Chapter Ten Guinevere
Chapter Ten
Guinevere
I woke up the next morning with the echo of Raffa’s mouth between my thighs and the phantom sensation of hot, wet blood on my hands.
It was an alarming contrast, but oddly fitting for my current situation.
My shoulder ached from where the dead man’s boot had connected with it, but I rolled away the stiffness as I got ready for the day. My face was a pale oval in the mirror, bleached of color and hollow beneath the cheeks and eyes. I looked skeletal and vaguely frightening.
With a sigh, I opened my makeup bag and got to work making myself presentable, even though I felt like squirreling the whole day away locked in my room. There was no doubt in my mind that Raffa, or one of his well-meaning but interfering sisters, would have dragged me out of bed at some point.
Besides, it was the first day of the grape harvest, which meant that I had already slept too long and most of the family would be out in the field of vines extending all down the left slope and valley beside the house.
I had been eager to participate in such a cultural phenomenon, questioning Delfina about the harvesting process and Angela, Stacci, and Carlotta about the community feast they hosted among the vines that first night to celebrate.
It was going to be glorious.
I could wallow in self-pity and flagellation another day, I decided, as I donned the most casual outfit in my closet, a white linen dress with straps that buttoned close on my chest, and slipped my feet into sturdy leather sandals.
My hair was wavy from Raffa’s braid, and even though it was impractical, I left it down because I liked the way it made me feel to know his fingers had been in it, caring for it and for me in one of my lowest moments.
Not thinking about the fact that I had killed someone—and watched him splatter open across the cobblestones beneath me like a much too macabre Humpty Dumpty—was utterly exhausting, and I’d only been awake for half an hour.
When I left the room, I noticed the splintered doorframe, thumbing a sliver of wood as I passed by.
It hurt to think of Raffa’s panic when he’d listened to the entire bell tower encounter through the phone, knowing he couldn’t reach me.
He must have been driven crazy with helplessness and rage, but when he’d handled me in the shower, he had only been tender and so patient it set my throat to aching.
Every touch of his hands seemed to reanimate me, breathing life into my two-dimensional spirit.
The ghost I had become after turning that random Italian assailant into one himself was banished by the immensity of Raffa’s worship.
For a man like that to cherish me? It felt nothing short of holy, some ancient pagan ritual involving sacrifice and blood as offerings to a god that was just as merciful as it was full of spite.
I could not deny that it made me feel powerful, especially after I’d felt so helpless on the bell tower, to know that this behemoth of a man knelt only for me.
Knowing, as I did now, that he was truly dangerous had been an extra thrill, the spark that tipped the edge of my pleasure into a cleansing, vibrant climax.
I could be honest with myself about that, at least.
Ask myself the first of the hard questions Raffa had alluded to the night before.
Did Raffa’s criminality affect how I felt about him physically?
Quite the opposite.
All those dark fantasies I’d harbored about being tied up, fucked hard, left wanting for hours, and then being made to come until it hurt only raged hotter now that I knew he could be cruel and shocking.
I wondered just how far down he could take me, just how thoroughly he could take every inch of me apart with his teeth and cock and bare, man-killing hands.
“Cazzo,” I murmured as I left my bedroom behind. “Who are you, Guinevere?”
The answer to that question was much more difficult to answer.
I hurried downstairs, eager for the distraction of the harvest and, if I was being honest, eager to see Raffa again.
Even though he was the cause of all this chaos, he was also the only one who made me feel slightly sane, even remotely safe.
Not just from external forces but also from myself.
This new version that was emerging from the darkest depths of my soul and swallowing whole parts of my previous identity whole.
That he could still look at me like he saw every inch of who I was, even the new bits I wanted to hide away from, made it impossibly harder not to love him.
“Buongiorno, Vera.”
I closed my eyes for a moment to savor the richness of that voice because Raffa was turned away from me, pouring coffee from a hand-painted Dolce & Gabbana Moka pot into a matching cup.
He was wearing casual khakis that hugged his thickly muscled thighs and sculpted ass and an oversized white linen shirt.
When he turned with the coffee cup in one hand, I noticed his shirt was open indecently low to reveal most of his carved, tanned chest and the crisp black hair that made my mouth water.
Merda, why did he have to be so gorgeous?
