His lips and tongue graze the butterflies at my collarbone as one hand massages my breast and the other grips my hip, guiding me up and down his length. I run my fingers down the front of him, feeling taut muscles under my hands with each roll of his hips.
How can any one man be all this?
His mouth finds mine as he thrusts harder, and he teases my nipple between his finger and thumb, bringing me back up onto the cliff that I just plummeted off of not ten minutes ago.
It’s like lightning under my skin. Sensory overload. My mind short-circuits as I become pure sensation. I feel everything so intensely, as if I’m electrified—fully charged and ready to detonate.
I arch into his body and cry out, once, twice, three times with his thrusts as I explode all around him. He pulls me tight against him and holds me here as we both come.
This is heaven.
When I can move again, I literally pinch myself. I have to know this is real, because never, even in my fantasies, did I think it could be like this.
Chapter Thirty-One
I WAKE HOURS later, still on the floor, deliciously sore. But it takes me only a second to realize I’m alone. I pull myself up to a sitting position and look around for Alessandro. I find him on the balcony. He’s in only his jeans, leaning his elbows on the rail, the city lights laid out in front of him.
I slip my dress on, and when I slide the glass door open, the cool air sends a shiver over me. “Hey. What are you doing out here?”
He turns to face me. “Thinking.”
“About?”
He draws me into his arms and kisses me. “The past, the future, and everything in between.” He takes my hand, leading me through the living room to a bedroom . . . in which I find a queen-sized bed with four pillows under a white duvet—the only furniture in the place. Above it, framed on the wall, is his print of Salomé.
“There’s a bed?” I mutter.
“You distracted me before I could get you this far.” He nuzzles into my neck from behind, his fingers brushing up my back to the tie of my dress, which he undoes. It drops to the floor at my feet. He kisses the sensitive spot below my ear, then steps back and slides off his jeans. He flicks off the light, then guides me to the bed, where we climb between cool sheets that are so soft they must have some insane thread count. I curl into Alessandro and realize it’s been over a month since we’ve talked about Lorenzo, or the group home or anything else from back then. I can’t even remember the last time I saw that tortured look in his eye. The guilt is gone and he finally seems free.
I smile against his chest.
He must feel it, because he kisses the crown of my hair. “What has you so happy?”
“Would you ever have imagined back then that we’d end up like this?”
He cups my cheek and lifts my face so those beautiful eyes are gazing down into mine. “I imagined it every day.”
I kiss him with everything that I have, because I don’t know how else to show him how deep his words touch me, and when he rolls on top of me, I give him every part of me: my body, my heart, and my soul.
“I love you,” I whisper, low in his ear.
He buries his face into my neck, and I feel his shaky breath against my skin. He makes love to me so slowly and thoroughly that it breaks me open and I spill right into him.
I DON’T REMEMBER falling asleep, but I wake in Alessandro’s bed. When I open my eyes, the room is bright, and so are Alessandro’s eyes as he gazes down at me. He’s sitting up, leaning against the headboard in a pool of sheets. He’s got the real-estate magazine that I saw on the kitchen counter when we came in propped on one bent knee and he’s writing something in it.
“Hey,” I croak. “Happy birthday.”
“Good morning,” he says, gliding a fingertip down the length of my nose.
I shift up and kiss him. I mean for it to be a quick peck, seeing as I have morning breath and all, but he glides his hand around the nape of my neck and holds my lips to his, deepening our kiss.
Finally, he pulls away, his gaze locking with mine. “I want to wake up to this face every morning,” he purrs.
I brush my lips over his jawline and look down at the magazine on his knee. “Oh my God,” I say when I see that he’s not writing something. On the back of a real estate flyer, he’s sketching something.
Me.
I’m sleeping, an arm flung over my head, my fingers curled into my wild afro and the sheets tangled over my breasts, one dark nipple just peaking out. And I’m beautiful in a way I never could be in real life. I look almost angelic.
He turns the sketch for me to see. “I was inspired.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say gliding a finger over the lines of my naked shoulder and the tiny butterflies there.
“Not nearly as beautiful as the real thing.”
My eyes flick to him. “I don’t look like this.”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t. I’m not nearly talented enough to capture your true beauty.”
I feel myself cringe. I have an unusual face, but I’ve never been beautiful.
His fingers caress my cheek and I lift my eyes to his. “You are beautiful, Hilary,” he says as if he read my mind. “One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things.” He leans in and kisses the cringe off my mouth. His mouth leaves mine and his lips brush over my cheek to my ear. “Live here with me.”
My brain short-circuits. I can’t have heard what I think I heard.
“Please,” he says when I don’t answer, pulling back and tracing my eyebrow with his fingertip. “I think about you all day and I dream about you all night. I want your days and I want your nights. I want all of you.”
“But this . . .” I wave a hand at the window. “I can’t afford this.”
He sets his sketch aside and slides lower in the bed, bringing me with him. He props himself on an elbow above me. “I can, and I want to live with you and love you right here. And when Henri is ready for the truth, I want to be able to tell him that we love him and each other. I want him to feel like we’re all part of the same big family, and that he never has to choose between us and Mallory . . . or between you and me. And when you’re ready, I want him to have more sisters and brothers.”
My heart pounds in my throat. He’s not just talking about moving in together. He’s talking about much, much more.
“You know I come with a butt-ugly coffee table, right?” It’s all I can think to say.
He laughs, then leans down and presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “I take your coffee table to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, until death do us part.”
Oh my God. I prop myself on an elbow and scowl down at him. “Did you just marry my coffee table?”
His eyes burn into mine as he bites a corner of his lower lip. “What would your coffee table say if I asked it?”
It takes me a second to catch what he’s saying, and my heart shoots into overdrive. “Asked it to marry you?”
He nods slowly, but now his expression is dead serious.
“It would have to think about it,” I answer warily.