Chapter 18 A Hunting We Will Go
A Hunting We Will Go
Rocco
The day was overcast, shadows dancing along the walls in our bedroom as thick, silvery fog cloaked our home. My wife lay beside me, one arm on the pillow, her face resting next to her hand.
She had the face of an angel.
The most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
Her body called to mine. Constantly called to mine. But where many women could only fulfill the desires of my flesh, this woman, my beloved wife, fulfilled all of me, not only for the moment, but forevermore.
A moment in her arms made all sacrifices worth it.
A lifetime with her would never be enough.
My hands balled and then flexed. The ring on my left hand, the white gold, was a bright metal in the room.
A symbol of her love and devotion to me.
My hands balled and flexed.
A symbol of her rooted place in my life.
If anything would have happened to her the previous night, my life would be over.
My heart and hers were interconnected. The veins and muscles of the beating organ one. It felt as if half of my body lay in the bed, and the other half belonged to me. If I was far from her, I would be severed.
The shell I was before she entered my life was a version of hell I would reserve for enemies.
Perhaps I would not even wish that on them.
It was never Rosaria who put me there. It was the lack of my Aria Amora Bella Fausti that had me frozen in time in another period of my life.
Until my wife finally appeared from the desires of my heart and brought me out of the frozen state I had been in.
I softly ran my hand along her naked back.
It almost seemed as if she was floating in the silvery light, her warmth the reason we were surrounded by clouds, as she referred to them.
This was why my hands, without my consent, reached out to touch her.
To convince my mind that she did not have hidden wings, although the way her hair fell across the pillow crowned her with a hazelnut halo.
My eyes fell back to my hands. The ring on my left finger. A magnet that would always lead me home. I felt the tugging inside of my heart and soul. A path that would forever lead me back to the other half of me. The half that had always been missing from my life.
I turned my hand over, examining my palm. Lines created an A pattern. Aria Amora. My beautiful love song had always been tattooed on my flesh, even before I knew her.
In remembrance, blood stained my hands, the blood of my adversaries that would forever mark me.
I set my hand on my wife, closing my eyes, breathing in her sweet scent.
It was the scent of forgiveness, but if the time called for it, my palms would be marked with the blood of her enemies—my hands, my heart, my soul.
In her sleep, she made a soft sound, as sweet as she was to me. She ran her hand along the sheets she said made her feel as though the clouds outside had spun our bedding, and then, blinking, her stunning hazel eyes turned to me.
“Can’t sleep?” she whispered.
My hand slid down to her lower back, the deep dip that was made for me. It was the same as our hands. Hers fit perfectly in mine, and my hand fit perfectly on all spots of her body, her thighs and lower-back dip especially.
Keys to locks of us.
“Sleep,” I whispered to her in Italian, leaning over and kissing her softly on the lips.
Her eyes drifted closed, and as I gently ran my fingertips up and down her back, her mouth parted slightly, and she breathed easily as she drifted back into a deep sleep.
I had kept her up all night. My body a slave to hers.
Especially after what had happened the previous night in the woods.
It was as if we both were desperate for the healing only the other could provide.
A near miss that made my soul tremble, and my anger rise to a height it had never reached before.
Forcing myself to unwrap myself from her scent, the warmth of her soft body, I got to my feet. I took care of the usual necessities in the bathroom, then dressed for a day of hunting.
My wife was sitting up in bed when I entered our bedroom. The covers were down, and her breasts were exposed to the chill, her raspberry nipples begging to be sucked. I licked my lips, my cock already hard. I could already feel her melting in my hands when my mouth would meet hers.
This was all it took.
Her breasts…her breasts were works of art. Warm, supple, perfetta. I closed my eyes, inhaling, and the scent of her wetness perfumed the air. She smelled so sweet to me.
“Rocco?” she whispered.
My eyes slowly opened to meet hers. She breathed out, squeezing the covers. “I just wanted to say…what did I want to say?” she mumbled to herself.
I grinned at her, taking steps toward the bed, and kissed her again. I could die this way, and it would be an honor.
She lifted her arms and wrapped them around my neck. “Now I truly can’t remember what I wanted to say.” She grinned against my lips. Then she sighed, and I breathed in her essence. “I remember,” she whispered. “Be careful, ah? I can’t do this life without you now that I found you—found my forever.”
