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“COME ON,” I MURMURED to her, as I hustled her up the stairs to our bedroom.
“That’s no way to speak to your wife,” she giggled as she hitched up the robe she was wearing in order to take the stairs better.
“I’ll speak to my wife however I like,” I joked, and I caught her at the top of the stairs and pulled her into my arms for a kiss.
She smiled against my lips, and I held her close, not wanting to let her go. I couldn’t believe it – we were really married. She was my wife. And now that I had her all to myself, after an evening of drinking and talking and laughing with her father, I was going to show her just how much that meant to me.
I scooped her up into my arms and she laughed as she hung on to me for dear life, holding me close as she buried her face into my neck. She was just wearing a bikini and a light robe that showed off every inch of her gorgeous body, and it had taken everything in me not to drag her up here for us to enjoy our wedding night way sooner than I had.
The doors to the balcony in our bedroom were thrown open, and I carried her outside so that we could look down on to the sea below us.
“It’s so beautiful,” she murmured to me, leaning her head back against my chest once I put her back on her feet. I wound my arms around her waist and kissed her neck.
“Not nearly as beautiful as you.”
“Hey, have you always been this cheesy, or did I just notice it now?” She giggled as I brushed my lips along her jaw and finally found her mouth again.
That seemed enough to keep her quiet. I pushed the robe away from her body so I could touch her properly. Her skin felt perfect beneath my fingertips, something made just for me. I wanted to feast on her, gorge myself until I couldn’t take any more, and I knew she felt the same way. These last few weeks together, they had just confirmed everything that I had already known, that our connection ran deeper than anything that I had ever felt with anyone before, and that nothing would come close to matching what we had.
She moaned softly against my lips as I pushed down her bikini bottoms, grinding against her perfect ass. I was just wearing trunks, but they felt like far too much in the way of the fabric right now. She reached behind herself to guide them down a little, and as soon as she felt my bare cock nestled against her, she smiled.
“You feel so good,” she groaned, and I pulled her flush against me. It was like I couldn’t get close enough to her, as though nothing would pull the two of us near enough to one another. I loved this feeling, this sensation of her bottom next to mine cock, and I knew that she could feel it, too – feel that rush of want, need, desire, that came mixed up with all the love we had for each other.
“Please, fuck me,” she murmured.
“Here?” I asked. Even though we were high up over the city, someone could still look up and see us. She nodded.
“I want everyone here to know that I’m yours,” she replied, her eyes pinned to mine as she spoke. I kissed her again, harder this time, the thrill of what she’d just said to me rushing through my body. My cock was swollen and hard and I took it into my hand, guided it against her pussy – she arched her back, gripped tight to the balcony in front of her, and let out a sigh of pleasure as I pushed into her.
She felt perfect. I would never get over how well our bodies fit together, as though they had been made for this. I watched as her eyes softened and closed while I moved in her, long, deep strokes as I fucked her right there in front of the entire city. So everyone would know she was mine, that she belonged to me.
This was my wife. My woman. She was mine now, all mine, and I belonged to her in just the same way. Our connection was sealed for good, and I would never let her go, knew that she would never let me slip through her fingers, either. I moved my hand up her body, fingers skimming her throat just barely, and she gasped, dipping her mouth to draw them inside.
The feel of her warm tongue against my fingertips lit me up, and I started going harder, harder. I was all the way inside of her, buried to the hilt, not holding back, and I could tell she didn’t want me to. There was nothing to hide anymore, nothing to hold back from each other. It was all out there now, blatant, no secrets. Just the way I had always wanted it.
She sucked on my fingers as I slammed into her, harder, harder, filling her in long, deep strokes that had her legs trembling in a matter of minutes. Down below us, the world moved on unknowing, but up here, the two of us indulged in each other like it was our last night on Earth.
Or maybe our first night together, the way we were always meant to be. I wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her back on to me, so close that I couldn’t hold back anymore, and I watched as her body spasmed around me, her system finally giving in to the pleasure we could share with each other.
