All Chapters of SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON: Chapter 371 - Chapter 380

Andrea's POVThe warmth that moved through me at that settled deep and immediate and made thinking difficult.He sat up in one smooth movement, his hands finding my waist, and he pulled me up the bed toward him with an ease that still caught me off guard every time—the casual effortlessness of how he moved me, like my weight was simply not a factor he was working around.He turned me gently, positioning me on my side facing away from him, his chest warm against my back as he settled in behind me. The spooning position was intimate in a different way than anything else—slower, quieter, more tender somehow despite everything.His lips pressed against the back of my neck."Okay?" he murmured against my skin."More than okay," I said softly.His hands moved to my hips, sliding my shorts down slowly, his fingers trailing warm over my skin as he removed them completely. The morning air was cool for just a moment before his body heat surrounded me again.He pressed closer behind me, his arm

Andrea's POV"That's three times now," I said."It keeps being morning," he said simply.I laughed softly and felt him smile against my hair at the sound of it.We stayed in bed for a while after, warm and tangled together, neither of us in any hurry to rejoin the world outside his bedroom door.His hand moved slowly through my hair. My face was pressed against his chest. The morning light kept shifting through the curtains, getting warmer and more golden as time moved forward without us paying it much attention.It was the kind of morning I wanted to hold onto with both hands.Then my stomach made a sound that was completely impossible to ignore.A loud, insistent, thoroughly undignified rumble that broke the quiet of the room without any warning or consideration for my dignity whatsoever.I felt my face go hot instantly.Dante went still for exactly one second.Then his chest started shaking under my cheek."Don't," I said into his skin.He was already laughing. That real laugh that

Andrea's POVHe picked up the soap and I stood still while his hands moved over me, large and warm and thorough, washing my shoulders and my arms and moving across my back and my stomach. He was careful and attentive and entirely present in the task, his hands moving with purpose over every part of me.When his hands moved to my breasts I drew in a slow breath.He washed them slowly, his thumbs brushing over my nipples with a thoroughness that was technically practical and practically anything but, and I felt the familiar pull of wanting gathering low in my body."Dante," I said softly."Still washing," he said, straight-faced."You're doing it on purpose," I said."Doing what?" he asked, and did it again.I pressed my lips together against a smile.He rinsed me with the same attention he'd given everything else, his hands moving over my skin as the water ran across it, making sure every bit of soap was gone.Then we were both clean and the shower was still running and neither of us m

Andrea's POVMy heart was suddenly beating somewhere up near my throat.Did he know? Had he figured it out? Had something in the way we'd walked in together, the way Dante's hand had found mine without thinking, given it all away in one careless moment?I forced myself to look back at Dahlia instead of holding Luca's gaze any longer than necessary."How long do they want to keep you?" I asked, my voice coming out steadier than I felt."Just for observation," Dahlia said. "A few more hours, then they'll let me go home if everything stays stable.""We'll stay," I said. "As long as you need us here.""You don't have to—"We did stay. We stayed the whole afternoon, the four of us in that hospital room, until the doctor finally came back and said the words I'd been praying to hear—Dahlia could go home. Everything was fine. The baby was fine. It really had been a false alarm, her body just being careful in the way pregnant bodies sometimes are.We all left together that evening. I still cau

Andrea's POVI stared out the window and said nothing, and beside me my mother said nothing, and up front Dante drove us all toward the mansion and whatever came next.When we got to the mansion, Luca and Dahlia were already waiting for us at the front entrance.The moment my mum stepped out of the car, Luca came down the steps two at a time and pulled her into a tight hug—the kind of hug that made him look softer and younger than he ever did otherwise. He'd always had a soft spot for my mum. During certain hard stretches of his life, she'd been the closest thing he had to a mother figure, and it showed now in the way he held onto her, in the way some of the constant tension he carried in his shoulders eased the moment her arms went around him."Look at you," my mum said, pulling back to study his face. Her hands came up to pinch his cheeks the way she used to when he was a boy, and Luca—the dangerous, powerful man that grown men feared—let her do it without complaint. "You've grown s