Page 5 of Unbound

We play like this for a while, and I can tell when he’s about to come from the way he swells. Instead, he pulls out with a groan. I gaze up at him in confusion.

He holds out his hands and helps me to my feet. “Much as I love filling your mouth, cara mia, I have other places I want to be.” I’m hoping he doesn’t mean with the accountants.

He runs his hands over my sides and peels my top up over my head. My yoga pants come next, then my underwear. He does it slowly, gently, taking his time. Kissing each piece of exposed skin as it’s revealed. His luscious lips and skilled hands turn the simple act of undressing me into an art form, and by the time he swoops me up naked into his arms, I am a quivering wreck of need. He holds me close to his now-bare chest and kisses me. It’s just as soft and tender as before, and he keeps his mouth on mine as he lays me down on the bed. He climbs on top of me, holds my face between his hands. His deep brown eyes meet mine, and I lose myself in their depth.

I reach up, stroke his cheekbones, his jaw. Glory in the sheer masculine beauty of his features. Yes, he’s still hard and ready to go, and yes, I’m more than ready, but I know that this isn’t about sex. This is something different.

“I love you, Rosa,” he says simply. “With everything I am, everything I will ever be, I love you. You are my whole world, my purpose, my religion. I will never stop loving you. Does that scare you?”

I meet his intense gaze, my eyes full of uncharacteristic tears. This is a lot. This is the first time we have been free of our witch-cast bind, according to Minnie. And yet it still feels as magical as ever. He once told me that he believed we were the magic, not the spell, and now I finally believe that.

I wrap my hands around the back of his neck. “I don’t scare easy, Luca da Firenze. And I love you too.”

I consider adding something flippant, something more on brand for me, like “So, are you going to fuck me or what?”—but it doesn’t feel right. Opening myself up like this, letting these big emotions flow through me, is in fact slightly scary but also wonderful. My heart feels full, my whole being is warm, bathed in the sunlight of his love. Of me being his, and him being mine.

He parts my legs and slides inside me. I sigh as he fills me, as his perfect body covers mine. My hands explore the muscles of his back, his magnificent shoulders, his powerful arms. His hands go under my ass, lifting me slightly so he can sink even deeper. God, it feels so good, the slow rhythm, the sweet strokes, the touch of his lips on my neck ...

“Yes,” I whisper, as he lingers there. “Please.” I sweep my hair away, turn my head to one side, exposing my neck and throat to him. Sometimes, I’m still amazed at all of this. At the idea of me—the big, tough vampire hunter—willingly making myself vulnerable to a creature that should be my enemy. It should be wrong, but I have never felt anything so right in my life. He licks the skin, kisses his way from beneath my ear around to my jaw, building my anticipation. All the while, he slides his cock in and out of me, the pressure and the pleasure building with each move.

“Ti amo, Rosa. Ti amo ...”

With that he bites, plunging his fangs into me and sucking. God, it never gets old, the way the throbbing and pulsing of the blood rushing to meet him and the throbbing and pulsing of my pussy become one. It sets my whole body on fire, every cell screaming with euphoria. My hands grip the bedsheets as he feeds, bunching the silky fabric up in my fists, giving in to the madness of it all. I trust him. I love him. I want him. I explode, calling his name as I climax, my body shuddering beneath him as I clench around his cock. He finds his own release, and I wrap my legs around him, dragging him closer, deeper. He finishes feeding, licks the wound to seal it, and looks at me. His eyes are ringed with both silver and red, which is always an impossibly hot combination—silver for his arousal, red for his hunger. I am his love; I am his prey. I am ... his.

I reach up, stroke his thick, dark hair. “Well. That was nice.”

He grins, flops down beside me, and pulls me into his arms. I end up half across his chest, arms and legs splayed over his body. “It was. I kind of wish I smoked now.”

I frown, intrigued. “I’ve seen vamps who smoke. Why don’t you?”

“I have, in the past. It’s not like it’s going to give me lung cancer. I just ... I don’t know, stopped enjoying it, I suppose? That’s true of a lot of things.”

“Yeah. I guess so, when you’re, like, a squillion years old.”

He slaps my ass, not too gently. “Hey. Watch it. You’re into your second century yourself.”

The Vecchissime have very long lives, but we are not potentially immortal like vamps. We age, slowly, but we do eventually die a natural death, if we’re lucky enough to get one of those. The aging process seems to be similar with vampires, at least the ones that were transformed before the Bargain. We call those Old World vamps, and their bodies still change—they can grow hair, grow the delicious dark stubble that Luca has, go to the gym, even in the case of my man here, get tattoos. My fingers run over the beautiful silver-ink dragon, its magnificent wings spreading over his shoulders and down onto his chest.

“Will you get fed up of me, do you think?” I ask. “Will you stop enjoying me?”

I don’t say it in a needy way; I’m genuinely interested. Can any love survive centuries? A lot of human marriages seem to implode within years, never mind hundreds of them. He twines his hands into my hair, uses it to tug my head back, so I’m looking up at him.

“Never, Rosa. Never.”

“How do you know, though?”

“I just do. I have never known anything as strongly as I know this. Now, what’s a man got to do to take a nap around here?”

I snuggle into him. He only needs about an hour of sleep a night, but I do enjoy sharing that with him. To say that he is a heavy sleeper is an understatement—he literally seems like he’s dead when he’s snoozing—and I know how much it means he trusts me to sleep around me, to be at his most vulnerable.

Still. I have questions. In fact, I feel entirely made of them. “What happened earlier?” I ask, tracing his chest hair with my fingers. I love his chest hair—why do modern men shave theirs?

“Which part? A lot happened earlier. Minnie broke the spell. Got caught up in some witchy crap. The spell broke apart and fled, which I’m trying hard not to think about or it makes me want to scratch my whole body from the inside out. I don’t want a fucking magical koi carp in my head …”

I get what he means, but I’m more laid-back about that. I believe Minnie when she said she broke the binding. As for the rest? I don’t know, and torturing myself thinking about it isn’t going to help. But that’s not what I was talking about at all.

“No, not that. I mean when you were about to drink that wine, and you went all weird.”

He tenses, very slightly. Barely noticeable, but even without vamp superpowers, I am also attuned to his body. I can tell he’s worried, upset in some way. Will he tell me? I know this man is more than capable of keeping secrets from me if he thinks it will keep me safe. I hope he doesn’t lie or evade. It would be a shitty end to the day.