I held myself deep inside of her as I came, filling her with my seed – I wanted that bonding, that deep passion to pull us together, and I could feel it forming as I held her close to me. I kissed her shoulder, tasting her skin, needing to gorge myself on as much of her as I could.
Slowly, slowly, I moved out of her, drawing my fingers out of her mouth as I did so, and she panted for breath as she clung on to the balcony for support.
“You okay?” I asked her, and she nodded, smiling at me.
“Just... need to lie down, I think,” she replied, and I didn’t need telling twice. I scooped her up into my arms again, and carried her back to the plush bed that we had been sleeping in every night since we had arrived here.
She lay down next to me, reached for my hand, and played with my fingers. I loved it when she touched me like that, so casual, as though she was still getting used to the thrill of having me right there, where she wanted me.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her as she traced her finger over the ring that she had slipped onto my hand earlier in the day.
“I can’t believe that we’re really married,” she admitted, shaking her head. “It’s... it’s crazy, don’t you think?”
“I think it makes perfect sense,” I replied. “I’ve always known you were going to be my wife.”
“Oh, really?” She laughed. “Even when I chewed you out the first time we met?”
“Oh, yeah, there was no doubt about it,” I replied. “Anyone who could speak to me like that was someone I wanted to have in my life, you know?”
“You’re crazy,” she told me fondly, turning over so she could face me properly.
“And you’re crazier, for marrying me,” I replied, smoothing her hair back from her face.
“Yeah, something like that,” she agreed. Her hair was just starting to grow back now, though it was still far shorter than it was before she’d had to cut it all off. I wondered if she missed it, sometimes, but I didn’t want to ask – it seemed unfair to remind her of everything that had come before, especially when we had come so far to forget it.
“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked her. “How much we’ve had to give up, I mean.”
She shook her head.
“Of course I don’t.”
“You don’t mind not being Nadia?”
She shrugged.
“I think Nadia had a whole lot of issues,” she replied. “I’m okay with leaving her behind, I think. And besides – this new version, she gets to be your wife. I think I can live with that.”
I smiled. It was a relief to hear her talking that way about our new lives together. We had so much we still needed to figure out, so much we needed to put together, but as long as we were here, as long as the two of us were doing it together, we could pull it off.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“You left a lot behind, too.”
She was referring, of course, to my family business. Since we came out here, I had shuttered up everything, closed it all down. The FBI had been in touch, and I had been able to broker a deal that allowed us to get out of the country and stay that way as long as we didn’t cause them any more trouble. Even though I had been the one to take out Nikita, they seemed willing to overlook that for now as long as I was out of their hair. They didn’t have to worry about the Salieris or the Serbians, and that must have come as a relief.
“I know,” I replied. “But I was done with that part of my life. My father wanted me to get away from it, so I have.”
She closed her eyes and yawned. She must have been exhausted. Even after being here for a good few weeks, it was hard not to let the strange time difference bother us. There was still a lot to get used to in these new lives that we were making for ourselves, but I was willing to put in the effort.
Especially now that we were married. We had a whole life ahead of us to work out the details. And, from this moment on, I intended to put all my energy into doing just that.
Epilogue – Nadia
“You want to grab some ice cream?” Andreas asked me, and I shook my head and yawned.
“Nah, I think I just want to get home,” I replied, tucking my hand into his. “Is that okay?”
“More than okay,” he replied, flashing me a smile. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to get you out of that dress all night...”
I laughed. The streets around us were bustling with people, the Gold Coast lit up for their summertime, but I felt like I might as well have been here alone with him. That’s how it always felt, when we were together – it had been nearly two months since we had gotten married, but I still felt that same, sweet, dizzying delight of having him close to me that I had from the first moment I slipped the ring onto his finger.
But tonight – tonight felt different. We’d been out with some friends of ours, a few families my father had connected with since he had arrived, and now, we were heading back to our place. The air seemed still, like the whole city was holding its breath. But why? It was a night like any other. Nothing was going to happen. And yet...
