His mouth finds mine and this kiss is nothing like the desperate collision at Luna's when we made our promises. This kiss is slow. Sweet. The kiss of two people who have nothing left to prove and nothing left to hide.
His fingers find my zipper and drag it down with a slowness that makes my breath catch. The gown pools at my feet and he steps back to look at me.
His lips part. No sound comes out.
Beneath the dress, Luna's body paint covers every inch of me. Roses and vines and jungle flowers cascading over my breasts, my bump, my hips. The same art she painted on me the night I walked into this building as a stranger. Full circle.
"Luna?" His voice is rough.
"Luna insisted. Said the goddess needed her war paint for the wedding night." I rest my hands on my painted belly and let him look. "Surprise."
His chest broadens with a deep breath. "Fuck." The word leaves him in a long exhale. His eyes trace every brushstroke, every bloom, every leaf curving over the body he knows by heart but is seeing reborn.
His hand reaches out and his fingertips follow a vine that trails from my collarbone down between my breasts. The paint is cool where his touch warms it. "You're going to kill me, jungle flower."
I arch a brow. "With sexiness? Yeah, that's the plan." A seductive smile curls the corner of my lip that makes my husband growl.
Luca bends and cups my ass in his strong grip. He lifts me onto the wide ledge beneath the glass wall, the party still pulsing below us. I reach behind him and pull the leather strap holding his hair back. Long black hair falls around his shoulders. His grin turns wolfish as he kneels between my thighs.
"Someone might look up." My breath catches as his mouth finds the painted vine trailing down my inner thigh.
"Let them." His tongue follows the vine higher, licking through paint and skin until he reaches the place where I'm already aching for him. The first stroke of his tongue makes my head fallback against the cool glass. The second makes my thighs clamp around his ears. By the third I'm gripping his hair with both fists and grinding against his mouth while three hundred people celebrate our wedding directly beneath us.
"Luca." His name comes out strangled. Desperate. "I need you inside me."
He rises and I fumble with his belt, yanking it free while his mouth claims mine. I taste myself on his tongue and moan into the kiss. His pants hit the floor and his cock springs free, thick and hard and already leaking at the tip.
He grips my hips and enters me in one slow thrust that makes us both groan. The angle is perfect, the ledge putting me at exactly the right height, and he fills me so completely that tears prick my eyes for reasons that have nothing to do with pain.
"My wife." He pulls back and drives forward again, his forehead pressing against mine. "My beautiful, stubborn, painted wife."
I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper. We find a rhythm that builds heat fast, his hands gripping the glass on either side of my head, his hips snapping against mine while the bass from the music below vibrates through the wall and into my spine.
The orgasm rolls through me in a wave that steals my voice. He follows seconds later, burying himself to the hilt and groaning my name against my throat.
We don't stop there. He strips his clothes away and then comes back for me.
He carries me to the waterfall. Warm water cascades over us as he takes me from behind, one arm wrapped beneath my belly tosupport our daughter, the other arm around my chest. The paint runs in rivers of crimson and green down our skin, pooling in the water at our feet. I grip his forearms and push back to meet every thrust, the spray hitting my sensitive breasts, his teeth grazing the curve of my neck.
"Harder." The word tears out of me.
And he gives me harder. His grip tightens around me and his pace turns relentless. The sound of our bodies meeting echoes off the wet walls. I shatter with a cry that bounces off every surface in the room.
He spins me around and I’m back in his arms. He lifts me and I wrap my legs around his middle as he carries me across the room, soaking wet.
He lays me down and arranges pillows beneath my hips with a tenderness that contradicts the hunger still burning in his eyes. He kisses the smeared roses on my belly, traces a ruined vine with his tongue from my hip to my breast, and takes a painted nipple into his mouth until I'm arching off the mattress and begging.
This time he takes me slow. Deep, unhurried strokes that let me feel every inch while his thumb circles my clit with devastating precision. We come together, his body shuddering over mine, my walls clenching around him, Luna's artwork reduced to beautiful destruction across the white sheets.
She'll definitely consider it a compliment.
Afterward, tangled in silk and satisfaction, his fingers trace the tiny devil Luna hid among the flowers on my bump that the water didn’t quite wash away.
“You like the little Dante we added to the artwork?” My voice is soft.
"You're stuck with me now, jungle flower." His voice carries the lazy warmth of a man who has been thoroughly loved and has no plans to move.
"I was stuck with you the moment you handed me that hibiscus." I trace the panther on his ribs, feeling the raised edge of a scar hidden beneath the ink.