“Did you sleep well?” he asked, concern so obvious in his usually stoic expression that I hesitated mid-step, thrown off by the tenderness there. “I kept the door open to my room, but I did not hear you cry out in the night.”
He’d been listening for nightmares.
My traitorous heart skipped a beat.
I accepted the coffee he extended to me, breathing in the delicious aroma to take a moment to compose myself. “I don’t remember any dreams. I was out like a log.”
“Bene,” he said with a firm nod, turning away to the oven, from which he pulled out a full plate of food. “The family left two hours ago to begin work, but Mamma made you a plate.”
I never thought I would see a powerful, arrogant man like Raffaele Romano fuss over someone, but there he was, making me coffee, grabbing utensils and a full plate of food to give to me, even laying my napkin in my lap.
I gaped at him, and when he noticed, he laughed. It was that full-bodied chuckle that he only ever used with his close loved ones. My eyes fell closed for too long a beat while I absorbed the beauty of it.
“I’m fine, Raffa,” I reminded him. “It wasn’t me who was . . . hurt.”
“We will agree to disagree, hmm?” he decided, nodding at my hand where it was loosely clasped around a fork, hovering over a mound of eggs. “Eat your food.”
“Are you being so sweet out of guilt?” I asked, even as I obeyed and dug into the perfectly seasoned scrambled eggs and vibrant slices of prosciutto.
“I am being sweet because I am a sweet man,” he qualified, and then shot me a wicked grin over his shoulder as he poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. “When I want to be.”
I didn’t respond, because, of course, I knew this. Raffa was the man who had taken an unlucky American girl into his home for safe harbor when she had no money or clothes to her name, who had provided for her and indulged her whims.
Of course, we had shared a basic attraction from the start, and I was sure if I’d been another kind of woman, he would have seen me off with a wad of cash to the nearest hotel, but that wasn’t how it had gone.
I wondered if I wasn’t so unlucky as I had always believed.
Raffa’s words from my last week in Florence in August echoed in my head: sfortunato al gioco, fortunato in amore.
Unlucky at cards, lucky in love.
And then his words from the night before . . .
There is nothing I would not give you. Nothing I would not do for you.
I knew in my bones they were spoken from the heart. He would do whatever it took to make me happy, even if it made him unhappy.
And the truth was, I did not want Raffa to be unhappy.
He had so obviously been unhappy for a long time when we met, and I thought it would be a crime if he stopped laughing that throaty chuckle and smiling that almost boyish, mischievous grin.
But could I be the kind of woman who fought—and killed—for what I wanted and those I loved? Even though I technically had the night before, I couldn’t say actually ending that man’s life had been my intention. It was more an accidental by-product of my desire to stop him from shooting Ludo.
Could I ever go into a situation with premeditated murder in my mind? Because if I stayed here with Raffa as anything other than his reluctant hostage, I knew there might come a day when I would need to.
“How many people have you killed?” I asked suddenly, shocked by my own frankness.
Raffa only blinked as he settled across from me with the Corriere della Sera. It was flipped open already to an article with a bold enough headline that I could read it upside down.
Suicidio! L’uomo salta dal campanile di Impruneta.
So that was how they’d spun it. That the man had committed suicide after drinking too much wine at the local festival.
I had to admit, it seemed plausible. It cowed and scared me slightly to wonder at the reaches of Raffa’s Camorra.
That they could rewrite history so clearly when there had been an entire piazza of citizens who must have heard the gunfire even over the live band.
“I do not count,” Raffa said before snapping open the newspaper crisply and perusing a different headline. “To do so would be . . . inopportuno.”
I had to cede that to him. “Okay then, have you ever killed women? Children?”
Raffa dipped the newspaper so he could narrow his eyes at me, that pale-maple brown almost bronze in the bright autumnal morning light.
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Why aren’t you answering?” I countered, dropping my fork to the plate. “You told me to ask the hard questions.”
A surprisingly proud grin curled the edge of his mouth, and I noticed that he hadn’t shaved that morning, his stubble an inky spill across his firm jaw and square chin. I wanted to drag my teeth along that bristly edge.
“So I did,” he agreed. “No, I have not killed children. Just because I kill when I must does not mean I do not have a code.”
“You didn’t say you haven’t killed women,” I noted.