⋅•⋅⊰∙∘❦✾❦∘∙⊱⋅•-
Dante adjusted Emil against his shoulder, the little boy still reaching for me. "Mommy."
Dante stared at me, then turned to Lorenzo as his mouth twisted into a scowl. "Some Omega you married."
Then Dante stormed out of the study.
He left without even thanking me, without even acknowledging that I had kept his son from wandering into the lake or the kitchens or any of the dozen other places a small boy could get hurt.
I blinked, then looked at Lorenzo. "Your older brother is a asshole, guess it runs in the family."
Then I turned and walked out. I didn’t care what happened behind me. I had a child-sized fist still tucked in my shirt, and at that moment, that was all I could focus on.
The memory faded slowly, bringing me back to the warm pool, surrounded by steam and the soft sound of water shifting around us and I blinked.
Lorenzo was still there, now much closer, close enough for me to see the tiny droplets of water on his skin, close enough that I had to tilt my head slightly to keep eye contact.
"You remember now?" he asked.
I swallowed. "Yes."
His gaze traveled over my face. "That was the moment that made me realize."
I frowned. "Because I called your brother an ass?"
A faint smile crossed his face. "That helped."
I snorted. "I knew I had good instincts."
"But it wasn’t just the insult." His expression softened again. "It was seeing you with my nephew."
I was at a loss for words. Lorenzo’s voice dropped. "You were still you. Still difficult, sarcastic, and impatient, totally incapable of keeping your thoughts to yourself."
"Thanks."
"But you were gentle with him."
I looked away. "He was a child."
"You didn’t know him."
"He was lost, all...all I did was the bare minimum."
"But you didn’t know if his family would blame you. You didn’t know if helping him would cause trouble. You didn’t care."
I stayed silent.
"You held him when he was scared," Lorenzo went on. "I even heard that you fed him."
Then the humor faded from his face. "I watched you hold him like he was something precious."
My chest tightened.
"Watching you that day did something irreversible to me." he said. "You were bratty, sharp-tongued. Ready to tear into my brother without a second thought. And yet so instinctively gentle with a child who wasn’t yours. You held him like he mattered. With such kindness like the world hadn’t already taught you that caring only gets you hurt. That purity underneath the attitude...I saw it, and I couldn’t look away."
I didn’t have any jokes to make this time.
"I didn’t like it at first." he began.
"What?"
"Wanting you."
My breath caught. Lorenzo’s eyes stayed locked on mine.
"I was angry about it, you had changed everything. You were supposed to leave when I got all that I wanted. I’d already accepted that." His voice quieted. "Then I realized I didn’t want you to."
He moved closer again. "I spoke to my father in his final days."
My heart sank at the mention of Frederick. "What...what did he say?"
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened a bit. "He asked me what I was going to do when you left."
I blinked in shock, "You told him about our agreement?!"
"My father was a smart man, he knew the moment I brought you home that I only married you for what I wanted to gain from it." Lorenzo shrugged, "But I told him it wasn’t his concern."
"And?"
"He laughed."
I could almost picture Frederick doing that.
"He told me that if I had to convince myself I didn’t care about you, I probably cared more than I wanted to admit."
I looked down, that sounded exactly like something Frederick would say. "Lorenzo..."
"I told him he was dying and getting sentimental." A tiny smile crossed his lips. "He told me that’s exactly why he was allowed to be sentimental."
I laughed softly despite myself. But then Lorenzo’s expression shifted.
"He told me not to let pride make my decisions." The warmth in the room seemed to dissipate. "After that, there wasn’t much left to debate...what my father and I discussed removed the last of my resistance. From that point on, I couldn’t deny my feelings for you."
He stepped closer until there was hardly any space remaining between us. I could feel the warmth of his body despite the water all around us.
"I want you beside me permanently," he said, voice low and steady.
As he spoke he closed the last of the distance between us.
One hand found the edge of the pool beside my shoulder, the water shifting around his arm and he other settled at my waist beneath the surface, fingers spreading against bare skin with a possessiveness that felt measured rather than impulsive.
He leaned in and began pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses along the side of my neck, just beneath the ear and then lower, toward the sensitive place where my scent gland sat under the skin.
The first touch of his mouth was careful, almost reverent, but the second lingered longer, lips parting so that the heat of his breath and the soft wetness of his tongue registered in the same moment.
He kissed the tendon that ran down the side of my throat, then the hollow just above my collarbone, then back up again to the spot that made my pulse jump against his mouth.
Every kiss was slow, the kind of attention that said he had already decided he had the right to take his time.
The water made every shift of his body feel amplified...the brush of his chest against mine, the way his thigh settled between my legs, the slow drag of his fingers along the curve of my waist as if he were mapping territory he already considered his.
His voice dropped into a rough whisper against the wet skin of my neck while his mouth kept moving, words and kisses braided together so tightly that I could feel the shape of each syllable as much as I heard it.
"I watched you hold on to Emil and I knew. If I ever put my mark on anyone, if I ever wanted someone to carry my pups, it would be you... I want you permanently, Alex." He said, his emerald gaze darkening. "Even if you hate me for it, even if it means I have to slaughter whoever tries to hurt you, even if I have to drag you back every single time you try to escape me, even if I have to lock the doors, tie you up and keep you where I could reach you...where you belong."
My body reacted despite every attempt to keep the reaction contained.
The pull of his scent thickened in the humid air, dark and possessive and threaded with the kind of heat that settled low in the stomach and refused to leave.
The warmth of his mouth against my neck sent a slow, spreading ache through the rest of me, the kind that made thought feel slippery and distant.
I could feel the water shifting around us with every small movement, the way his hand at my waist tightened just enough to keep me from drifting back, the way his lips lingered over the scent gland as if he were already imagining the mark he wanted to leave there.
My mind reeled under the weight of what he was saying, the absolute, calm certainty of a man who had already decided and was no longer interested in pretending otherwise...but my body leaned into the contact anyway, spine curving slightly toward the heat of him, breath catching each time his mouth found a new place to claim.
Lorenzo’s lips stayed against my throat, soft and unyielding at the same time.
My fingers curled against the edge of the pool. "L...Lorenzo...I can’t–"
"Shhh."
His voice was quiet when he spoke again, rough and deadly serious, the words carrying both the threat of everything he had just confessed and the genuine need underneath it.
"Tell me to stop, tesoro mio."
A beat passed, long enough for the water to lap once more against the edge of the pool, long enough for the steam to curl between us like a held breath.
"Tell me you don’t want me too."
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