“God, I’m nervous,” she mutters, as she paces back and forth along the dining table. The lights are low, the candles flickering and casting long shadows across the polished wooden table, and in any other scenario, this would feel like a romantic night in. Instead, Katie is wracked with tension, and I know nothing is going to ease her mind until he’s finally here.
Because tonight is the night she’s going to meet my father. It’s been nearly a month since she arrived in the city, and my dad has been chomping at the bit to meet her in person that entire time. It’s taken pretty much every excuse in the book to give her long enough to settle in and start feeling like herself around here, but this evening they’re going to meet, and the two sides of my life are going to come together for good.
“It’s going to be fine,” I assure her, pulling her down onto my lap. Outside, the sound of the fountain in the garden serves as a soothing backdrop to our conversation, and she wraps her arms around my shoulders and gazes down at me for a moment.
“You sure there’s no way I can still get out of this?” she asks. I can tell she’s joking. Well, mostly.
I shake my head. “He needs to meet you,” I remind her. “To give his blessing for the marriage. I know it’s not…” I trail off. I’m not even sure how to put it into words, not really. Not what?
She knows that she’s becoming a part of this family, and that he’s the head of it; now that we’re going to be married, she needs to know who she’s dealing with, who she’s going to be working with from this point forward. But, not unreasonably, the thought of being in a room with a mafia boss seems to have her spooked to the core, the last vestiges of her old life still clinging to her and throwing her off-balance.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she mutters, managing a small smile. “I mean, a year ago, I was working for a city councilor, and now I’m sitting down with a mafia boss…”
“Trust me, they’re probably not as different as you think.”
She cocks an eyebrow at me. “Oh, trust me,” she replies. “They probably are…”
“This is the last thing,” I remind her gently. “The last thing you have to do before you’re part of the family for real. After this, you can start with your plans, put them into action, make some tracks toward helping the women who came out of the brothels…”
She closes her eyes for a moment, and nods. I know that’s the most important thing to her, part of the reason she’s even willing to go through with this in the first place. She knows that my father has access to the kind of power most people can only dream of, and after what she saw when she was kidnapped at the hands of the Magliones, she will do whatever it takes to help those women who survived him.
“You’re right,” she agrees. “And besides, I don’t want to have spent all day slaving over a hot stove for—”
All at once, I hear the sleek buzz that announces a new visitor—the doorman lets people come and go at his discretion, and I can already guess that my father will have some smart comments about being kept out of the house that he helped me purchase. This place, of course, came through one of his connections, though I paid for it with my own money—no way am I going to rely on anyone else to provide my family home for me, no matter how willing my father might have been to cover it for me.
He’s still making sense of the fact that he’s a grandfather. Emil, by some miracle, managed to keep his mouth shut when he got back to the city, allowing me to tell my father what really happened. Though he was shocked, and more than a little horrified to discover that I’d had a child out of wedlock, when he found out that I was engaged and intending to bring Katie and our daughter to live with me in Harrotsville, he swiftly changed his tune. As long as he got to meet her, and scope her out for himself—which was what the intention of tonight has always been.
I make my way to the door, where the doorman has already allowed my father onto the property. He lifts his gaze to take it in, nodding approvingly.
“An old friend of my uncle’s designed this place,” he remarks, extending his hand to mine and giving it a businesslike shake. “Looks like the places I used to summer near Bologna…”
And then he glances past me—and I turn to see that Katie has followed me out from the dining room and is currently twisting her hands into knots in front of her, waiting for me to make the introduction.
“Dad,” I stop him in his tracks. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
I take Katie’s hand and pull her to my side—showing a united front, making it clear that nothing and nobody will come between us. She squeezes her hand against the small of my back, silently thanking me for taking the initiative.
“This is Katie. My fiancée.”
For a moment, the two of them just stand there, staring at each other—I realize that I’m holding my breath as I look between them, not sure how this is going to go. My old life and my new life, coming together, the final test of whether or not they will fit with one another…
“Great to meet you, Mr. Mariana,” Katie offers finally, holding her hand out to my father.
After a pause, he takes it.