“Dolce,” I whispered, kissing her lips, all over her face. “You are too sweet. You will give me a cavity.”
She smiled at me, then her face turned serious. “There was a woman in the woods last night.”
I stood to my full height, looking down at her. “You did not tell me this.”
She bit her luscious lip, then shook her head. “No, it slipped my mind with the wild pig incident.” She looked down, away from me. “Stop looking at me that way,” she whispered. Then she met my eyes.
“Tell me, my wife, how am I looking at you.”
“Like you’re seeing something that pissed you off—it’s…unnerving.”
I could tell she hated to admit that to me, that the way I was looking at her made her uncomfortable. I blinked, attempting to clear the look off my face. What I was seeing was a dead woman in our woods if she meant my wife harm.
My wife shook her head. “Blinking isn’t helping, Rocco.”
“Tell me everything.”
She nodded and did. Then she snatched my hand. “Give me your word,” she said, “that the Shorties won’t get in any trouble, especially when Ermanno put his body in front of mine to protect me from the boar.”
“Tell me, what are these Shorties.” The word did not roll off my tongue as smoothly as most words.
“Oh, ah, the short Fausti men, the ones who haven’t grown into their potential Fausti-ness yet—the ones in the woods with me last night.” She stuck her chin up.
She was going to fight me on this. It was not worth it to me. I sighed. “You have my word, my queen.” An uncomfortable feeling hit me in the chest. Small man or not, Ermanno was there for her when I was not. I would have to tame the urge to rip his throat out.
“Bene.” She twirled her thumbs for a moment. “Do you know who it was by any chance? The woman in the woods?”
“No one at our celebration,” I said. “All guests were accounted for at the time.” My heart was pumping faster in my chest, although the rest of me was frozen. I would explode when it was time to defend mine.
“All right,” she whispered. “It was all just so odd…she sounded crazed. As crazed as the boar. Ermanno said she was a strega and had sent the boar at us because we were eavesdropping.”
I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. She closed her eyes, and I breathed in the scent of lingering fig and grape on her skin, along with a scent that was masculine and feral. Mine.
“Sleep, Amora,” I whispered. “You are safe in your castle.”
“I love you, Rocco,” she whispered. “I love you so much, I don’t think my heart can contain it sometimes. So, you know what that means?”
“Tell me what this means, Amora.”
“You’ll take care of yourself—no unnecessary risks. My heart is at stake.” Although her voice was tender, her eyes were unwavering. “Your word, my king.”
“You have more than my word, my queen,” I spoke in Italian. “You have all of me.” Then I repeated the words in English.
She sighed as she got comfortable in the bed, her eyes falling shut right after. I had worked her body to new heights the night before. Danger will do that to a man. I quietly shut the door behind me, knowing she needed her rest. If I did not go out and meet my family, she would not get any.
Guido waited at the bottom of the steps. Since he would oversee my wife’s safety while I explored the property with my father, uncles, brothers, and more men, I left him with a warning I had heard my brother express countless times, except I did not plagiarize, since I would be changing the threat.
“Your family’s life depends on my wife’s life.”
He seemed to stand straighter, and he nodded as a solider would. I nodded back, and this…this sealed the deal between us.
Guido did not take it personally. If anything, all I found in his eyes was a deeper respect for me, and for the love I shared with my wife. A love that went beyond life and death. A love that would live forever.
Uncle Tito had said to me that he had always been in awe at the way Brando loved Scarlett, and the first time he saw the way I looked at my wife, he was in awe of me as well.
“There are three things too wonderful for me, four that I cannot understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship at sea, and the way a man loves a woman.”
“I do not understand these things either, uncle,” I had said to him. “However, I do not need to, not if the love is mine. Too wonderful to describe in mere words.”
He had grinned at me then, and then we toasted to love, our women, and the things we could not understand.
My feet paused at the front door of our home.
Before Aria Amora Bella Fausti, I was a man with one single layer.
After she came into my life, I had become multidimensional.
I had a purpose outside of the family. I was finally a man who did not even consider any longer what it meant to have the respect of others regarding the love I shared with my wife.