She smiled down at me and nodded. I stood up and hugged her. She leaned up and kissed me, letting me into her mouth. I really had missed this. I wanted to show her how much. Those three days had been three days too long. Our kiss deepened, and I felt her running her hands over me. My hands traveled down her body and cupped her ass. I squeezed and pulled her harder into me.
“I missed touching you so much, babe,” I whispered. She wrapped her hands around my neck, and I scooped her into my arms. We went to the bed where I dropped her on her back. She sat up and immediately went for my pants, pulling the button open and wrestling down the zipper. I started unbuttoning my shirt as I watched her. I wanted this. It hadn’t been that long, but it had been long enough. I had spent enough nights trying to imagine her sucking me off. I was never leaving the house that long again. She peered up at me as she pulled my underwear aside to get at my cock.
It was as if it knew we were home, too, and had also missed her, standing at full attention. She smiled up at me, as she took it by the base and jerked it. Her hand was just too small to wrap around its entire girth. Precum leaked from the tip, which she licked off with the tip of her tongue before wrapping her lips around my fat mushroom tip. I groaned as she sucked and slowly—torturously—swallowed the rest of my length. She ran her lips slowly back down to the tip and let my cock pop out of her mouth.
“Lie back,” she said. I helped her pull my clothes the rest of the way off before lying back on the bed. My cock twitched with anticipation as she took her clothes off. She was so sexy. Every part of her was perfect—and she was all mine. I loved and hated her for making me wait. She crawled back onto the bed and settled between my legs.
She carefully sucked one of my balls into her mouth and bathed it with her tongue, sucking just hard enough with just the right pressure so it felt good and didn’t hurt. While she paid attention to the other she ran her hand up and down my length, giving a little extra love to the tip, just the way I liked it.
She ran her tongue along the underside of my penis before swallowing it down again, this time, the entire thing. Her throat felt amazing—and I had to commend her for not gagging. I grabbed a handful of her hair and used it to gently guide her up and down. I was definitely on my way. I didn’t want to come inside her mouth, so I eased her off of my dick and pulled her up.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked me.
“I want you to ride me,” I told her. I watched her straddle me and grind her pussy against my hard cock a few times so I could feel how wet she was. She used her hands to guide me into her entrance. As soon as she felt me pressed against her wetness, her eyes shut and her lips fell open. She gasped softly as she fed my cock into her. I wanted her on top for specifically that reason. I had a front row seat to the best show in the world. She was slick and tight and silky around me. The way she moved on top of me was so erotic. With her pussy choking me and the visual of her on top of me, I knew I was not going to be able to last long.
“Come here,” I told her. She leaned forward pressing her breasts onto my chest. She kissed me hungrily. I grabbed her ass and started jackhammering into her. She screamed, feeling me enter her from that angle. Her long hair fell down across my chest and the bed. I kept thrusting, as I felt her tighten around me and her body start to shake as she came. A couple more thrusts and I was there too, milking myself dry into her pussy. I kissed her before I let her roll off of me onto the bed. I pulled her onto my chest so she could rest her head there. I wanted to be touching her. She needed to know that I was serious. Nothing like that was ever going to happen again. I couldn’t allow something like that to even possibly come between us again.
I saw her staring at me from the corner of my eye, and she didn’t stop when I looked down at her.
“What’s the matter?”
“I love you,” she whispered.
“Good,” I said to her.
She laughed. “Really Lorenzo. I love you. You’re a good man, and I was wrong to think that you had anything to do with the pictures.”
“I’m sorry you had to see those. I’m not proud that they exist, especially since they made you so upset.”
“It’s all right. Under different circumstances, they might have been hot. You know. If it wasn’t you and Elissa.”
I looked down at her.
“Oh yeah? Did you touch yourself looking at those pictures while I was gone?”
“No. I could hardly stand to look at them. I might have been able to if I imagined us together like that.”
“Am I off the hook?” I asked carefully.
“It wasn’t your fault she sent them to me,” she said with a sigh. “I do have to say though, if I get another package like this from any one of your exes, this marriage is over,” she joked.
“There are no more. I swear. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your exes, should I be scared?”
“Nope. They should.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Isa
Marina was so used at this point to me calling her with doleful messages of doom and gloom. It was always something about how my marriage was horrible, how Lorenzo was horrible, and how much I was suffering. It was only natural that when I called her, the first thing she asked was what was wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong, Marina,” I said lightly.
“What happened?” she insisted.
“Again. Nothing. Lorenzo came home, and we talked about it.”
“And?”
