“Color?” he asked, his voice low.
“Green,” I gasped, breath breaking as my body still shook. “Fuck me, Luca. I want it.”
He gave me a look that made my chest seize, his forehead lowering to mine until our breaths tangled. His lips brushed mine.
“Not fuck, baby.” His hand holding the side of my face, his mouth catching the end of my sob. “Worship. Love. Own.”
The grin that broke across his lips was sharp and devastating, but his eyes stayed steady on mine as he pressed our foreheads together. “That’s what this is.”
Bastion was still holding my hips like he couldn’t let me go. Luca kissed me, not desperate this time, but reverent, slow strokes of his mouth against mine as if he needed me to feel the difference.
“Every time,” he murmured, kissing me again. “Not fucking. Loving. Owning. Worshiping you until you never doubt it again.”
I clung to him, because it was breaking me apart in a way I hadn’t expected.
“My husbands,” I whispered against his mouth, and I felt both of them stiffen around me — one behind me, one holding my face — like I’d just branded them without ink.
And maybe I had.
For the first time in my life, I saw a future I would live. Not just survive.
Chapter Fifty-Five
LUCA
Emilia slept naked on her stomach between us. A sheet tangled around her hips. Bastion was tracing her back with his hand.
I lit a cigarette, taking a deep inhale. The ache that came with it was grounding. Real. I held it, then lit another, passing it over.
Bastion took it without a word, pulling deep.
“She’s been asleep an hour,” he murmured, his voice low so not to wake her.
I exhaled smoke toward the ceiling, smirking faintly. “We did fuck her for nearly two.”
His mouth twitched. His eyes stayed on her, his hand moving down the slope of her waist to where the sheet clung. “She does good keeping up with both of us.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“She was made for us,” I said. Because it was true.
Bastion stroked her again, slower this time. “She really was.”
I inhaled deep. My chest was heavy, but not the kind that crushed. The kind that filled.
I glanced down at her, the faint curve of her lips even in sleep. My throat tightened.
“I can’t wait to see Alexander’s face,” I muttered.
Bastion’s jaw flexed, blowing smoke away from her.
In my head, I could already see it: Alexander’s composure fracturing, that perfect Adam steel snapping in half when he realized what we’d done. What we’d taken. No—what had always been ours.
I would finally rip apart the legacy he held so dearly. Not with fire. Not with blood. With ink. With vows. With her name on my skin and ours on hers.
She’d said it tonight.My husbands.
The sound replayed on loop in my skull. A fever. The taste of peace I hadn’t let myself imagine for three years. Knowing she would always be between us. That no matter how the city burned, we’d return to this bed and find her here.
