She Couldn’t Move

Candice’s P.O.V.

I couldn’t move.

Every muscle trembled, my body felt turned inside out, raw and glowing like I’d been set on fire and left to smolder. Mantovani’s weight was still half on me, his breath hot against my neck, his cock softening slowly inside the place he’d just claimed so completely I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel empty again.

The room smelled like sex and violence and something darker: surrender.

He finally pulled out with a low hiss (both of us wincing at the tenderness) and rolled to his back. One arm dragged me with him, tucking me against his chest like I was something precious even after he’d just broken me open.

I couldn’t speak. My throat was wrecked from screaming, my voice reduced to a rasp. All I could do was press my face to the wolf tattoo over his heart and listen to it thunder.

His fingers stroked through my hair, surprisingly gentle.

“You okay?” he asked, voice hoarse.

I laughed—wet, broken, delirious. “I don’t think that word exists anymore.”

He exhaled something that might have been a laugh or a sob. “Good.”

Silence stretched, thick and electric. Then:

“I heard her,” I whispered. “Mom. Outside the door.”

His arm tightened around me. “I know.”

“She heard everything.”

“I hope she did.”

I lifted my head, met his eyes. They were still dark, still dangerous, but something had cracked in them too. Something human and terrified.

“She’s going to try to take me away from you,” I said.

“Let her try.” His thumb brushed my swollen bottom lip. “I’ll burn the fucking planet down before I let anyone put you in a car that isn’t headed straight back to my bed.”

A shiver ran through me (fear, arousal, possession, all braided together).

I believed him.

God help me, I believed every word.

Mantovani’s P.O.V.

I carried her to the shower twenty minutes later because her legs still wouldn’t hold her.

She stood under the scalding water like a sacrifice, head tipped back, eyes closed, while I washed her gently (every bruise, every bite mark, every streak of us running down her thighs). My hands shook. I’d never shaken in my life, not when I put my first bullet in a man, not when I took the gavel, but they shook now.

Because I’d just done the one thing I swore I never would.

I’d let the monster off the leash completely.

And she’d looked up at me afterward with stars in her eyes and said don’t stop.

I was in love with her.

I was going to destroy her.

And I didn’t know how to be anything else.

When I wrapped her in one of my black hoodies (it hung to her knees) and carried her back to bed, she curled into me like a cat, fingers tracing the fresh scratches she’d left on my chest.

“Your father’s going to find out,” she murmured against my skin.

“He already knows.”

Her head snapped up. “What?”

I met her eyes, steady. “I called him while you were half-dead in the shower. Told him I claimed you in front of the entire club. Told him if he has a problem with it, he can take it up with me personally.”

Her mouth opened, closed. “And?”

A slow, feral smile curved my mouth. “He laughed. Said, ‘Finally, my son acts like a d’Agostino.’ Then he told me congratulations on locking down the future of the family.”

She blinked. “He… approves?”

“He thinks you’re the perfect leash.” I brushed a thumb over her cheek. “What he doesn’t understand is I’m the one collared.”

Her breath hitched.

I leaned in until our lips brushed. “Sleep, piccola. Tomorrow the war starts for real. Your mother, the sheriff’s brother, every bastard who thinks they can touch what’s mine; they’re all going to learn what happens when you come for the president’s woman.”

She searched my face for a long moment, then nodded once (small, fierce, unbreakable).

“I’m not afraid,” she whispered.

I kissed her slow and deep, tasting salt and sex and the future burning between us.

“You should be,” I said against her mouth.

“But you’re not afraid of me.”

She smiled (small, wicked, perfect).

“That’s why we’re perfect for each other.”

I pulled her tighter against me, the wolf on my back sheltering her like it was always meant to.

Outside, engines started rumbling. Brothers gearing up. Word was already spreading.

Tomorrow, blood would run.

Tonight, she was mine.

And hell itself couldn’t change that.