“Please, call me Marco,” he replies, and there’s a note of warmth to his voice that draws a sigh of relief from between my lips at once. He might have had a few choice words for me when he found out about all of this, but as long as he’s kind to her, I don’t give a damn about it.
“Marco,” she repeats, smiling. “It’s so good to meet you. Would you like something to eat? I made us some dinner…”
“A good cook, Luca?” my father remarks as he slaps me on the shoulder. “It sounds as though you’ve done well…”
“Perhaps if you say that again after you’ve eaten my food,” Katie jokes, as we make our way along the corridor toward the dining room, “I’ll be more inclined to believe you…”
We sit for dinner, with Polly being taken care of by one of the nannies I hired to help out around here—of course, Katie has barely made use of them, insisting that she’s perfectly capable of taking care of her daughter on her own terms. I know better than to argue with her, especially in these early days as she starts to relax into this new life, but I hope she’ll start exploring a little more of the city and make some use of her newfound freedom when she’s ready.
“So, a marriage, eh?” My father remarks, when the final dishes are being cleared away by the kitchen staff—another addition to the house that I made before Katie arrived, mainly because I want as much time with her as I can get. The less time she spends distracted by silly little things like cooking and cleaning, the more time I have to catch up with her and Polly, and that’s everything I need right now.
“Yes, and your son has given me a ring big enough that I’ll never be able to forget it,” she jokes, flashing him the engagement ring on her finger.
“I’d have rather he not waited till after you had a baby,” my father remarks, cocking an eyebrow, “but I suppose better late than never. When have you set the date for?”
Katie and I exchange a look—truth be told, we’ve been so caught up in everything that’s been going on, we haven’t had time to talk about when we’re actually going to get married. The details don’t seem all that important, not when her presence here is so fresh and she still has so much to get used to.
“Honestly, we have no idea,” Katie replies, taking the lead with her honesty, and my father sighs heavily.
“Well, I suppose you’ve had bigger things to be thinking about,” he adds, conceding the point. It’s as close as I’m going to get to an apology for the way he lost his shit at me when he found out I had a baby with a woman I wasn’t married to, but I’ll take it. A dark shadow flits across his face as he looks at Katie, and I know he’s thinking about what he heard of the kidnapping that took place just a few months ago.
“I’m sorry you were caught up in all of it, Katie,” he continues, his voice lowering gruffly. “I’ve known that the Magliones would stoop low before, but I never imagined they would target someone like you…”
She shakes her head. “I’m safe now, and so is my daughter,” she replies. “And I wouldn’t be able to say that if it weren’t for your son.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand, giving it a squeeze that I return.
“I know that…I know Luca will be returning to work with you, now that he’s back in the city,” she continues, her voice slightly halting—I can tell she’s having a hard time with this, speaking it all out loud to this man who she barely knows but who wields such immense power, and I’m proud of her for not backing down.
And she’s right, of course. Now that I’ve finished my tenure at the hospital, I’ve taken up my usual position at my father’s side, managing the medical needs of the men who come and go through our business. With the death of Maglione, there have been less pressing matters to attend to, but in our line of work, I know it’s only a matter of time before the demands begin anew.
“And now that I’m going to be part of the family…I’d like to do my part too,” she continues. Her voice is a little shaky, but she’s holding it together. I’ve heard her rehearsing this conversation in the ensuite bathroom attached to our sprawling double bedroom, though of course I haven’t told her. I want her to go into this with the utmost confidence—that’s the only thing my father responds to, and I don’t want him to have any reason to second-guess her.
“Do your part?” he says, lifting his chin and eyeing her for a moment. “And what does that entail, exactly?”
“The women who Maglione kidnapped,” she explains. “I might not know everything that they’ve been through, not the intimate details, but I know how terrified I was when they had me locked up there—when they were threatening me, telling me what they were going to do to me…”
She swallows hard, her throat rising and falling as she pulls herself together again. Though she doesn’t talk about it much, always quick to tell me that she barely scratched the surface of what the other women went through, I know the kidnapping has left an indelible mark on her.
“And I want to do what I can to help them.”
My father raises his eyebrows, prompting her to keep going.
