She gasped, her eyes rolling to the ceiling. “Please, my God, I’m begging you, Peregrine.”
“That’s a good fucking girl,” I rasped. “Now I’m going to give my angel what she needs because she begged so well for it.”
I wanted to devour her, to consume her with my desire. But she needed me to hold back, to check my monster and be as gentle as I knew how. Spreading her legs, I spat on my hand and ran it over her clit with delicate strokes. The shudder that moved through her at my touch was everything. My beautiful, tortured, wet, little thing. I let my tongue graze her entrance as I worked her clit with my thumb. The wail that burst from her mouth filled the deepest corners of me.
Shattered, surrendered, willingly conquered.
Just the way I needed it.
Her body seized and her fists clenched as an orgasm wrecked every part of her and her skin flushed pink. The silky wetness on the insides of her thighs brushed against my face, sticky against the sides of my neck. The world was a memory and there was nothing but her, nothing but the soft rush of wetness against my mouth and her tortured cries echoing through my studio.
We never made it to dinner. But we did leave her heels on the floor of my studio, her dress on the spiral staircase, my clothes in the hall, and her brassiere on the doorknob of our bedroom. And I fucked her hard the way she needed it. Then we fell onto our backs, our slick, exhausted bodies tangled together. Too exhausted to even speak.
I stroked her hair in the dark, my eyes glued to her lovely face. She was so close to sleep.
“Mozart,” she murmured.
“What is it, angel?”
“He’s in the kitchen,” she whispered. “Can you check that he’s not hungry?”
I kissed her forehead and put on my boxers and went down to the kitchen. The kitten was a black ball of fur on the linoleum in front of the stove. He still had food in his dish and a plate of milk. When he heard my step, he lifted his head and narrowed his green gaze on me. His mouth parted in a halfhearted hiss and he gave a little shiver.
Rosalia would be devastated if she knew he was cold. Grinding my teeth, I scooped up the goddamn cat in one hand and carried it upstairs to our room. Rosalia was sound asleep when I deposited the kitten in the bed, but her lids fluttered as it curled up against her body. A faint smile slipped over her mouth and I lay back down and closed my eyes.
She’d won the battle and the war and I didn’t care. From the first moment I’d laid eyes on her, I’d never had a fucking chance.
She’d done the impossible in my mind. The parts of me I’d kept hidden for so many years, the wounded bits—she had accepted those. My incessant need to push and push until suddenly I had gone too far didn’t bother her as long as I kept it on a leash. But most importantly, for the first time, I had found someone I trusted enough to love and protect the way I should have been all those years ago.
I pushed the indignant kitten to her other side and pulled my wife’s warm body against my chest. She slept soundly now. I stroked her dark hair through my fingers and a little moan escaped her lips. There was a tender ache in my chest as I gazed at her lovely face through the dark.
I’d spent my entire life searching for perfection, searching for a spark of the divine. And here it was, wrapped up in silk and sleeping in my bed. The darkness at the center of me that I had never been able to cure was beginning to heal. And all it had taken was her acceptance, her love.
The one thing I’d never been offered before.
Simple, unconditional love.
For the rest of my life, I would get on my knees for her and worship her beautiful body. The soft, warm body that had healed me, that was more lovely than anything carved from marble since the beginning of time. I would venerate her and eat her alive with my selfish love and she would bask in my adoration.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ROSALIA
THREE YEARS LATER
When I didn’t get into the opera company, it was a weight from my shoulders. The auditions were in the early fall. I’d graduated with perfect grades, I’d had a tour de force of a final recital. The stage was set for the next step in my career.
Then I woke up the morning of my audition and sat in the window seat in my bedroom with a hollow ache in my stomach. Outside it was raining softly and the yellow leaves hung heavily from the wet trees. The front gate had been replaced with a newer addition and Peregrine had carved an angel for the fountain in the center of the driveway. The house was perfect and in the last three years it had become my haven.
My throat closed.
I’d lived off this dream for so long, but over the last year, I’d wanted it less and less. I was exhausted. Mentally drained and physically beaten up from dance classes and vocal lessons.
My three years at the academy had tested my limits and I was done. My body was numb as I dressed and had Peregrine’s driver take me to the audition. And I stood there like a porcelain doll, completely emotionless, as I sang. It was the worst performance of my life and I cried all the way home and curled up in bed for the rest of the day.
Peregrine didn’t understand what had happened. He held me that night while I explained between sobs that I’d had a horrible audition, but I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t care. I was just so fucking tired.
I wanted this life we’d built together. Up until marrying Peregrine, I’d existed in a state of disassociation, depending on my music to keep me sane. But my life was good now and I wanted to live in it, not in my mind.