I didn’t know where to begin to apologize to her for all of this. For letting it get to this.
I ruined it all.
Dante doesn’t even ask, just picks me up when we stop. Holding me against him as I can feel the desperation I have for the need of touch. His lips are against my forehead as we walk into the condo, the sun wants to rise on a new day.
A new year in my life.
He seems to know what I want, carrying us to the balcony and lowering us into one of the chairs, his arms still wrapped around me. He isn’t ready to let me go.
“How can I make it better, Ilaria? Just tell me what to do.”
Looking at Dante I see the way the gold of the sun gleams in his brown eyes. It looks like flakes of gold hidden there. He always looks so serious but with me his features soften. He doesn’t have to be the next Don of the Boston mafia family with me. He can be himself.
He lets me cast my anxieties on him and tries to ease all of the problems I have in my life. He shows up for me constantly, wants to be the person I can lean on and trust. He wants to be my husband.
It’s not just the agreement now. We both know it.
So I have to give it to him. I have to be the one to let him know my feelings first so he can feel the safety like I already do.
I’ve messed up so much recently that I can’t mess this up.
“I love you Dante.”
I don’t ruin it with words of how it’s too soon or how I always knew. I don’t try to explain the feeling to him because it just is. I give it to him without any excuse or reason.
His mouth parts, his thumb raising to swipe at the bottom of my lip, pressing it as he smirks at me, such a soft movement on him but I still stare at his mouth.
Fuck do I love how he is looking at me right now. Like he wants to eat me up without sharing. As if I’m his favorite meal.
“Say it again.” My cheeks warm at his request, “Please, Ilaria, just say it once more for me.”
He’s vulnerable and needy, just like me.
“I love you.”
He kisses me, pressing against me as he parts my lips with his tongue. Tasting me as we feel frenzied and needy, clinging to the other person with the mania of two people who have finally freed their feelings.
Love isn’t a scary thing.
It can consume and take. It can be a wild fire of emotions. But with Dante it’s safe. It’s freedom. It’s being able to be who I am 100% of the time without fear. It’s the feeling of coming home to a place that actually feels like home.
It’s everything.
38DANTE
My wedding day.
Today I would marry Ilaria, the woman who I had fallen in love with already. Tonight we would be together in a way I had been thinking about since the first time I saw her.
My mafia principessa about to become my queen.
I missed her.
Last night, after our rehearsal dinner, she had been taken to her fathers house with all her friends.
Traditions were important, though we had been living together for a few weeks already we needed that night before with our friends and our families before we joined together.
But all I wanted was her.
“Are you ready to be a married man?” Enzo jokes as he adjusted his bowtie.
Ilaria had demanded formal wear for everyone, having laid out my outfit for me like the control freak that she was. A small box on top of it was a gift she had gotten for me.
A gold chain with ‘22’ our wedding date.
Ilaria liked to mark me with gifts, and I loved to be marked by her. There was something about the way her fingers would stroke my watch or how she would touch me when she picked out my clothes. Her pride was in me and how I looked. It mattered to me now that I looked the part of her husband.
Wanting to be a certain way for Ilaria had surprised me. I hadn’t expected to fall in love with the person I was arranged to. But with Ilaria it had happened.
“We need to head down. The girls are already on the way here.”
Francesco walked into the room, looking at me up and down like he was double checking that nothing bad had happened to me.
He was skeptical of marriage because he hadn’t been gifted with parents and a life like I had been. His idea of marriage was akin to what people would think a prison sentence was. That was why he didn’t do relationships or anything serious. He couldn’t handle the disappointment he had seen over and over again as a child.
Maybe seeing Ilaria and I happy would give him hope. Or maybe her blonde friend would make him realize how monogamous relationships weren’t as tiresome as he expected them to be.