“I know there will be plenty of women looking for a way to get back on their feet now that they’re free from all the bullshit Maglione put them through—uh, excuse my language,” she quickly corrects herself, flushing slightly. I nudge her with my foot under the table, a silent reminder that this man has heard a whole lot worse than a little cursing over the years.
“And I want to help them onto the right track,” she goes on. “I have experience in politics, petitioning people, setting up support groups that could actually help…”
I can tell that my father is impressed by her certainty, a smile spreading over his face as he nods. “I’m sure I could see some way to setting you up with something like that,” he agrees, and she grins widely.
“Thank you,” she murmurs. “I know I have a lot to learn about this world, but I…I want to be a part of it. I want to make a difference.”
I can tell that something has shifted in my father’s mind, at the sound of those words coming out of her mouth—knowing that she’s not just enduring this life, but that she might actually thrive in it, that makes all the difference. But as he reaches for the glass of wine sitting on the table before him, I can tell that his mind has moved on to other things—in fact, the very thing he came here for in the first place.
“Now,” he remarks. “When am I going to get to meet my granddaughter…?”
Polly is asleep by the time my father gets to her room, and he lingers in the doorway for a moment, just watching her from afar. It might not be the meeting he pictured, but he just seems happy to be around her at all.
“She looks just like you did at that age,” he remarks to me, and to my surprise, I hear an edge of emotion to his voice. My father does all in his power to keep whatever is going on inside his head to himself, but I suppose the sight of this new generation has shifted things slightly for him.
All at once, Polly’s eyes flicker open, as though she can sense the eyes on her. She looks over toward the door, and Katie hurries over to pick her up, scooping her against her chest.
“Oh, did we wake you, sweetheart?” she murmurs, and Polly reaches up for her mother, her little chubby hands brushing against Katie’s hair. She’s been grabbing it in chunks recently, and Katie is forever disentangling her locks from her daughter’s fingers.
“I guess she must sense her grandfather is in the room,” she remarks, looking over to my father with a smile. She steps toward him, raising her eyebrows. “Would you like to—”
“Hold her? Yes, I would,” he replies, not even giving her time to finish what she’s saying before he’s formed his arms into a cradle for our little girl. Katie carefully slides Polly into his grip, and for a moment, Dad just stands there and stares down at her.
I can tell that he’s having as hard a time wrapping his head around this as I am. All the generations of his family—the living ones, at least—standing together in this room…the family’s past, its future, everything laid out before us.
“She’s perfect,” he remarks, and for a second, I can see a younger version of him in the room with me—the version that must have held me the same way, held Emil… A man who has just come to terms with this child being a part of him now. His face softens, and she reaches out to touch his cheek. He closes his eyes for a moment, letting the sensation brush through him, and then he hands her back to Katie.
“Quick, before I start getting too emotional,” he mutters gruffly.
I chuckle. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this…”
“When it’s your granddaughter, you’ll understand,” he replies, his eyes slightly misty as he looks back to me. And the way he says it, I’m sure I will—even if a new generation is at least a couple of decades away for the time being.
We say our goodbyes once he’s met Polly, and Katie breathes a sigh of relief as soon as he’s out of the house.
“Okay, that went better than I thought it would,” she admits, as the two of us head down to the bedroom to get some rest. She has been buzzing around all day, hardly able to sit down or relax for a moment, and I know she must be exhausted.
“I knew it would,” I reply, as she sinks down in front of her dressing table to take off her earrings and her makeup. I watch her for a moment, drinking in her reflection in the mirror, and then move to her side to rest my hands on her shoulders, giving them a light rub.
“You did so well tonight,” I murmur to her, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. She smiles at me in the mirror, her face fresh and bare. She looks so beautiful like this, with no mask or makeup on. I can still remember the first time we met, when she was hiding her identity, though it seems a million miles away right now.
“Thanks,” she sighs. “Though I feel like your dad isn’t entirely happy that we’re not married yet…”
“Oh, he’ll always find something to complain about,” I reply with a grin. “He’s old-fashioned like that.”
“So you don’t think he’s going to set the wedding date for us whether or not we ask?” she jokes back.
I chuckle. “Oh, I didn’t say that,” I shoot back. “He’s probably booking the cathedral right now—”
“The cathedral?” she gasps. “You can’t be serious.”
