Page 43 of The Sicilian Billionaire's Neglected Wife
“No other woman exists for me,” he gritted out, fighting for control as she clenched around him. “No reporter. No temptation. Nothing. Just you.”
“Aivan—” His name was broken music on her lips.
“Just you,” he repeated, shifting the angle to hit deeper, to touch that place inside her that belonged only to him. “Always you. Only you.”
She came again with a sob, her release triggering his own. He poured himself into her, marking her from the inside, making sure she’d feel him for days, remember who she belonged to.
After, as she lay boneless beneath him, he studied her face. The tears had dried but something fragile still lingered in her eyes. Pain from memories of a father who’d chosen another woman over his family? Or pain from believing her husband might do the same?
He found himself speaking without conscious thought, thumb tracing the curve of her cheek. “I gave you my word when we married. I’ll give it to you again.” He looked directly into her eyes, making sure she understood. “I will never cheat on you. There will be no other women. No affairs. No betrayals. You have my word as a Cannizzaro.”
Relief flashed across her features, followed by something that looked dangerously like hope.
He rolled away before she could respond, before she could ask for promises he didn’t know how to make. Physical fidelity he could manage. Had managed. Would continue to manage.
But the way she looked at him sometimes, like she was waiting for words he didn’t have, feelings he couldn’t name...
That he couldn’t give her.
Not when he didn’t even understand what it was she was asking for.
Not when the thought of her leaving made him want to lock every door and throw away the keys.
Not when she made him feel things that had no place in the carefully controlled life of a champion.
So he pulled her against him instead, her back to his chest where she couldn’t see his face, and held her while she drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow they’d return to their routine. Tomorrow she’d be his perfect wife again, and he’d be the champion who needed nothing beyond the next victory.
But tonight, with her body still trembling from his possession and the ghost of her father’s betrayal hanging between them, he allowed himself one moment of weakness.
He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in.
“Mine,” he whispered into the silk of her hair, knowing she couldn’t hear him. “Always mine.”
Even if he didn’t understand why that mattered more than any trophy.
Even if he couldn’t name the feeling that made his chest tight when she smiled.
Even if the word “love” remained as foreign to him as losing.
Even then.
