Page 79 of Captured Fantasy

He wiped my cheek with his thumb. “If I had to guess, it was years of no one letting you release properly. You should let me edge you when you feel up to it.”

“Not tonight,” I sniffed. “But yes, I’m open to it.”

“Call it a night or should we just take a break?”

“Take a break,” I said firmly. I didn’t want this to end when it was only just beginning. I needed him all night.

He stepped back, tracing my thighs with his fingertips. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m starving.”

He retrieved his phone. I sat on the counter, his arm around my waist, while he ordered food. Then we stepped into his enormous shower, the water falling like rain from the ceiling, and he washed my body.

He carefully worked the plug from me and laid it aside, soothing my sore flesh with gentle strokes of his fingertip. Afterward, he put on a pair of boxers and helped me into one of his t-shirts. It was soft and smelled like him, a clean, male scent that wiped my brain and made me stupid.

We were both quiet as we rested on the couch together. I lay tangled up across his legs, running my fingers over his tattoos. Tracing the dark ink over his skin, feeling the faint raised lines on his perfect body.

“You don’t seem real,” he said, gazing up at the ceiling.

“Why’s that?” I lifted my head.

“You’re just this…gorgeous thing. Sometimes I feel like you’re just a figment of my imagination, some kind of fantasy that’s too good to be true,” he said, his dark eyes thoughtful. His mouth parted and he drew in a heavy breath. “I don’t know how to move forward with you, Enza.”

Coldness seeped into my bones.

“What do you mean?”

“What kind of man am I if I can’t claim you?” he said. “Federico has legal control over you, at least within the outfit, and I don’t know how to fix that. And I’m just letting him touch you, letting him fuck you, when I should kill him for it. I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?” I whispered. My throat was thick and dry.

He pulled me against his chest, kissing my mouth. “I’m falling for you, Enza. I don’t know how or when, but you will be mine.”

I couldn’t speak through the roaring in my ears.

“If I have to kill Federico, I will,” he said, and I knew he was serious.

“You can’t,” I gasped. “He’s not a bad man, he’s just…jealous and passionate. Like you. Give me time, Cosimo, I’ll sort this out.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“This is causing problems at work,” he said, his jaw clenched. “Federico and I have gotten into at last two fights, we can’t fucking work together without instigating another. Lucien is rightly pissed because it’s disrupting everything and it’s a bad time for discord.”

I sat up, surprised. “I had no idea it was this big of an issue.”

“It fucking kills me to think of him touching you.”

“Cosimo, you need to be the bigger man.”

“I already am the bigger man,” he said, his eyes glinting.

I sat up, straddling his waist. “You are. But don’t do anything dangerous, I can’t have you getting hurt.”

The doorbell rang and he lifted me off his lap and deposited me on the couch, going to retrieve our food.

It smelled amazing and my stomach growled in a sharp reminder that I hadn’t eaten since lunch. He disappeared into the kitchen while I unveiled boxes of lamb gyros, salad, fresh hummus, naan bread, and stuffed olives. When he returned with two glasses of whiskey, I had already filled my plate.

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