Chapter 16 #2
“Are you going to answer or just stare at me?” His brow arched, the corner of his mouth quirking in not quite a smile.
That wasn’t what kept me mesmerized. It was his voice again, warm and soothing, as though his fingers stroked my cheek.
Lust flooded my veins, settling into a beat between my thighs—another sensation only he could satisfy.
“I’m going to stare.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I like what I see.”
His jaw clenched, a tendon clamping as tight as his fist. “What do you want me to say, Vivi?”
“The truth is all I’ve ever wanted from you.”
“Seems so simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
He hung his head, grabbing the back of his neck. I thought he’d retreat. Run as one of us always did, but instead he inhaled deeply.
“I see you,” he said in a low tone, but with so much conviction that it drowned out any residual animosity from our earlier encounter. “You’re all I ever see when my eyes are open or closed.”
He lowered his hand and looked at me with an endless, captivating blue. The scratch of flint and a flicker of promise. A bright flame in the eye of an addict who needed one more hit.
He wanted me.
My heart stuttered on the next beat.
“But what good does the truth do when it means nothing?” Agony flashed through his gaze. “When I have nothing? When I am nothing but the hired help. I’m no one.”
A ghost.
The words split my chest in two, sorrow bleeding from the wound and pooling at his feet.
I love you, I wanted to shout at him and into the rafters of this godforsaken house.
I had loved Luca since that night under the stars, but circumstances conspired against us.
He, the good mafia soldier. Me, the king’s daughter and his prized bargaining chip.
But Luca’s confession was the beginning of a new end.
I felt it in my bones like a change to my DNA that cemented what I’d known for years. I would fight for him.
“You’re someone to me. Doesn’t that matter at all?” I asked.
“Not to Vigo Cabello.”
I rolled over, the room spinning as I went, but I was on my feet, standing in front of Luca and the torment in his eyes. “I’m not talking about him. This is between you and me. Just the truth. A long time ago, you—”
Whispered in my ear.
“I’m embarrassed that I—”
Touched myself while you watched.
“That I—”
Came so hard that the stars exploded.
“And—”
You never even laid a hand on me.
“Say something,” I breathed and waited.
Heartbeats pounded away without a response.
His jaw ticked.
A flash of uncertainty lit his gaze.
“Don’t leave,” I begged, desperate to keep him with me for even a minute more. So desperate, I’d settle for breadcrumbs of information. “Tell me something. Tell me about you. Anything. Just don’t go.”
I was hyper aware of his every move. His hand as it inched toward my hip and when it fell to his side without making contact. The rise and fall of his chest, every inhale, and the warm exhale of his breath. His lips and the melody that beat against my rib cage when they parted.
“Close your eyes,” he demanded in a low tone.
I shook my head. “I like looking at you.”
His mouth curled in that sad attempt at a smile, almost as if he didn’t understand the true emotion behind the act. “I won’t disappear.”
“Promise me.”
He crossed his heart, and mine exploded. “Prometto.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
“Because I only keep the promises I make to you. Now close your eyes.”
I did as he commanded and then waited. I waited what felt like a hundred years, inhaling the sun and man, overcome by his presence and his scent that grew stronger. So did the warmth of his breath by my ear. My hand flew to his cheek, my thumb was on his scar, and my palm held him in place.
Mio Dio.
I craved intimacy. I craved human contact so badly that the heat from his body ignited a fire in my own.
I’d never been kissed. I’d never come close to sweaty, desperate sex, but I prayed for it nightly.
I prayed for love. I needed both, like my next breath, which stuttered through my lungs.
But it wasn’t his touch that soothed my craving; it was his history.
“When I was only days old, my mother left me at a church. Abandoned at birth with nothing but a ring and a name.” His tone was soft, but emotion I’d never heard from him clouded his voice. Was it pain or betrayal? I settled on a mixture of both.
“God abandoned me then too—”
“What? No—”
He pinched my side, and I yelped. “Hush. This is my story. Are you ready to listen?”
I nodded, though his confession left me antsy.
“A janitor at the cathedral, Roman, found me. A baby he called a miracle for his wife, who couldn’t have children.
I don’t know that she felt the same.” A lump moved down his throat, but he continued before I could ask why.
