Page 79 of Code Name: Dante

“Um, how long until I can get you naked?” I asked the second I closed it behind me.

Her response was to take off her sweater, toss it on the floor with the jacket she’d already removed, then unfastened her jeans. I was torn as to whether I should help or strip myself. I went with the latter.

It wasn’t like Lark and I hadn’t spent the last three nights in each other’s arms, making love more than sleeping. Four, if I counted the first night, which meant just as much, since it was the first time I’d slept with her next to me.

This was different, though. We were alone, and that meant we could have sex out in the living room if we wanted to. And in the kitchen. And wherever we chose, we could make as much noise as we wanted to. I longed to hear Lark shout out my name, even scream it, every time I made her come.

“It’s like you can read my mind,” I said when she spread a blanket on the floor in front of the fire and lay down, tucking a pillow behind her head.

“Yeah? What about you? Can you read mine?”

“Definitely,” I said, lowering myself on top of her after spreading her legs. “You’re wondering if I remembered the condoms.” I tore the one I had in my palm open, sheathed myself with one hand, and fingered her pussy with the other. “Are you ready for me,cuore mio?”

Her back arched, and she writhed beneath me. “You know I am.”

Lark wrapped her legs around my waist, and I filled her. “God, you feel good,” I said, drawing my cock out, then thrusting back in, repeating the motion until I felt her pussy clenching me. “Say my name,” I demanded.

“Alessandro,” she moaned.

“Louder.” I thrust harder, then held myself still.

Her fingers dug into my flesh when, like I’d hoped, she screamed it. Only then did I let myself go deeper, harder, until I came too.

We lay side by side, stroking each other’s skin, kissing every place we’d touched, and talking, not worrying about the time or who might be waiting on the other side of the door, in a bedroom we were no longer in.

“If it was just like this every day, for the rest of our lives, I’d be the happiest man on earth.”

“Just like this? Naked, on the floor?”

“Fine by me. What about you?”

“Hmm. Maybe if we were in Florence…”

“All over the world, Lark. Wherever you want to go, I’ll take you.”

“There’s just one thing.”

I propped myself up on my elbow. “What?”

“I think you should marry me first.”

“How’s tomorrow?”

Lark giggled. “To get married?”

I nodded. “There are a few judges Vincent probably paid off who I could get to waive the twenty-four-hour waiting period and come here to perform the ceremony.”

She laughed out loud. “No way. I’m not becoming your wife, standing in front of a bribed judge.”

“Then, the next day. Or the day after that. Or next month, if you want time to plan an actual wedding. Or next year. I don’t care when it is as long as between now and then, we’re together every possible minute.”

The smile left her face, but the love didn’t. “I don’t need an ‘actual’ wedding, whatever that even means. All I need is you.”

“Same. There is one other thing I’d really like, though, when I become your husband.”

Lark propped herself up like I had. “What?”

“I want you to dance with me. More than once.”

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