Chapter 32
Leda
A laugh escaped me. Joking Lucas was new, and I loved him just as much as I loved the rest of him. Like the shattered diamond, there were facets to Lucas that couldn’t be ignored.
But I also had my own facets. Mafia princess, sister, lover. I really didn’t know who reigned over the rest right now or who I really wanted to be.
“Would you want to?” he asked after a moment, his breath stirring the hairs on my forehead. “To one day be my wife?”
It wasn’t exactly a proposal, but it was him being soft Lucas again, the one that I wasn’t so sure of how to deal with.
Did it matter, really? I loved him, and if this side of him made me awkward, I would get over it eventually. The most important thing was that I didn’t ever want to live without him. Period. “Of course, I do,” I told him, tilting my head to catch his eyes. It had nothing to do with the fact that I was carrying his child. This wasn’t my brother’s story. Everything I was doing was because I wanted to, not because Lucas was forcing me to do any of it.
Of course, it had worked out just fine for Nico and Rory, but not without their moments of running and hating each other either.
Lucas brushed his lips over mine. “I don’t want you to do something you regret,” he said, pressing his forehead to mine. “And I think you will always regret killing your father. I can’t let you do that, Leda. I can’t let you live with that regret, and I will do anything to keep that from happening.”
I breathed him in. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to be the one.” There was a part of me that mourned the thought of seeing my father’s face right before I killed him, but the larger pieces of me told me that it was a mistake all the way around. Besides, I had two men who had killed a great deal telling me it was an issue with them. My heart ached to think that Lucas carried the weight of the souls he had taken over the years, how his sleep was plagued constantly.
I was really surprised that he hadn’t gone insane yet
“Good,” he was saying, his hand stroking my back softly. “If I get the chance, I will kill him for you, all right?”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t want him to have any dealings in my father’s death either or for Carmine’s face to be one that Lucas was forced to face for the rest of his days, but right now I didn’t want to think about it. Sighing, I leaned against his shoulder. “I don’t even know who I am.”
Lucas pulled back so he could see my eyes, stroking my face with his other hand. “You are Leda D’Agostino,” he murmured, kindness in his eyes. “You are the woman who has endured a shitload of things from her father and survived. You’ve endured shit from me that should have sent you walking away, but you didn’t. That’s because you don’t give up easily, Leda. That’s because you are a fighter, and hell, I’m a lucky man to have you at my side.”
Tears spilled over, but Lucas gently wiped them away. “You have to stop,” I choked out, pulling myself together. “I like it better when you are yelling at me. I can handle that.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I like it when you yell at me too. It turns me on.”
There was something wrong with us, like seriously wrong.
Lucas pulled away, and I missed his warmth instantly, but when he pulled his shirt over his head, displaying his scarred torso, I was heated in another manner altogether. “What are you doing?” I asked as he reached for the buckle on his trousers.
Lucas’s grin was shamefully wicked, the dimples on full display. “It’s not every day that I ask a woman to be my wife, Leda. I want to commemorate it by fucking you senseless.”
My blood heated. “You better not be asking anyone else,” I forced out, swallowing to combat the thickness of my tongue in my mouth. God, this was going to be my husband one day. He was already the father of this unborn child, tying us together for the rest of our lives.
But being his wife, the lone woman that he would love for all eternity, was on a different level. After all, he was the only man I wanted to be with.
Lucas’s hands stilled. “I don’t plan to,” he stated firmly. “You’re it for me, Leda. This thing between us? This is forever. It will stay forever.”
His words were heavy with emotion, and I knew what he was saying was the truth. “I love you.”
His gaze grew tender. “What I feel for you? It’s more than love. You are mine, Leda, and I don’t plan to ever let you go.”
That was what I was hoping for, what I had wanted all my life. In Lucas’s eyes I could see a future, and that was what we needed to cling to in order to get through this war against my father.
As long as we had each other, that was going to make us stronger.