“Hey,” I assure her. “Remember, this is our wedding. Our marriage. Everything happens on our terms. You want a big event, we can have one. You want something small, we can have it. Whatever you want, okay?”
She grins at me in the mirror, and then turns to face me properly.
“I think I’d like to set a date,” she admits, after a brief pause. “I mean, I know all of this is…I know a whole hell of a lot has been going on. But I’m ready to be your wife.”
“My wife,” I remark, a grin licking up my face. “You know, I like the sound of that…”
“I’d hope so,” she laughs, as I guide her out of her chair and into my arms. “You’re the one who proposed to me…”
“Say it again,” I tell her as I sink my lips to her neck. She moves into me slightly, sensing where I’m going with this.
“What, that I’m going to be your wife?”
“Mmm,” I groan, my fingertips digging into her waist. “Yeah, that. I like that. I like that a lot…”
I find her mouth with mine, and I kiss her deeply, the two of us intertwining ourselves in one another as the sun dips low in the sky outside. After tonight, I feel even more certain that she is the woman I’m meant to be with—my father respects her, and he doesn’t offer that kind of approval to just anyone. She’s part of this world now, and she seems as determined as possible to make the very best of it she can.
I hitch her onto the dressing table behind her, and sink down to my knees so I can spread her legs—she’s wearing this light green dress that hugs her ass perfectly, and I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t caught myself shooting a few looks at it over the course of the night.
“You know, I don’t think I got the dessert I wanted tonight,” I murmur to her playfully, as I slowly push the hem of her dress up. She squirms on the table before me, her teeth resting on her bottom lip.
“Oh, yeah?” she replies, voice slightly breathy. “And what exactly would that be…?”
“I think you know…”
I reach beneath her skirt and hook my fingers around her panties, pulling them down slowly, exposing her inch by inch until she’s naked beneath her skirt. She parts her legs a little wider as I graze my lips along the inside of her thigh, listening to the delicious shudder of pleasure that moves through her when she feels my mouth against hers.
“Oh, fuck,” she whimpers as she slides her hands into my hair, pulling me into place as though she can’t imagine anything better. I’m tempted to keep her waiting a little while longer, to tease this out until she’s begging for the feel of my mouth against her pussy, but truth be told, I can’t imagine holding back much longer.
I let my lips trail along her tattoo, the same peacock that allowed me to recognize her at the hospital back when we encountered each other once more. I’ve never really been into tattoos, but the ink on her skin seems to reflect something in me—the image that she has burned into my body, of herself, her love, her touch. I kiss the peacock’s tail feathers, teasing her for just a little longer as her hips rise and try to grind against my face to indulge in the relief I know she needs so badly.
And then, tucking my hands beneath her ass, I pull her to the edge of the table and plant my lips against her gorgeous pussy.
She moans as she feels my lips latch around her clit, rolling her sensitive nub between my tongue as I suck on her lightly. She’s so sensitive that even the barest touch can be overwhelming to her, and I know I have to take my time if I’m going to get my fill of her the way I want to.
I swirl my tongue around her a few times, tasting the sweet muskiness of her folds, and let out a moan against her. She bucks against me, her body already responding to my attention. Her fingers weave into my hair, holding me in place, as though there’s anywhere in the world I would rather be right now than between her thighs, getting her off.
“Oh God, that feels so good,” she gasps, as she begins to lift her hips to push back against me. I suppose all the tension of the day must have built up inside of her, because I can already feel her thighs starting to clench on either side of my head, a sure sign that she’s near to her release.
I seal my lips around her clit once more, sinking my fingers into her ass as I pleasure her with my tongue. I could spend all night between her legs like this if it means being able to hear more of the noises that escape her lips as she inches toward her release. Her fingertips dig into my scalp, her body beginning to tremble as her breath becomes more labored, and I work my tongue in slow, consistent circles against her swollen nub, until…
I have to stretch my arm over her lap to keep her pinned in place as she goes over the edge, her body squirming and lifting beneath me as the pleasure takes her where she needs to go. Her breath is tearing at the back of her throat as her pussy clenches and squeezes with her orgasm, her thighs trembling on either side of my head.