“And it was all a misunderstanding.”
“Some misunderstanding. Why was his ex sending you nude pictures of the two of them? Were they fake?”
“Oh no. They were real,” I said.
Marina went silent before she started up again.
“Then why aren’t you here at my house where we can plan the next phase of your life and a twenty-something-year-old divorcée in New York City?”
I laughed. She was so dramatic. I was dramatic, too. Maybe that was why we were friends.
“No need, Marina. Still happily married.”
“Oh, so now you’re happy, are you? What changed? What could Lorenzo possibly tell you to make you take him back?”
“Well,” I began dramatically, “Elissa and Lorenzo are exes. They used to date ages ago, and that was when they took the pictures. She had kept them, and she sent them to me in a desperate and sneaky attempt to make me leave Lorenzo.”
“Wow. The things good women are driven to because of men,” she said loftily.
“I don’t know about good. Elissa’s a bitch. Point blank. Can I tell you what she did?”
“What?”
“She told Lorenzo that he had to go to her house to tell him something about his dad’s business, and when he was there, she made a pass at him.”
“Lorenzo told you all this?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“No reason. I’m just impressed by the honesty, I guess.”
“Oh my God, Marina. Is that you showing approval of Lorenzo?” I teased her.
She scoffed. “I’m not going to praise the man for doing the bare minimum that is expected of him. I’m just impressed that he would own up. He really has been faithful to you, hasn’t he?”
“He has. I had no reason to doubt him.”
“So he wasn’t having sex with Elissa. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he won’t, or wouldn’t, or even hasn’t with other women.”
I sighed. “Marina, stop it.”
“I’m being realistic here. You trust him, Isa, but you have no real reason to. What’s stopping the guy from screwing you over if that is just what he wants to do one day?”
“We made vows to each other,” I said,
“Isa. Idealism is cute, but marriage vows are broken nearly as often as they are fulfilled,” she said. “Neither of you knew each other before you got married. You can’t tell me that you know this man, I mean, really know him after just this short amount of time.”
�
�I know that, Marina. I don’t need you to remind me. Say what you want about the marriage, but the fact is that he loves me. He loves me, and I love him. He said that he would never do anything knowing he would hurt me. He said that he was scared and unsure about being a dad, but he was going to give it his best shot for the baby and me. I trust what he says, and I want to give him a chance to prove himself.”
“How do you know he’s serious?”
“He asked me to marry him.”
“Did he forget that that has already happened,” she asked.
“No. We’re doing it again. We’re going to have another ceremony, this time for us. The other wedding was for our families. It was for our fathers to publically show that they were burying the hatchet and that they were going to stop trying to kill each other. This one is going to be for us.”
“I love you, Isa, and I am going to support you in whatever decision you make. You are the one who is married to him, and I understand that. I just want to know that you are sure about him.”
“From the beginning, Marina, I’ve been upset that this hasn’t been a real relationship. That we were set up and that we didn’t get a fair start and all that. It has felt more and more real as the days have gone by. I care about him, and he cares about me. I have to be able to trust him, and that means trusting him not to break my heart even when he is in a position to do so if he wanted to.”
“You trust him?”
“I do,” I said honestly.
“Then I suppose congratulations are in order,” she said grudgingly. I smiled. She always put up a fight, but I knew she would be there for me.
“It’s about time. I was about to think that maybe you wanted me to be calling to tell you that we had broken up.”
“Just because you love the guy, Isa, does not mean that I have to. I am going to trust your judgement on him, but the minute he wrongs you again, I’m out.”
I thanked her and hung the phone up. The news of our wedding was technically a secret. We hadn’t told anybody yet, and we weren’t really planning on telling anyone either. Marina was right. Congratulations were in order. I hadn’t felt this great in a while.
It was like nothing in the last few days had even happened.
It was like nothing in the past few months had even happened. So much of what I was afraid and insecure about with Lorenzo was Elissa and his past, and he had put my mind to rest. Whether or not he was sleeping with her still, or whether he was just married to me for show and really wanted to be with her…the answer was no. He was with me, and that was because he wanted to be. I was happy again.
Just like that.
That was all it took.
The feelings I had for Lorenzo were growing every day. He was the husband I hadn’t chosen but had managed to fall in love with. Our meeting, wedding, and the first month or so of our marriage was a whirlwind romance, but perhaps not in the traditional sense. People in normal relationships got to experience and get over this part of their relationship that was full of jealousy, uncertainty, and near break-ups before they decided to put a ring on it and make it official. We hadn’t. Our relationship was advanced, in that we were already a married couple, living together, sharing funds, and expecting a child, but we had still only just known each other for a short while.
