He had wanted to thrust into her then, so close to losing control he’d been shaking, but he’d gone down, arousing her all over again, carefully penetrating with his fingers to prepare her and making her arch up to his mouth as she gave up another orgasm.
Then, then he had covered her, gritting out, “I’ll be fast. It will only hurt for a minute.” He’d had nothing left for discipline and for the first time in his life he wasn’t using a condom. But as he’d thrust into her, she had tensed in the wrong way, gasping an anxious, “Wait.”
It had nearly killed him, but he’d kept himself still, eyes closed, breath held, racked in a state of exquisite torture. He’d been so aroused he had been one pulsing nerve that felt and smelled and heard. He had been completely in the moment, his entire world reduced to her silken clasp around him, her scent, her shaken breaths as she relaxed by slow degrees.
Finally, her soft lips had sought his, whispering a damp acquiescence against his mouth.
As he’d begun to move, he’d known what they were doing wasn’t sex. It had been everything from the basest type of mating to the highest art form. He had promised to be fast, but he had wanted it to last his lifetime. His need to pour into her had been so acute he couldn’t breathe. One more stroke, just one more then—
“Oh. I think I’m— Keep going. Don’t stop. Please. Oh, oh.”
Music and torment. He had guided her thigh to his waist and pushed a hand under her hip to angle her so he could drive deeper, kissing her hard as she dug her nails into his shoulders and sobbed with pleasure into his mouth. Then she had shuddered and rippled and had come again, pulling him with her so they were both tumbling through the same waves of mindless pleasure, clinging to each other while they drowned in ecstasy.
Alessandro came back to the quiet formality of his office in his mother’s house and the patter of afternoon rain outside. He set a hand on the window, then his forehead, letting the cold of the pane penetrate, trying to take his hot blood down a few degrees.
He and Octavia were so damned attuned when they were having sex. It had only grown better from that first time and he was hard as a diamond just thinking about it. He wanted to cross the hall and slide into the bed where she was napping, and remind her exactly how well matched they were.
But seduction was off his playlist.
Wait. Was it? He ran a hand down his face, trying to pull himself together, thinking he didn’t have to make love to her, just let her know he wanted to. Surely that would begin to reassure her?
A distant squawk told him his wife might not be awake, but his son was. He took custody of Lorenzo from the nanny, spending his first hour alone with the boy, fully taking in that he was a father now. That brought up memories of his own father and, if he had been looking for something to cool his ardor and shake him back to his priorities, there it was. He was glad of the privacy of his office as he dealt with the wrench of emotion.
Lorenzo was such an innocent. So perfectly unmarred by life. Alessandro enclosed the tiny boy in a protective cage against his chest, thinking how cavalier he’d been in producing this new life only so Lorenzo could struggle to hang on to it. This world was a harsh place. When he’d been making love to his wife, he hadn’t taken in that he was increasing a thousandfold the level of responsibility he had carried since he was twelve years old. But now he had this small boy to guide and guard into manhood. Did Octavia really believe he would allow his child to grow up anywhere but under his own nose?
The magnitude of how completely his life had changed hit him. His cousin, the man he’d relied on, was gone. His wife wanted to leave him. He’d been given a son.
His entire path forward had to be reassessed, but he wouldn’t move down it alone. Octavia was coming with him. That much he knew.
* * *
Octavia woke and went directly to her son, but he wasn’t in his nursery. Ysabelle might have him downstairs, she supposed, but the door to the master suite was closed and...
She glanced at the door at the end of the hall. It was the office Alessandro used when he was here. He’d been in Paris all week, despite his assurance days ago that he was here now. The door to his office was almost always closed whether he was in there or not, but a sixth sense had her going to it and knocking.
“Alessandro?” She poked her head in.
He stood at his desk and looked up from reading something on his laptop screen, his expression of concentration clearing to distracted welcome. He was impeccable if casual with his jacket and tie gone, two buttons open and a baby in his crooked arm.
“You’re up.”
“You’re home.”