She pushes my face away from her when she’s had her fill, and leans down to kiss me as soon as I can catch a breath—she must be able to taste herself smeared on my lips, and the thought sends another shudder of pleasure through me. I reach down to adjust my cock through my pants, having hardly noticed how badly I need to fuck her until now.
“So you think my wife-to-be wants to get fucked on her dressing table?” I tease her playfully, as she clings to me while I straighten up. She can only nod—her cheeks are still flushed, her lips still parted, a little glossy from the wetness that passed from my mouth to hers.
I kiss her again as I pull myself into my hand, and as she shuffles to the edge of the table, I reach down to unzip my pants. I need to be inside of her, to feel that intimate welcome of her body wrapped around mine.
Before her, before all of this, I never thought I would be so aroused at the thought of being with a woman I’ve already had hundreds of times before. I was always looking for the next thing, the next woman, the next thrill to light me on fire. I was certain that the novelty came in newness, not in exploring the same territory with a person I had already been with.
But as I wrap my hand around my erection and guide it toward her welcoming entrance, I can see how wrong I was. Because every time I’m with her, it feels new—there’s some new reaction, something new in the way she draws in her breath, something new in the way she moves against me, that thrills me just like it did when we were first together. I want to spend the rest of my life exploring every part of her, uncovering everything about her, no matter how long it takes.
And now that we’re to be married, I know I have all the time in the world to indulge that.
I slip my hand to the small of her back and hitch her to the edge of the dressing table, bringing my cock against her folds and thrusting forward an inch or two. Both of us let out a sigh of pleasure as we come together, and I kiss her again, feeling the curve of her lips as she smiles into me.
“Does it ever stop feeling this good?” she breathes to me, as I push another few inches into her. There’s nothing frantic about the way we move against each other—no, we can take all the time we need, savor every second of it, drink it all in.
“I’ve never been with someone as long as I’ve been with you,” I reply, as I wrap my arms around her and begin to move into her properly. “But as far as I know…it’s always going to feel this fucking good, baby.”
She moans as I fuck her, the words falling away to give way to the pleasure. She is so wet from the orgasm she just had, the warmth and tightness of her stimulating every inch of my length, and I know it’s not going to be long till I reach my own release inside of her.
Her body rocks back against mine, the two of us falling into a familiar pace as we make love there on the desk—and that’s what it is, making love, not fucking like I used to do before, but sharing ourselves with each other in this intimate and even exposing way. I have nothing to hide from her. She has seen every part of me, and I have seen every part of her, and all that we can do is come together over and over again, trying to discover something new every time.
She hooks her ankles around my back, pulling me deeper into her with every thrust, and I listen to her breath starting to grow more shallow against my ear. It’s only a matter of time before she comes again, since she’s so over-sensitized from the oral, and my cock is throbbing at the thought of it. There’s nothing that turns me on like making her come, hearing her lose control the way she does. She’s usually so contained, so careful, and knowing that she can do nothing but give herself over to the way I make her feel…it gets me off like nothing else in the world.
I press myself even deeper into her, massaging her clit with each thrust, and it doesn’t take long till I feel her fingernails digging into the small of my back, inviting me closer, her heart pounding against mine through her chest. Our bodies are moving in perfect unison by now, our breath mingling, the pleasure stirring so fast in both of us that the corners of my vision are starting to blur with pleasure…
She goes over the edge first, her body tensing against me for a moment as pulsations of pleasure begin to course out from between her legs. The sudden pressure wrapping around me is almost more than I can take, and I grit my teeth and will myself to hold out for as long as I can before I go into my own release. I can hear her moaning against my ear, that gorgeous noise making it even more difficult to keep myself from coming.
But then, after a few moments, I do. My cock throbs inside of her, filling her with my seed, our bodies mingling in the most primal way imaginable. I don’t move, drinking in the feeling, the sensation, the sounds of her breath as she shudders with pleasure in my arms.
And as I slowly turn my head to kiss her once more, I can’t help but smile.
Because if this is what my marriage has in store for me, days and nights spent like this, with the woman I adore—then it’s going to be better than I ever could have imagined.
And I can hardly wait till I can call her my wife for real.
