7. Nova #2
My heart is pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it. My whole body is vibrating with want, with need, with three years of being untouched and six weeks of sleeping beside a man I crave more than air.
“You should go,” he says.
I blink. “What?”
“You should go back to your room. Take a cold shower. Go down to dinner and pretend this never happened.” His jaw tightens.
“Because if you stay, if you touch me right now, I’m not going to be able to stop.
And I need you to be sure. I need you to choose this, not just fall into it because you saw something that made you want me. ”
“I already want you.”
“You want comfort. You want safety. You want to feel something other than pain for once in your miserable life-”
“Don’t tell me what I want.”
The words come out sharp. Sharper than I intended. But I’m tired of being managed, handled, protected from my own desires like I’m too fragile to know my own mind.
“I know what I want,” I say. “I’ve known for weeks. I’ve been lying awake every night thinking about it. Wanting it. Wanting you.”
“Nova-”
“You want me to be sure? I’m sure. You want me to choose? I choose.” I take a breath. “I choose you. I want you. And if you don’t touch me in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Something gives way behind his eyes.
I watch it go - the last thread of his self-control, snapping. His hand comes up, and his fingers close around the back of my neck, and he pulls me toward him, and-
He stops.
An inch from my mouth. Close enough that I can feel his breath on my lips. Close enough that if either of us moved, just slightly, we’d be kissing.
“Not like this,” he says, and his voice is raw. “Not standing in my bathroom with water on the floor and paint on your hands. Not when I’ve spent a month imagining all the ways I want to take you apart.”
“Then when?”
His thumb strokes along my jaw. His eyes search my face.
“Tonight,” he says. “Come to my room tonight. Not because of nightmares. Not because you’re scared. Come to me because you want to be there. Come to me because you’ve chosen me.”
“And if I do?”
His forehead presses against mine. His breath mingles with mine. His body, still wet, barely an inch from touching my clothed one.
“If you do,” he murmurs, “I’m never letting you go.”
He releases me.
Steps back.
Reaches for a towel and wraps it around his waist, and I watch the muscles in his arms flex, watch the water droplets slide down his chest, watch him cover himself like he’s putting away a weapon.
“Go,” he says. “Dinner is in an hour. I’ll see you there.”
I go.
I walk back to my room on legs that barely hold me. I strip off my paint-stained clothes and step into my own shower and turn the water to cold, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
All I can see is him.
All I can feel is the ghost of his fingers on my neck.
All I can hear is his voice, raw and wrecked, saying my name as he came.
Tonight, I think.
Tonight, I choose him.
***
Dinner is torture.
We sit across from each other at the candlelit table, same as every night. Wine is poured. Food is served. Conversation happens, probably - I couldn’t tell you what we talked about if my life depended on it.
All I can see is the water streaming down his back.
All I can feel is the weight of his gaze on my face.
All I can think about is what’s going to happen when the meal is over and the candles are snuffed and I walk up those stairs to his room.
“You’re not eating.”
His voice cuts through my haze. I look down at my plate - I’ve been pushing the same piece of fish around for ten minutes.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Nervous?”
I look up. He’s watching me with those dark eyes, a slight curve to his lips that isn’t quite a smile.
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Fine. Yes.” I set down my fork. “I’m nervous. I’m terrified. I haven’t-” I stop. Take a breath. “It’s been a long time.”
“I know.”
“And before, with Dante, it was never…” I trail off, not sure how to explain that sex with my husband was perfunctory at best, absent at worst. That by the end, we hadn’t touched in months. That I’ve spent years feeling untouchable, unwantable, invisible.
“I know,” he says again, and the way he says it makes me think he does. Somehow. That he’s added this to all the other things he’s collected about me over the years.
“How do you always know?”
“I pay attention.” He turns the wine glass slowly by its stem, his gaze never once leaving mine. “I’ve been paying attention to you for a very long time.”
“That should probably scare me.”
“Does it?”
I think about it. Really think about it - the watching, the waiting, the way he’s been a silent presence in my life long before I knew he existed. It should be creepy. Obsessive. The kind of thing that sends up red flags.
“No,” I admit. “It makes me feel… seen.”
