Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Bambalina
It’s two a.m. when I emerge from the dark room where I’ve been working on my latest photographs. I step onto the landing of a quiet, empty house.
Tess is away all week doing rehearsals, and Papa and Antonia are visiting friends in Washington. Nicolò has been away all week, doing things I’d rather not think about.
He only stays here a few nights a week and I live for those nights. Knowing there’s only a wall between us when I touch myself to thoughts of him feels so hot and naughty and indulgent.
Having him under our roof also means I’ve had ample opportunities to watch him. And that’s how I know Nicolò Di Santo is different.
My stepbrother isn’t a brute.
His knuckles aren’t busted up like Benito’s. He doesn’t have ink crawling up both arms like Andreas. He doesn’t carry the overtly threatening charisma that Cristiano possesses.
He doesn’t seem to have as strong a propensity to murdering people as his peers. Or so I hear.
Nicolò is understated. He’s polished. Measured. A quiet threat wrapped in tailored clothing. But don’t misunderstand me… he’s still dangerous. He just hides it better than most.
I know the rumors and I’ve seen the evidence. I once overheard Trilby and Tess whispering about how Nicolò had nailed a man’s hands to a fence for touching one of his soldier’s wives.
And the night I came home late from Trilby’s and found a severed finger resting in a box on the kitchen island will haunt me forever.
I didn’t stick around long enough to confirm who had brought such a thing into the house, but it couldn’t have been anyone else.
Papa hasn’t harmed—or dismembered—a man in his life.
Sitting on the bed, I open my journal and scribble down notes for the few things I photographed today. Then I let my thoughts wander.
I imagine that Nicolò is here in the house. I can smell his cologne in the air. He’s walking up the stairs. Then, instead of opening the door to his room, he opens the door to mine.
I picture him telling me to touch myself, so I do.
Sinking into the fantasy, I close the journal, scoot back on the bed and shove my hand into my satin pajama shorts, then close my eyes.
I imagine he’s really here, watching me, telling me where to put my fingers, how to move them. He tells me I’m a good girl. His good girl, and that he wants to taste me.
I lift my hips up into my hand. Just the thought of Nicolò’s eyes on me gets me so hot, so quickly. I’m already wet between my legs so I rub it over my clit and pretend it’s Nicolò’s fingers doing the touching, not mine.
I’ve noticed his fingers many times. They’re long and masculine, and I acknowledge, with a shiver, they’ve been around many a man’s throat.
I imagine they’re on me now and they feel so good.
I moan deliriously. I can be as loud as I want tonight because I’m the only soul in the house.
I’ve discovered in the last few months I’m not a quiet lovemaker. If I ever do get a boyfriend, I’ll have to move out of the house, otherwise I’ll fill the four walls with my cries and gasps.
I find it hard to keep my mouth shut and my voice in check when I’m pleasuring myself. I can only imagine how much harder it would be if someone else were doing the pleasuring.
That thought tips me into the final furlong and blood crests to my core. I envisage his dark gray eyes narrowing as his fingers go to work. My head tips back, arching my neck, and he drags his teeth along the sensitive skin covering my throat.
God, I wish I could look at him without blushing.
I wish I had the courage to talk to him.
I wish I could feel him like this, just once.
That last thought drives me off the cliff. I rub myself harder until stars burst behind my eyes and my hips come off the bed.
I don’t hold back. My jaw falls open and I cry out. A long high-pitched whimper is chased by small gasps with each new spasm.
This feels so good.
As the high subsides, there’s a creak on the landing outside my room. My hips thud onto the comforter and my mouth snaps shut.
I thought I was alone.
Holding my breath, I slowly sit up, listening for the smallest sound and hoping to high heaven I’d imagined it.
Then my heart drops along with the sound of a door closing. It’s the door to the room next to mine. His.
Blood rushes up my neck into my cheeks. He must have heard me. He had to have heard me. I was so loud.
My heart beats out of my chest.
In a panic, I turn on the vintage radio Trilby gifted me at the holidays. I never listen to the radio, only streamed music on my phone, but I need to mask the sound I made somehow. Then, I sit back on the bed, my hands covering my face.
Please God, say he didn’t hear me.
Thankfully, and for once, I didn’t cry out his name. Now that would have been a move-to-entirely-different-country level of mortification.
Even the thought of him stripping out of his clothes next door and slipping beneath his bedsheets naked fails to wrest me out of my embarrassment.
Instead of listening attentively to every small sound he makes like usual, I bury myself beneath the comforter. I pull it over my head, and eventually fall asleep listening to the blues playing on a sad old radio.
***
Seven hours later, I peel myself out of bed.
I sweated so much before I fell asleep, the sheets stick to my skin. I’m still embarrassed, but I’m also hungry.
My stomach groans and I’m faced with an uncomfortable decision: either stay in my room forever and slowly rot, or risk facing the subject of my very loud orgasm in the kitchen.
The thought of seeing him, especially after what he may have heard last night, makes me tremble. It’s been six months of seeing him occasionally around the house and I still haven’t gotten used to how imposing he is.
I wrap my long hair into a messy bun at my crown and make my way down the stairs. The glow of security lights filters through the windows, illuminating every room.
I reach the bottom, listening for any sound that might suggest he’s up and about. I really hope he isn’t, because if I see him, I’ll blush heinously, and my infatuation with him will be obvious.
When I round the corner, my heart shoots up into the base of my throat. Nicolò Di Santo is standing in the center of the room with his back to me, his attention on his phone.
My gaze flickers over him. The dark gray suit that matches the color of his eyes. The broad shoulders that block out the light. Thick, black hair, always perfectly styled. Expensive shoes polished to within an inch of their life.
While I’m busy observing him, he turns around.
I swallow and bring my gaze back up to his. He’s looking at me indifferently, like I’m standing in his way.
“Oh, um, sorry,” I mutter, shifting to one side to let him pass by. The sleeve of his jacket brushes my bare arm, his cologne curls up my nostrils. I breathe in and hold the air in my lungs until I can taste him. God, I have a serious problem.
He reaches for a glass, then holds it under the faucet.
I pull my gaze away and walk to the coffee machine to prepare something extra dark and strong.
My foggy head needs some sort of shock. I face the machine until the cup is filled but I can hear him moving about behind me.
When it’s safe to turn around, I pour out a bowl of Cheerios.
He’s settled into a chair at the kitchen table, his eyes still glued to his phone.
When I pour milk into the bowl, it sloshes onto the floor.
That’s when I realize I’m shaking. Swearing under my breath I set the bowl on the counter.
It takes me only a couple of minutes to clear the spilled milk but it feels like longer because my face is burning.
Not only am I about to eat the breakfast of seven-year-olds, I can’t even serve it without making the mess of a toddler.
It's in moments like this, I really wish Nicolò didn’t live here. I hate feeling so self-conscious and on edge when moving around my own home.
Sometimes, when I’m not fantasizing about him touching me, I imagine what it would be like to have a normal stepbrother. One who asks about my day, or offers to drive me places because I don’t yet have a car.
Not someone who makes my nerves tighten when the scent of his cologne drifts into my orbit.
But, as I climb the stairs, open the door to my room and see my journal right where I left it, a large shadowy part of myself knows I likes it this way—to share a darkened hallway with a man whose hands are covered in blood, whose gaze breaks my skin and whose fingers take me far, far away.