Page 118 of My Dark Ever After
“Oh, you like that idea,” I noted with smug, masculine pride.
“I do,” she admitted, leaning back to smile shyly at me. “It’s unbelievably hot.”
“It is,” I agreed. “But first things first, I think.”
She raised a brow at me, an expression I was happy to know she had adopted from me. I ignored it to shift her to the bench so I could get up and retrieve her dress. She sat still and pliant while I dressed her, slipping the fabric over her head, lifting her to her feet to tug it over her hips so it swished at her high-heeled feet. I got on my knees before her to kiss each knee before it disappeared beneath the material and the inside swell of each breast when I adjusted the panel just so over its curves.
By the time I finished tending to her, her lids were low over smoldering dark eyes. She smoothed her fingers into my hair, pushing the waves back from my forehead tenderly.
“I love you.” She spoke softly, as if the words were a reverent prayer in a sacred temple. I was glad for it, because I had made this space as holy to us as possible, filled with symbols of the greatest love stories ever known, including our own. “All this is unspeakably wonderful,” she said, gesturing to our surroundings. “But it’s you I can’t take my eyes off.”
I smiled at her. “I read the letter you wrote in the Chiesa di Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi.” At her little gasp, I raised a cocky brow. “I had it retrieved from the bowl. It is better that the man who loves you and is capable of andwillingto give you whatever you want knows the desires of your heart than some priest in a chapel, no?”
She frowned slightly, but did not stop me from continuing.
“‘I want a life filled with fire, and I want to be courageous enough to stand the flames.’ That is what you wrote before you told Beatrice, or God, or whoever you hoped might grant wishes, that what you desired most was love. Love of a man whose touch threatened to raze you to ash.”
“Only so I could be reborn into something better,” she murmured, smoothing a hand into my hair. “Something stronger.”
“I told you once that maybe you were unlucky in life because you were saving all your fortune up for a truly epic love story,” I said as I gathered her slim fingers in my calloused grip. “I did not understand at the time that the same thought could be applied to me. Whatever hell I have endured in this life, it was to earn the perfection of you at my side.”
“Raffa,” she breathed as I leaned forward to kiss the bared skin above her navel.
I was nervous, which was strange for me. But the stakes had never been so high. Not even when I had decided to take over ascapo dei capifrom my father to save my family.
This was a decision I was making for me. A selfish one, given the dangers Guinevere would have to endure by my side, but one I found I could live with because she had convinced me that she could handle the heat, enjoy it, even.
I had to believe, as she did, that fate had created us for each other and thrown us on an inevitable course toward this very moment, where I would cement our destiny for the rest of our lives as one of Italy’s greatest love stories, even if ours was never told as widely as the ones that surrounded us in this room.
“So I hope you understand I am not doing this because you are suddenly a Mafia princess and uniting our families would shore up the power that our enemies have been trying to steal for months. I am doing this because you are the one dream I will allow myself to have without guilt or avarice. I am doing this because I had forgotten what joy was and connection could be until you jumped into the road and I hit you with my car.” I paused as she let out a weak laugh. “I am doing this because I love you in any language across any span of time, and I will never stop, not even when my last breath leaves my body. So, Guinevere Stone, I am asking you to stay by my side forever as my wife because no one will ever love you as much as I do.”
Fat tears pooled in the lower troughs of her lids like diamonds before rolling down her cheeks. One splattered over our joined hands, anointing us.
“We’ve only known each other for four months,” Guinevere whispered thickly. “Most people would think we were crazy.” A blinding smile streaked across her face like a shooting star. “It’s a good thing then that my Infernus Rex taught me not to care what other people think. Yes, Raffaele,si,sic,oui,po,ja.” Her bright laughter frothed over her lips, sparkling as champagne. “In any language,yes!”
I caught her as she threw herself to her knees and into my arms. Her mouth found mine unerringly, hot and firm over mine like a seal, a stamp of approval for our union.
I let myself dissolve into the sweet caress of her lips and tongue for a moment before I pulled back just enough to kiss the tears from her cheeks.
“So pretty when you cry,” I murmured, cupping her face in both palms so I could stare at her beauty and know I could do so every day for the rest of our lives.
My chest ached with the brutality of my heart banging against its confines, eager to jump through the cage of my ribs into Guinevere’s hands.
“I can’t believe this,” she said with another giddy laugh, peppering my face with kisses. “It feels too good to be true.”
It would never fail to amaze me that this woman could think something involving me was too good to be true. I had always harbored a secret desire to be seen as good and worthy, above the writhing masses of immoralsoldatiand capos my father had ruled. I knew I was no better than them, not really, but to have Guinevere believe I was made a tremendous difference in the weight I had carried over my shoulders for much too long.
“Give me your hand,” I told her, already taking her left hand in mine so I could place the ring I had chosen on her ring finger. I explained the significance of the choice as I slotted it over her narrow digit. “The first wedding rings have been attributed to ancient Rome. They were first cast in iron, but it rusted, so they moved to gold. They were calledfede, and the Irish claddagh ring is based on a similar notion of two hands holding the same heart.”
Guinevere gave a shivery exhale as the two hands framing an enormous black diamond fit into place at the base of her knuckle. The dark gem gleamed like her fathomless eyes as she stared at it in wonder and then back up at me.
“It’s perfect,” she breathed. “Of course it is.”
I could not resist the proud smile that fixed between my cheeks. “Only the best for my Regina Inferna.”
She tipped her head back to laugh at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I’m quite worthy of the title yet, but one day, I will be.”
This time pride for her sluiced through me. “Of that, I have no doubt,cacciatrice mia.”
