my eyes flutter closed under the weight of sleep and he holds me to his chest.
“I love you,” he says when he wakes in the middle of the night and holds me again, his movements frantic and hurried until his hands find mine in the dark. I breathe it in my dreams and when I wake, when the light finally peeks along the edge of the window, Santo’s gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Santo
Fucking killed me to leave her.
Killed me.
But we both have reached the point from where there is no return.
Either we go our separate ways and hold the knowledge of who we are forever, and I uphold the vows that I took and make the ultimate sacrifice.
Or I break the vows I’ve taken and choose Rosa instead.
The choices are dismal and my options few. Either choice means turning my back on someone I love.
I told her I’d prove myself to the brotherhood, that I’d make them realize who I am. But with Romeo in jail and the knowledge of her betrothal imminent, I don’t trust the outcome of any choice right now.
So at the first break of morning light, I extract myself from her with difficulty. When she stirs, I kiss her cheek and brush her hair back off her damp forehead. Her hair’s a gleaming masterpiece, and I bend close so I can breathe her in. The simple scent of her’s like an elixir I crave more and more.