We were married, but our marriage had the newness and exploration of a short-term dating relationship. This was not a bad thing; it was just a true thing. We couldn’t rush anything because that would have just been dishonest of us. We didn’t know each other the way a lot of people in relationships at our level knew each other. Part of me was a little sad about it, but the other part relished it. We had already said our vows, all we had to do now was enjoy each other—and that was not hard. Lorenzo was a fucking catch. Maybe the fact that we were married and not just dating was a factor that made us more willing to be there for each other and be more proactive about solving problems. There was a lot more at stake if we decided we didn’t want to figure things out.
Everything that had happened recently had just come and gone so quickly, any faster and I would have been knocked out. The rollercoaster of emotions alone was exhausting, but now, I had nothing to complain about. I had nothing to be angry, or sad, or scared about. Elissa had been neutralized. The stain that she had tried to make on our marriage and my growing trust of Lorenzo was gone. Completely wiped away because she had nothing.
My fear that he didn’t want the baby or want me was gone, too. He wanted us both, and he was going to do his best to make sure that he was what we both needed, the baby and me.
I was happy.
My husband loved me, I loved him, and we were happy.
Not only that. He had proposed to me. Proposed marriage to me because it had been a mess from the beginning. We had met each other and gotten married in the span of two weeks, and we had spent most of the beginning of our marriage hating each other and driving one another up the wall. It wasn’t fair. The second wedding would be a chance to do things over and hopefully get it right, or at the very least, get to do things our way.
Lorenzo was extremely laid back about the whole thing. He wanted to give me what I wanted, but understandably, he didn’t care too much for putting the event together. The wedding we had had before was undeniably gorgeous, but it wasn’t ours; it wasn’t for us.
I had a chance now—because the first time it had been taken away from me—to have the wedding that I had always dreamed of. I was already married to the man of my dreams so this second ceremony was just something nice we would get to experience together. Since the first wedding was all taken care of for me, I was overwhelmed with the sheer number of choices and things that had to be covered and taken into consideration.
Of course, there were the major things—like the venue—because the wedding had to take place somewhere—and the dress—because I had to get married in something, but there were also other finer points that were sort of up in the air.
How many guests were we going to have? Were we even going to have guests this time around? The point of having guests at your wedding was to share the moment with the people in your life who you loved and who were about to be directly affected by the couple’s decision to marry and to have witnesses. We didn’t need witnesses because all we wanted was a ceremony, legally we were already hitched. As far as inviting the people whom we loved to the wedding, what did that mean in terms of numbers? Would anyone even want to come? Did we want or need people there, judging our decision to do what we had just done all over again on our terms? Would Lorenzo’s mom find it insulting that I wanted to have another wedding after she had been so involved in the planning of the last one?
Really, though, when I thought about it, there wasn’t anyone that I absolutely wanted to have there, except maybe Marina. If that was the case, then a lot of the frills and things that were just for the sake of taking good wedding photos could go out the door.
Just because I didn’t necessarily want guests there didn’t mean that Lorenzo automatically felt the same way. I asked him one night over dinner. I had taken to cooking a lot more often since he seemed to like it so much.
“How’s the wedding planning going?” he had asked me.
“I wanted to ask you something about it,” I said.
“What’s the matter?”
“I need to know how many guests you want to invite,” I said.
“I told you, Isa. It’s whatever you want.”
“No, I'm not getting married to myself, Lorenzo. You need to help me out a little, at least throw me a bone or something. I don’t want to plan something that you won't like or something that doesn’t really reflect us as a couple and what we want.”
“Honestly?”
“Of course. Tell me.”
“I don’t know if we need anyone there,” he said.
“What did you think of the first wedding we had?” I asked him.
He shrugged.
“It was nice. Mom worked hard, and she had the help of th
e organizer. It was traditional, which I didn’t hate, but it was a little too much for my taste.”
“What is your taste? If we weren’t married at all and I asked you what the best possible wedding you could think of was, what would it be?” I asked. “If you had no one hounding you or breathing down your neck about what they wanted. What is Lorenzo Montorini’s dream wedding?” I asked him.
He smiled at the question. Did men think about this stuff as much as women did? Did they even care, or did they just put up with grand wedding ceremonies to make their brides happy.
“An afternoon at city hall and then a nice dinner out somewhere, our favorite restaurant,” he said. I frowned a little making him laugh.
Going Once, Taken Twice: A Dark Romance Page 33