Something softens in his expression. “Good.”
The meal continues. We talk about nothing: the weather, the gardens, a book he’s reading that he thinks I’d like. Normal things. Safe things. The conversation of two people who aren’t about to change everything.
But underneath the words, the tension builds.
Every time his fingers brush the stem of his wine glass, I think about those fingers on my skin.
Every time he shifts in his chair, I think about his body against mine.
Every time he looks at me - which is constantly, always, those dark eyes never straying far - I feel it like a touch.
By the time dessert is cleared, I’m wound so tight I might snap.
“Nova.”
I look up.
He’s standing. His napkin is on the table. His chair is pushed back.
“I’m going upstairs,” he says quietly. “You can follow me. Or you can go to your own room. Whatever you choose-” He pauses. “Whatever you choose, I’ll understand.”
He leaves.
I sit alone at the table, surrounded by the remnants of a meal I didn’t taste, and I think about choices.
For two years, I didn’t have any. My choices were made for me - by Dante, by Vivienne, by the gilded cage of Castellani expectations. I chose what to wear, what to eat, how to arrange my face. Everything else was decided by others.
But this-
This is mine.
He is mine, if I want him.
And God help me, I want him.
I push back from the table. Stand. Walk to the stairs.
My footsteps echo in the quiet house. The sconces flicker as I pass, casting dancing shadows on the stone walls. My heart is pounding. Not with fear, not anymore. With anticipation.
His door is closed.
I stop in front of it. Raise my hand to knock.
Then I remember what he said.
Come to me because you want to be there. Come to me because you’ve chosen me.
I don’t knock.
I open the door.
***
Luca
She’s here.
I knew she would be - felt it in my bones from the moment she watched me in the shower, from the moment I saw the want written plain across her face. She was always going to come to me tonight. The only question was whether I could hold myself together long enough to let her.
But knowing she would come and seeing her actually standing there are two different things.
She’s in the doorway, backlit by the corridor, wearing something soft and flowing that clings to curves I’ve been dreaming about for years. Her hair is down around her shoulders. Her feet are bare. Her eyes are huge and dark and fixed on me like I’m the only thing in the world.
“You came.”
“I came.”
She steps inside. Closes the door behind her. The click of the latch sounds obscenely loud in the silence.
“Are you sure?”
“If you ask me that one more time, I’m going to scream.”
Despite everything - the tension, the want, the way my entire body is straining toward her - I feel my lips twitch.
“That can be arranged.”
Her cheeks flush. “Luca-”
“Come here.”
She crosses the room. Slowly, like she’s savoring every step. I watch her approach, watch the way her nightgown moves against her body, watch the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing quickens.
When she’s close enough to touch, I don’t.
Not yet.
“I need to tell you something first,” I say.
Her brow furrows. “Now?”
“Yes. Now. Before this goes any further.” I take a breath. “I’m not a good man, Nova. I’ve told you that before, but I need you to really understand it. The things I’ve done, the things I’m still doing, they’re not things good men do.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
“I don’t.” She steps closer. Close enough that I can smell her - something floral, something sweet, something that’s just her.
“I don’t care what you’ve done or what you’re doing.
I don’t care about the business or the danger or whatever it is you think would scare me away.
I’ve survived Vivienne Castellani. Nothing you tell me is going to be worse than that. ”
“I killed a man once.”
She doesn’t flinch.
“He deserved it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t care about that either.”
Something cracks in my chest. Some last wall I didn’t know I was still holding up, some final barrier between me and the wanting that’s been eating me alive for three years.
“I’m going to ruin you,” I say, and my voice comes out rough. “I’m going to touch you and taste you and make you scream my name, and when I’m done, you’re never going to want anyone else. Do you understand that? Do you understand what you’re choosing?”
“Yes.”
“And you still want this?”
She reaches out. Takes my hand. Lifts it to her face and presses my palm against her cheek.
“I want this,” she whispers. “I want you. All of you. The good parts and the bad parts and everything in between.”
I’m moving before I can stop myself.
My hands find her waist. My mouth finds hers. And the first time I kiss Nova - the first time I finally, finally let myself have what I’ve been wanting for three years-
Everything else disappears.