“You okay?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied. “Just tired. I haven’t been around that many people at once in a while, you know?”
“Yeah, I feel you,” he agreed, squeezing my hand and smiling. “But you were great. They were already talking about having us around again.”
“Like my father would give us a choice,” I laughed. He had put his roots down in this city quickly, made it his home; he had friends he went to the beach with every day, to work out and play football with, and he was settling in like he had been here his whole life. He wanted the same for us, too, though I was a little more reticent, a little more held-back. I supposed there was a part of me that worried about what people would think of us when they found out where we had come from.
“Yeah, point taken,” he agreed as we turned the corner towards our house. We had moved out of the villa and into a little townhouse next to the beach, which we had turned into our sanctuary against the world. I always loved coming back here, knowing that we could hide away from everything with each other as long as we still had it.
But Andreas stopped dead in his tracks as soon as we laid eyes on the house. I furrowed my brow at him.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. He didn’t reply. Slowly, he nodded towards the top story of the house.
“Do you see that?”
I followed his gaze, and my heart skipped several beats inside my chest as I realized what he was gesturing to. A light was on at the top of the building.
“Did you leave that on?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“I don’t think so...”
“Shit,” he muttered, and he strode towards the house. I tried to pull him back.
“Andreas, wait!” I pleaded with him. “Come on, be sensible – we can’t just burst in there, what if someone’s waiting for us—”
“They’re not going to screw up everything that I have here,” he growled, as he jammed the key into the lock and pushed the door open. I followed him, close behind, heart racing, all the fear that had seemed to drift away since we had come here flooding back to me in full force. What was happening? Who the hell was up there?
The house was still and quiet, but that didn’t do much to reassure me. I needed to get him out of here. What if someone had found us? What if someone was here to take revenge against everything that we had done? Someone in Nikita’s family, perhaps, determined to put this right?
He stormed up the stairs and I rushed up behind him. Did we have anything to protect ourselves, if something was going down? I had no idea. Andreas had promised to protect me, but I hadn’t thought that he was going to have to.
He pushed open the bedroom door, and froze on the spot.
“What? What is it?” I called after him, fear lancing through me, taking control, all too familiar with the terror that was making it hard to breathe.
And when I rounded the corner and saw what he was looking at, I knew at once what had him so freaked out.
“Hello,” Mauro announced as he stepped out of the bedroom, eyes darting between the two of us. “I suppose I owe the two of you a congratulations.”
I stared at him. No way. No fucking way – there was just no way he could be here. He was dead. He had been for months. Andreas had told me, he had watched his body taken out of his apartment. And he had been wrecked over it, hurt, agonized over what he could have done to protect him better. And yet...
“Mauro?” Andreas breathed. Mauro nodded.
“The very same.”
“You’re dead.”
“Not last time I checked.”
I clung to Mauro as tight as I could. There wasn’t any way this could be happening. Mauro was dead. And even if, by some strange twist of fate, he had survived everything that had happened... he was part of our old life. Part of the life we had left behind. We had moved on from all of this, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that we were going to let anyone get in the way of that.
And yet, here he was, standing there before us like a ghost from our past. I wanted to blink and have him vanish, or shake myself awake next to Andreas in bed and tell him about the crazy dream I’d just had, but I couldn’t.
Because this was real. As real as they came.
Another man stepped out from behind Mauro, and Andreas lurched back, covering me with his body – but he seemed to calm a little when he saw who it was.
“Leo,” he muttered. The FBI guy? Another name I hadn’t heard in a long time. I thought we had left that all behind, but maybe I should have known better than to believe it could really go like that. Our lives had been so wrapped around all of this for so long, but I had thought we had broken free.
Now I was being swiftly reminded that it wasn’t so easy to get away from a past that you ached to leave behind.
“What are you doing here?” Andreas demanded. His voice was edged with tension, anger, confusion, everything I was feeling right now. I wished I could have console him. I was his wife, after all, I was meant to be able to help him with all of this, but in the face of the enormity of what was happening, I had no clue how I could.
