“It will be,” I reassured her. “It is.”
“Your family hate me,” she grumbled. “Issy will never speak to me again. Your mum… yourdad.”
I didn’t pretend to understand the relationship between Leo and my dad. Over the last few months, whenever I would ask, he would only say something along the lines of, “I spoke to her. She’s fine.”
He truly loved her, so I knew he would never hurt her.
“Leonie, you’re seeing this wrong. My dad wouldn’t let anything ever happen to me. Knowing that he sent Firdman to kill me too… It was either you, me or my dad who killed Anton. Either way, he was a dead man walking. If anything, you’ve done us a favour. It was a bit scary at first, I won’t lie to you, but it was worth it.”
“I scared myself,” she confessed with an awkward smile before cuddling back into my chest with a sigh.
“You’re ruthless,” I said and I hoped she could hear the smile in my voice. “My wicked lioness.”
She didn’t say anything, just shuffled somehow closer. I wanted to hold her there forever.
“Don’t go again. Don’t leave me again.”
She tensed. “I… you want me to stay? I can’t stay here.”
“Then let me come with you,” I pleaded, brushing back her hair and tucking it behind her ear. After we’d fucked, this was always a surefire way of getting her to sleep, comforting her.
Four beats passed before she asked, “You still want to be with me?”
“I meant what I said at that beach, Leonie. Exclusively, publicly,legally,I want you as mine. Not one part of that has changed.”
“Legally?” she whispered. That word had made her breathless before.
I cupped her chin, pulling her gently to face me. Her icy eyes were wide and questioning. “I want to own your spirit, your mind. I want to be all you think about. You consume me, Leonie. You’ve swallowed me whole. This is not me asking now, not while today is still going through your head. But I promise you, one day soon, I am making you a Belov. A Belov-Castillo, if you so wish. You’ll be my wife.”
“Yeah,” she said with a shaky laugh, “today is probably not the best day.”
Even though I said it, it still hurt for her to agree.
“Just give me some time,” she said and pressed a kiss to my cheek.
But as she pulled back, kneeling before me and looking down at me, her eyes bore into mine and there was heat there.
We collided. Our mouths came together with a desperate need because I had never needed anyone, but she was crucial. Imperative to my existence. Her fingers curled into my hair before she straddled my lap, pulling me closer as I hardened to a painful force against my trousers.
Fucking hell.
She had shrugged off her coat and was on the buttons of my shirt as I was on the zip of her trousers. I had to get inside her. I had to be inside her. They were skin tight, making it hard to get a good angle but I found her clit and just brushing it had my lioness gasp. I relished in the noise, rubbing against her in tight circles as she rolled against my cock.
“Take these off,” she begged against my lips, pulling at my waistband. “I need you.”
I wasted no time in pulling them and my boxers down, not bothering to take them any lower than my thighs. She stood, kicked off her trousers and didn’t evenbother to take off her knickers, instead pulling them to the side as she seated herself on me.
Our groans were the most nurturing noise I could have asked for as she impaled herself on my cock. She ground against me, rocking forward and back, letting me feel her every angle. Her sharp breaths filled my ear as I let her have full reign of me.
“Dom,” she groaned, hands back in my hair. “Fuck, oh my god. Fuck.” Her swearing became a stutter of fricatives as she came, pulsing around my cock.
As she came down, I pressed a thumb against her clit and nipped at her earlobe.
Then she unleashed herself. She set a pace that had me delirious, one I had to match, drilling up into her.
“I missed you,” she was crying. “I couldn’t think of anything other than you. Every time I came with my fingers… I heard your groans, breaths, words. I saw your face, saw your cock fucking me. It’s been that way for years.”
She was going to have me come on the spot.