Page 55 of Forbidden Vengeance

“Say please,” I murmur, though my tongue is already on the side of her throat and my hand is already undoing my belt.

“No,” she snaps before she reaches down to help me.

I toss my pants and briefs off the edge of the bed and quickly shuck off my shirt. I grip myself in my hand, stroking my length slowly a few times. Fuck me, I’m sotense—every one of my nerves alight with that same, glimmering haze.

I better fucking last but from the way she’s looking at me, I don’t think I will. Her chin tips up, eyes narrowing at me in challenge.

“Where are your manners?” I click my tongue even as I hook my arms beneath her thigh, moving it up and to the side. I lean over onto one forearm and look down between our bodies. Where her skin is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and I can still see wetness smeared between her thighs.

“Nonexistent,” Elena retorts. “Fuck me.”

I nearly come undone at just the first press of my cock against her, but I bite down on my tongue and press my forehead against her shoulder in order to collect myself. Elena slips her arm around me, fingers pressing into my shoulder blades and then smoothing up to the hair at the nape of my neck.

“God, Mario,” she murmurs, voice somewhere near my temple.

I press deeper into her in one long stroke, gasping against her skin. I kiss her shoulder, then her mouth before I begin thrusting into her.

Every particle in my body has a tenuous grasp on the other, the spaces between us filled with electricity. I moan against her mouth, thrusting into her slowly at first until I feel both of her arms wrap around me.

“Fuck, Elena,” I manage to groan, my mouth somewhere between the corner of her jaw and the front of her throat. My hand falls back down somewhere near her waist, gripping her.

Elena whimpers and I collapse against her, the thrust of my hips quickening. Stars burst behind my eyes and my fingertips are going numb whenever they graze her skin. I can’t fuckingbreatheand the only reason my lungs continue to fill is because Elena is moaning my name back into me.

“Mario,” she says. A chorus of it, “Mario. Mario. Mario.”

My hips snap against hers as I press another bruising kiss to her mouth. I hook one of her legs over my shoulder, and then another as I thrust into her. I feel her pulse around me as she comes.

Once, and then I am still kissing her and fucking her andGod—what is this? Because she comes again, and only then do I whisper them.

The dreams and the fantasies and the things I’d never let myself voice—I fucking say them against her lips, her collarbone. Words I didn’t even know lived inside me until they spill out like blood from a wound.

I come and it is with Elena’s arms around me and Elena’s name on my lips, like a prayer, like salvation. I pull out of her and gather her into my arms. We don’t say anything until both our pulses calm, mirroring each other in the quiet dark.

“What did you say? Earlier?” she whispers against my chest.

I shake my head, tucking her head beneath my chin. “Nothing, I think.”

After, as she dozes in my arms, I finally allow myself to admit the truth I’ve been fighting, the words I whispered into her skin: I’m in love with her. With her brilliant mind and calculated grace, with her ability to match me move for move in this deadly game.

Even with that perfect baby growing inside her—Anthony’s child, a complication I never saw coming.

The realization should terrify me. Instead, it feels like coming home. Like finding something I didn’t even know I was missing until it was already under my skin, in my blood.

Giuseppe would call it weakness. O’Connor would call it stupidity.

But holding Elena in my arms, feeling her heartbeat against my chest, I finally understand why my brother chose Bianca over blood. Why he’d burn the world to protect what’s his.

Because I would do the same for her. For them both.

18

ELENA

The morning sickness hits like clockwork at exactly 10:37 a.m., a cruel reminder that my body is no longer entirely my own. Twelve weeks pregnant and it hasn’t eased—if anything, it’s gotten worse.

I barely make it to the bathroom, marble cold against my knees as I heave up the ginger tea and bland toast that was all I could manage for breakfast. My hair—still damp from this morning’s shower—falls forward, but familiar hands gather it back before it can get in the way.

“Can I get you anything?”

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