“You need to come back,” Mauro replied. The words that I had prayed I would never hear again, as long as we lived. I closed my eyes, trying to block it out, but that didn’t do anything to shut out the reality of what was happening right in front of me.
Andreas tensed, shook his head.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he growled.
“You have to,” Mauro replied. “Back to New York. With us. That’s why I’m here.”
He tightened his grip on my hand, as though making sure I was still there with him. I squeezed it back, letting him know I hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Why?”
“The Salieri family needs a leader,” Mauro replied. Andreas shook his head.
“No, it doesn’t,” he replied, curtly. “It’s over. I dissolved everything—”
“If you really think it’s that easy,” Mauro replied, picking his words carefully, narrowing his eyes at the two of us. “I’m not sure your father taught you anything.”
I chewed my lip. I had feared this day would come. How long did we really have, before something like this was an inevitability? I should have known this would come back to find us, even though I wished I could hide from it. Even though I wished we could leave it behind us, for good.
“I have a life here, Mauro,” Andreas replied, shaking his head. “You – I left everything behind in New York. I thought you were dead—”
“I needed to be, for a while,” he answered calmly. How could he speak about it like it was nothing? Andreas had been sure that he had lost his friend, his closest confidante, and now Mauro was standing there as if he had just missed a call from him or something.
“But there’s a power vacuum back there now,” he explained. “We need someone to fill it. Someone we know we can trust. You’re the only person we could agree on. So, we’re here.”
I could see the paleness in Andreas’ face as he tried to come to terms with it. But he must have known it couldn’t be that easy for him to abandon the life he had known. He must have guessed it would come back to find him one day, though he wished that it wouldn’t. There was still so much we were trying to navigate, but we couldn’t just leave behind everything that we had lived for in the past.
“You can’t make us leave here.”
“No, we can’t,” Mauro agreed. “But we can tell the Serbians where you’re hiding and turn this place into a warzone in a matter of hours if you don’t.”
I shivered at the mere thought of it. Mauro and Leo might not have been ideal, but an assault from the Serbians would have been a million times worse.
Andreas closed his eyes. He knew he didn’t have a choice – that we didn’t have a choice. He turned to me, slowly, doubt written all over his face.
I was his wife. I was his wife, and that meant that I had agreed to help him through anything and everything that this world threw at him. No matter what they were asking him to do, I would do it right alongside him. It was the least I could do, to make sure he had someone supportive by his side, someone who would keep him on the right track, even when it felt like things were too impossibly difficult to imagine.
“Will you come with me?” he murmured. “If I go?”
I nodded at once.
“You know I will,” I swore to him. “Anywhere you go, I go.”
He paused.
“And do you think we can do this?”
“I know that you were always born to be a leader,” I assured him. “You can do this. You can do anything. If this is what we need to do... we can do it.”
I rolled back my shoulders, set my jaw. I meant it. Every word I said. No matter how much it scared me, we could survive anything this crazy world threw at us. When I held his hand, it was like everything else dropped away. The love between us was more than ever, stronger than it had ever been since I had worn his ring on my finger. We could do this, whatever they demanded of us, anything at all.
As long as we had each other.
Andreas turned back to Mauro, his hand still in mine, the two of us united against the world.
“I’ll do it,” he replied.
Mauro smiled.
“I thought you might,” he replied. He glanced over to Leo, then clasped his hands together in front of him.
“Now,” he replied. “I think we need to get out of here.”
THE END
Book 4 – URGE – Now Available!
HUMANS HAVE BOTH THE urge to create and to destroy...
Married, to the woman of my dreams, finally free of the nightmares that plagued both our families—or at least, that's what I thought.
Nadia and I tried to start over in Australia, but now, our past has caught up with us, and we're dragged back to New York to help finish what we started.
I thought we were home free, but the life we escaped isn't done with us yet.
Only now, it's not just my new wife I have to worry about anymore. A shocking revelation changes everything and suddenly, it's not just us we're fighting for...
