Too much.
He took a deep breath. “What is it that you’re trying to achieve with these ridiculous questions, bella?”
Defiance glared at him from those golden-brown depths. “Establishing boundaries, I suppose.”
“That question is moot, Alessandra, because I don’t believe you would ever do such a thing to me.
“Strip me bare of every rule I’ve ever lived by, si.
“Drive me crazy with your stunts to protect those two bastards from me, si.
“Make me pant after you like a damn dog in heat, si,” he bit out, with a self-deprecating shake of his head. “But to cheat on me is to cheat on the life we want to build with each other—so, no, bella, that’s not you.”
And in that moment of vulnerability, of giving voice to things he’d never admitted before, even to himself, Vincenzo knew exactly how much she was changing him. Antonio had been right to worry.
From the first day he had met her, she had bowled him over with her beauty, but even more with her generosity, her integrity, her constant attempts to open herself up to others.
Alessandra made him want to be a different man. A better man.
A man who could open himself to the possibility of a relationship with his brothers, a man who gave others the second chance that he’d never been given. A man who could even consider forgiving the woman who had directly ruined his life, who had so thoroughly broken his mother’s heart that she’d never recovered from it.
But he couldn’t. He didn’t know how. His path had been set so long ago that he didn’t know how to choose a new one now. He didn’t know how to be a man whose every waking thought was not filled with taking everything that had been denied him. How to be the man who had to face all the things he’d already done in the name of revenge.
“I was insanely jealous of Anna. How much she’s a part of your past, a part of your present.”
He wasn’t shocked by the sudden turns their conversation took anymore. Neither did he derive any kind of satisfaction from the revelation. It had been a power trip to learn how much he affected Alex. But that was before. Before he realized that it worked both ways. Before he’d begun to view himself through her eyes. “She’s firmly in my past. You’re my future.”
“I want to trust this so much. And not just for Charlie’s sake. I need to believe in this marriage, V, in you.
“I want to stop caring about everything else. About Leo and Massimo, about BFI, about the entire world. I want what you promised me on the island, our life together.”
His chest felt like it would burst open, so much emotion filled him. “All you need is to take a step toward me, bella, that final step.”
“Then why does it feel like defeat?”
He shook his head. “I want your surrender, bella. Not your defeat.”
Some unnamed emotion glittered in her eyes. Pulling the damned dress away from those legendary legs, she crawled toward him on her knees, flashes of bare golden flesh toying with him.
Her hands on his knees pushed them apart and she moved close, intoxicatingly close. The tips of her breasts brushed against his chest, her flat belly against his. Her fingers directed his hands to her thighs with no hesitation. The silk of her skin under his calloused fingers, the incredible scent of her teasing his nostrils… She was a feast he’d been denied for far too long.
“Alex, bella, we don’t have to do this tonight, when you’re still grieving—”
“No, I need this tonight. I need this now.” Her hand moved to his neck, then upward to sink her fingers into his hair. Her warm lips skated over every inch of his face, branding him, staking a claim. “I don’t want to think. I just want to feel.”
Her breath was a warm benediction against his other cheek. He felt engulfed by her. Every moment, every day, she was beginning to own another piece of him. His breath began to come in harsh pants, as if he was trying to catch up to her. And he had a strangely feverish feeling that he would forever be trying to catch up.
“But sometimes I wonder if you’re the devil or an angel,” she whispered, the words flickering over his skin as she shifted that gloriously lithe body closer. And closer. Her lips descended toward his, her grip on his hair getting tighter. Until his head was tilted up to look into her eyes.
“All I care is that you’re mine.” That first press of her mouth against his, after so long, sizzled right through his skin. “Please, V…say you’re mine.”
Words came and fell away from his mouth as she looked deep into his eyes. He considered and threw away platitudes that had no meaning, lies that would damage the surrender she was giving him. Surrender he wasn’t sure he deserved.
And then they came, so easily, slumbering awake from some deep place he didn’t even know existed within himself. They burned in his chest, lit a fiery path through his throat as he tried to process the weight of the feeling. Of how unprepared he was for them.
“I’m yours, bella. Like I’ve never been anyone else’s.”
She came at him like a wild storm then, pushing into him, pressing into him, shaking the very ground he stood on. Her mouth… Madre di Dio, in all the wildness, her mouth was a lush escape. A warm invitation to heaven.
“And I’m yours. All of me is yours,” she whispered frantically against his mouth, a benediction he hadn’t even known he’d been waiting for.
Vincenzo cupped her hips, eager
