Still, she was here now. They carried the dishes into the kitchen together. Vee took charge, opening containers, reheating sauces, and smacking Luca’s hand when he tried to steal a piece of chicken.

"I am starving," he protested.

Vee laughed, and Luca caught her around the waist, stealing a kiss before she could move away. She smiled against his mouth.

The night may not have started as early as Luca had hoped, but somehow, it became beautiful anyway.

They ended up having dinner in the kitchen instead of the dining room. Vee sat barefoot on one of the breakfast stools, Luca across from her, both of them eating from reheated plates. The candles in the dining room burned forgotten, the rose petals still scattered outside.

Just for the fun of it, they did the dishes together. Vee washed. Luca dried. Then Luca got bored and started flicking little drops of water at her.

Afterward, Luca poured them wine, and they chatted some more. About Val’s wedding. About Tony managing the pizza parlour.

Eventually, Vee sat on the breakfast table, legs swinging lightly, gazing up at him as he cleared their glasses away.

"Hey..." she called.

"Hmmm..." Luca answered distractedly, replacing the glasses in the cabinet.

"I love you."

He turned to her, stepping naturally into the space between her thighs. "I’m obsessed with you." He pressed a kiss to her nose. "I’m glad my forever will be with you." Another kiss, same spot. "Can’t picture it with anyone else." He found her mouth.

Soft, at first. That was the plan, anyway. He didn’t intend for it to go anywhere. She’d had a long day. She was about to have an even longer night. Marco and the entire entourage were minutes out, maybe less. This was supposed to be a brief, tender moment between two people who loved each other.

Vee deepened the kiss. Her hand came up to his jaw, fingers pressing in and whatever argument his sensible side had been preparing dissolved without delivering a single word.

Right.

He had a couple of minutes. He decided to make extraordinarily good use of them. Her fingers moved to his shirt, finding the buttons, working them open one by one.

"We’ve never fucked in here, have we?" she asked conversationally against his mouth.

"That’s because Nonnina would have killed us."

She pulled his shirt open. Her tongue found his nipple — a flick that short-circuited every remaining thought in his head and rerouted all available power elsewhere. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

The groan that came out of him was involuntary and he was not remotely embarrassed about it.

"I like it when you do that." His voice had already dropped an entire register.

Vee looked up at him from beneath her lashes, the expression on her face sitting somewhere between innocent and absolutely catastrophic. She knew exactly what she was doing.

His hands found Vee’s waist and drew her closer to the edge of the surface she was perched on, closing the last remaining distance between them.

"I know." Vee’s smile was audible. "I know what makes me irresistible."

"Is it me or have you recently learned how to be cocky?"

She tilted her head, completely unrepentant. "It’s hard not to be when I live and breathe you."

Her words landed in the centre of his chest and detonated quietly. "Fuck."

He had been completely outmanoeuvred by her and he had no complaints whatsoever about it. He picked her up from the table, set her on her feet, then turned her around. His eyes cut to the clock on the wall.

Ten minutes. Ten fucking minutes. He did the mental arithmetic quickly and arrived at an answer he didn’t like. Not enough. Nowhere near enough. Nowhere near what he wanted to give her, what she deserved, what he’d been thinking about.

Ten minutes was what they had. Make it count. He pulled her top over her head, tossing it behind him without tracking where it landed. It could sort itself out. His hands found her breasts immediately — because his self-control had already handed in its resignation — squeezing them, his mouth dropping to her neck, lips and teeth pressing into the warm skin there.

Vee’s head tilted back against his shoulder. Her hand reached behind her, fingers threading into his hair and pulling, the sharp tug drew a sound from him that he felt in his back teeth. She knew exactly which strings to pull. Had memorised the entire instrument.

His mouth stayed at her neck, grazing, tasting, while one hand remained occupied with her breasts and the other moved south— finding the waistband of her jeans, unbuckling it efficiently. He pushed the denim down to her thighs.

One hand slipped between her thighs. Please, he thought. Please be ready. We have nine minutes now and I cannot spend four of them on foreplay.

His fingers found her heat. The sound he made was deeply, profoundly grateful — a grunt of relief. She was warm and slick and ready, gloriously, mercifully primed, her body already several steps ahead. He pressed his forehead briefly to the back of her neck.

Thank God. "Bambola—" he whispered.

He didn’t waste time. Belt yanked. Zipper down. The brief, necessary logistics of the situation handled as he worked against a deadline he now deeply resented.

Then he was inside her. His cock — which operated on its own sovereign territory where Vee was concerned, had done so from the beginning and showed no signs of reform — pulsed the moment it felt her. That familiar heat. That specific, devastating warmth that had rewired him fundamentally since their first time.

He exhaled through his teeth. Home. Vee moaned, her feet shifting automatically, widening her stance, her body making accommodations without being asked because they knew each other now, had learned each other thoroughly — every preference, every angle, every unspoken request.

He didn’t give her time to adjust. He picked up the pace immediately — one hand dropping to find her clit with unerring accuracy, the other closing over her breast — and moved like a man being actively pursued.

(100 power stones even though I took the day off. I love you all)