Page 77 of Blood Money

His arms tightened, and his fingers dug into my flesh in a bruising manner. “Kendall, stay with me. Breathe, baby. Breathe.”

At his demand, I sucked in a ragged, gasping inhale. My vision cleared, but I was tingling head to toe. If he let me go, I’d likely fall to my knees. “Why?” I croaked through a throat parched from the burn of my building tears.

“It’s a long story. Basically, my grandfather ordered it, and Mario was an ass-kissing piece of shit.”

“M-M-Mario?” My legs buckled.

He turned us so my back hit the tiles, his body holding me up. He gripped my head and pressed his forehead to mine. Nose beside mine, he stared into my eyes. The agony I knew was in mine was mirrored in his.

“This is why Alessio was right. I can’t expect you to be with me when I was the reason for your greatest loss.”

Pain sliced through me with each unanswered question that slashed through my brain, the wounds reopened and bleeding fresh. The devastation when I realized Vittorio wasn’t going to show up at the train station. The heartbreak when he wouldn’t answer my initial text messages or calls. The fear and uncertainty the day I found out I was pregnant. The regret that I’d deleted his number. The pain and fury when I was told he didn’t want anything to do with us. The emptiness when I realized my baby was gone. The bleakness and the hopelessness that dragged me under and almost killed me. All of it crashed over me.

“Kendall! Look at me!” He shook me.

I’d been staring right at him, but I was too locked in my memories to respond. My first protective instinct was to run—to hate him. But sanity prevailed, and I blinked away the tears that poured from my eyes. If I did that, I was proving to him that he was right to let me go—proving I wasn’t strong enough to stand by his side through the hard things we were sure to face.

And more than the self-preservation, I wanted to live my life beside him.

The fierceness in his gaze reminded me of a wild animal. I rested my trembling hands on either side of his neck, his pulse pounding against my palms. “It. Wasn’t. Your. Fault.”

“God, Kendall,” he said as he shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Together we are stronger,” I whispered, dropping one hand to cover the tattoo on his side. The same one his brother had. In my darkest days, I’d looked it up. I didn’t know why, but I did.

“Fuck,” he breathed before his lips crashed to mine. We clung to each other as the kiss said everything we couldn’t—everything we didn’t have words for.

“Up,” he grunted, and I hopped up to throw my legs around him. He held me tight.

Because he had me.

He fumbled for the faucet and shut the water off.

Then he carried me to the bed, dripping water the entire way.

Holding me with one arm, he shifted us fully onto the center of the mattress. Through it all, his tongue lashed against mine. We broke free only to adjust.

My hands were everywhere, trying to relearn every inch of him. I reveled in the changes ten years had brought him. The broader shoulders, the thicker muscles, that thick, hard cock that I swore was bigger—I worshipped it all.

He ripped his mouth free to move it to my throat. He sucked and licked the water from my body, then made his way between my legs. Though as a man, he was larger, he still fit perfectly—exactly as he’d pointed out. He continued working his magical mouth down to exactly where I was dying for him to go. He was relentless and didn’t let up until I had shattered, screaming his name.

Slowly, he licked me until the last of my orgasm faded. Then he rolled to his back, bringing me with him until I straddled him. When he tried to enter me, I slid down his body until his shaft was under my lips. I wrapped my fingers around the base and drew the soft head into my mouth.

“Oh Christ,” he hissed. Reflexively, he grabbed my hair as his back arched. I swallowed to bring him down my throat, and he made a gargled groan. When I glanced up at him, the cords of his neck stood out, and his eyes were rolled back in his head. His hips flexed, and I gagged, pulling him free only to suck him in as deep as I could again.

“Fuck, I’m gonna…,” he grunted and tugged at my hair, but I fought the pull and kept going until he shot his hot spurts of cum down my throat. I swallowed every drop.

“Jesus,” he gasped as he gave one last shuddering thrust.

I planned to keep working him over until he was hard again, but I needn’t have worried. He hooked me under my arms and jerked me up his body like I was nothing more than a rag doll. He positioned me over the end of his length, then dropped me at the same time as he drove his hips up.

It was heaven.

He fucked me like he hadn’t just come in my mouth. My next orgasm barreled into me like a runaway train. I came so hard, I flooded all over him.

“Oh God,” he groaned but held still, and I desperately needed him to move. But when I tried to grind on his perfectly amazing dick, he flipped us around until I was on all fours and he was behind me. The second we were in place, he shoved back inside, and I whimpered.

This right here was what I wanted us to have for the rest of our lives.

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