Page 72 of Cruel Heir

“Are you going to tell me about it?” she whispers, arching into me almost involuntarily.

“After this.” I slip my hand under her skirt, sliding her panties down her hips. “Five days without you is too long,principessa. And my hand isn’t enough.”

She pulls back from the kiss, her eyes widening as she tries to pull away from my touch, the mood between us cooling. “I know you must have had company.” Lucia’s eyes are bright with suspicion. “I know how this goes.”

“No, you don’t,dolcezza. Not with me.” I sink down onto the window seat, pulling her atop me as I do, her skirt riding up her thighs as I bring her down into my lap. I reach for her hand, pressing it between us, against the hard ridge of my cock that’s threatening to burst through my fly. “Does that feel like anyone else has satisfied me since I’ve been gone,principessa? Or does it feel like my cock is that fucking hard because I waited for you?”

Lucia sucks in a breath, her hand flexing against my shaft. Even through my suit trousers, the sensation makes my head swim. I reach for my zipper, jerking it down, and I wrap her fingers around my cockas I lift her up, angling her so that the head nudges between her thighs.

“Slide me inside of you,dolcezza,” I whisper, my voice so strangled that it feels hard to get the words out. “Let me feel how much you missed me, too.”

Lucia lets out a breathless moan as my hips arch upwards, pressing myself against her entrance, just enough for me to feel how wet and warm she already is. Her hand tightens around my cock, and I suck in a breath as she lowers herself onto me, her tight pussy wrapping around the sensitive, swollen head as she starts to sink down onto my lap.

“Fuck.” I groan aloud, my hands gripping her hips as I pull her down tightly against me, feeling her warmth envelop every inch of my straining cock. “God, you feel so fucking good,principessa—”

“We don’t have to do this anymore,” she whispers, even as she tightens around me. “You already have what you want.”

“What I want is you.” It comes out before I can even think of what to say, the words effortless enough that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’re true. “No one else, Lucia. And so long as you want to stay with me, I plan to keep you. Whatever it takes.”

“I want you too.” Her eyes meet mine, dark and soft and full of emotion that I know she’s only just beginning to work through. It’s the same for me. Everything has changed, and I know as well as she does that it will take time for us to figure out what all of this means—for us both.

But this is the beginning. And if all goes as I hope, we’ll have another, very soon.

“Then that’s enough, for now.” I slide my hand into her hair, bringing her mouth to mine for another kiss, as I start to thrust into her. Nothing has ever felt as good as having her wrapped around me, warm and wet andmine. My wife.

The woman I love.

I nearly whisper the words against her mouth as I hold her there against me, as I feel her arch and cry out when I stroke my fingersbetween her legs until she comes for me, when I feel my cock harden and my body tense as I come for her, too. I nearly let it slip.

I tell myself there will be plenty of time to say those things, still.

Once this is all over.

Once our future is secure.

22

ANDRE

Iexpected Lucia to worry, when it came time for me to go back to her father. What I hadn’t expected was for her to insist on coming with me.

“It’s too dangerous,” I tell her flatly, the moment she suggests it. “And we’re leavingnow. There’s no time to discuss this.”

In retrospect, I should have known when I woke up to find her already out of bed, and tracked her down to what was her bedroom, getting dressed for the day. It took three days for the meeting with Fontana to be arranged, and for all three of those, Lucia has spent the first hour or so in the bathroom. It’s usually early afternoon before her nausea calms down enough for her to be presentable. The fact that she pushed through it to be dressed, with makeup and jewelry on, before I’m out of bed, should have been a clue that she was ready to insist on something she knew I wouldn’t like.

“He’s my father.” Lucia tips her chin up in that stubborn way that I see less and less of these days, but I still recognize. “I’m carrying your child, but alsohisgrandchild. It will be harder for him to ignore that if I’m there, too. I want to have a voice in this.”

“Wives don’t come to these meetings. Youknowthat.”

Lucia gives me a withering look, the kind that reminds me of whyI’ve come to admire a woman who I once couldn’t have imagined had the type of tenacity that she does. “You’re changing things, aren’t you, Andre?We’rechanging them. You kidnapped me and started all of this. I was dragged into it. I don’t want to sit here and wait to find out if you’re coming back. I want to be there when it’s finished.”

I want to argue with her. I want to tell her that there’s no possible way I’m letting her walk into what could end in my death and her father taking her back. I want to tell her that I don’t want her to be there to see it if I fail.

“You owe me this,” Lucia whispers, and I know, as she says it, that she’s right.

Everything she’s endured since that first night has been because of my plotting and need for revenge, because I took her as a means to get what I thought I needed more than anything else.

But what I need is her. And it’s clear to me that she needs this.

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