“Luc...” I cried out as the pleasure slammed into me, tore through my body, and devoured me in an inferno of all-consuming light and flames. “Oh, yeeeeeees...”
Vaguely, as if from a great distance, I heard Luc call my name as he erupted deep inside me, filling me with his hot, thick, pleasure.
Feeling as if I were floating, I sighed and shifted so my cheek pressed against the comforter beneath me. At my back, Luc groaned, thrust his pulsating cock slowly inside me one last time, then collapsed against my back.
“Dio.” His hot breath fanned my ear and cheek, and he nuzzled my neck, making me shiver beneath him. “I’m addicted to you like a drug, angioletto. It’s as if you walked out of my dreams and straight into my life. I can’t get enough of you. I’ll never get enough of you.”
I reached for his hand, braced on the mattress at my side, and pulled it close to my chest, loving the feel of him pressing against me, covering every inch of my skin, breathing hot over my neck, filling me—still—so far inside.
“I can’t get enough of you either. God, that was good. I missed that.” I pulled his fingers toward my lips and kissed the backs of his knuckles. “I’ve missed this.”
He chuckled against my back. “Dirty sex?”
“No. Yes,” I corrected, smiling. “I meant all of it. The different ways you make me feel. I love it all. And I’ve missed it.” I squeezed his fingers. “I’ve missed us.”
He shifted at my back, slipping free of my body, but I didn’t care, because he wrapped me in his arms as he rolled, turning me to face him, and gathered me close to his chest, holding me so tight I knew I was safe and protected and cherished.
“I’ve missed us too.” He lowered his head and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “And I’m never letting you go ever again, Natalie James Salvatici. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and together we are unbreakable. You know that, don’t you?”
Tears filled my eyes as I lifted my mouth to his, loving him more with every passing second.
He kissed me slowly, thoroughly, with every bit of passion I knew was in him, and as he claimed my mouth, he also filled my soul with strength, with purpose, with the unwavering belief that what he said was true.
This, us... we... were the only two people in the world who mattered. Everyone else—in his House, in his family, in the whole damn Entente—they meant nothing.
We could survive anything so long as we held on to each other.
9
Luc
I didn’t sleep.
I’m pretty sure I dozed, but I was too hyperaware of every movement Natalie made beside me to rest. Too focused on touching her and keeping her tempting body flush against mine. Still too aroused to think of anything but sinking inside her and making love to her all over again.
When she stirred beside me, I couldn’t help from curling against her beneath the thin sheet and running my hand up her flat belly to gently cup her breast.
She sighed, a sweet smile tugging her lips up in the lone candlelight I’d left burning. “You’re not sleeping.”
“That’s your fault, vita mia.” I sank my teeth into her shoulder, then licked the spot and gently kissed it as I palmed her breast. “This body is way too distracting.”
“Well, in that case...” She rolled to face me, pressed a hand against my shoulder to push me to my back, and climbed over me, straddling my hips.
A wicked smile curled her lips as she gripped my forearms, slid my arms above my head, and pinned them to the mattress while she lowered her face to my throat. “I’d better do something to distract you.”
I groaned as her tantalizing lips suckled a spot on my throat. She sank onto my lap, and my already hardening cock slid through her wetness and pressed against her clit.
“Mm, angioletto.” I turned my head, searching for her lips. “I love your distractions.”
Her lips found mine. She opened at the first touch and sucked my tongue into her mouth while she rocked her steamy pussy against my cock.
I’d already had her three times tonight, but I was like a randy teenager—I couldn’t get enough. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get enough of her.
Each time she touched me, I only wanted more. And when I thought of the way she’d trusted me earlier, when I remembered how angelic she’d looked in that gorgeous butterfly dress in the chapel, walking toward me in the candlelight, every fucking time she gazed into my eyes as she was doing now and I saw how much she loved me, I was humbled. Awed. So completely amazed that this incredible, strong, and vivacious woman had picked me.
That she’d come back to me.
“Luc,” a voice called from outside the tent.
We both jerked up. Wide-eyed, Natalie grasped the sheet and yanked it up to her chest. Hands on her hips, I looked toward the tent door, my heart racing, my mind unsure who had said my name and why.
“Luc,” the voice called a little louder. “Are you awake?”
“Merda. Marco,” I mumbled to Natalie, my racing pulse slowing just a touch as she climbed off me. “Yeah,” I called. “Hold on a minute.”
“What does he want?” Natalie whispered, sitting back in the pillows and fluffing her hair as she fixed the sheet around her.
“I don’t know.” I reached for my slacks from the floor and tugged them on, not at all thrilled with the interruption. But a whisper of worry in the back of my head told me Marco wouldn’t have bothered us if it wasn’t important.
I braced my hands on the bed and pressed my lips against hers. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed my dress shirt and stuffed my arms in the sleeves, but I didn’t bother to button it. And I didn’t go looking for my shoes.
Pulling one side of the tent door open, I stepped off the decking and spotted Marco pacing in the darkness no more than fifteen yards away.
Marco was dressed in jeans and a thin gray sweater, and the tense line of his shoulders told me whatever he’d come out here to relay was definitely not good.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice as I approached.
He stopped and faced me in the darkness. “Dante’s out.”
“What? They let him go? Just like that?”
“Apparently.”
“How did you find out?”
“Some men dro—”
Shuffling sounded in the brush to my right. I looked that way to see Dante lurking near a tree in the shadows.
“Santo Dio.” My eyes grew wide, and I crossed quickly toward my brother and wrapped my hand around his nape, pulling him toward me.
But he didn’t return my hug. Every muscle in his body was tense and rigid, and when I stepped back and looked at him in the waning moonlight, I saw that his eyes were wide and bloodshot, and there was a frantic look in their pale blue depths that hadn’t been there when I’d visited him in the Tomb.
“What’s wrong?” When Dante didn’t answer, I looked to Marco, who’d moved up on my side.
“Tell him,” Marco said.
Dante’s wild eyes jumped from face to face. “She called me.”
“Who?” I asked.