“The Riccis lived simply. We had little money, so I worked to help with bills. I stayed even after Anna died, but I needed something different. That’s when I joined the Navy.
The SEALs taught me a lot, most importantly that I was good with a gun. ”
I held my breath, hanging on every sentence as Luca told me about his years of service.
People he saved. Men he killed. Every word gutted and reshaped my insides.
The wall I had built to protect myself crumbled around our feet until all I saw was Luca in uniform.
Luca at war. Luca with blood on his hands and a broken heart barely pounding in his chest.
“Things changed when Justin died. The team disbanded. I left the service and was homeless again. I had no idea what to do with the rest of my life when my only skills involved a 339 and an eye for accuracy. Dami stuck with me, making sure I didn’t spend too much time drinking in bars and strip joints.
Then one night, we met a guy. A Cabello guy who offered us a job, and that, uccello, is what brought me here. ”
I held him tighter. “To me.”
He sighed. “If we’d met at another time, in another place, then sì.”
“Where?”
“California.”
“Why there?” I asked.
“Because it’s far away from here.”
I swallowed, rocking onto my heels as his fingers slid down the column of my throat. A rough sound of approval rumbled out of him when the pad of this thumb hovered over my thundering pulse. Then his touch slipped to trace the line of my collarbone and down the chain of my necklace.
“Wine country,” he whispered.
“What?”
“California, uccello. Wine country, in the valley of the mountain.”
Oh. “That’s where you’d live.”
“That’s where we would live.”
“We,” I murmured, completely intoxicated by his proximity and his fingers searing a path along the deep line of my cleavage.
The image of an aisle formed in my mind. Luca waited at the end with his intense stare focused on me as I walked to meet him with a bouquet fisted in my hands. A future I had only dreamed of.
A rush of cool air hit my skin, bursting the bright bubble as he pulled away. My eyes popped open to find him studying the charm at the end of my chain. His pupils bled black into the blue while he flipped the medallion over in his palm.
“What is this?” he asked, his voice dark and low.
“Saint Michael,” I said, a chill racing up my spine even though the fire in the hearth and Luca burned hot. “The champion of justice and a gift from my mother.”
His gaze flew to mine. “When did she give it to you?”
“The night we met. My eighteenth birthday.”
He dropped the charm as if it were a live grenade and fell backward three feet.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why?” He pointed to the medallion now resting in my cleavage.
“Why what?”
“Why did she give you that specifically?”
I shrugged, remembering the night she clasped it around my neck. Her words, God’s plan, and a savior from the sinners. “As a symbol of protection, I guess. Like a promise that I’d have some kind of guardian angel until I’m free from Stefano and my father. Hope.”
“Hope.” He wiped the word from his mouth as if it were blasphemy. “Jesus Christ, she was insane. She started this. She made you believe monsters and deities are one and the same, when you should fear them both. Such a fool.”
“Stai zitto!” I snapped. “You didn’t know Mama. You don’t know anything about her—”
“Goddamn it, Vivienne. I know some mythical creature isn’t your savior.”
“You’re right! You are.”
The room fell silent but for his heaving breath. A terrifying darkness hooded his eyes, and he stepped forward. On instinct, I fumbled backward, steadying myself when my legs ran into the couch. My neck tipped back, and he caught my chin between his thumb and finger.
“Do you believe that?” he asked.
I blinked, my heart thundering.
“Answer me,” he insisted.
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes. As the seconds passed, tension eased out of his muscles, and the air around him lost the stranglehold it had on my lungs. His hand dropped while he retreated once more.
“Vivienne,” he said my name as if it was a knife plunging into his back.
“Why does it hurt you so much to care about me?” I pressed, stepping forward.
“Because I’m…”
“What are you? A monster? I am not afraid,” I insisted, inching closer.
With each step, the collar of my sweatshirt slipped, exposing my shoulder and the rounded slope of my breast. He never looked.
He never touched me the way I wanted him to.
But his gaze was stuck to mine, torment lapping like flames in the deep blue, and I knew he felt something.
Something hot.
Something wild and barely controlled.
Something that triggered my own recklessness.
“I’m not afraid of my father or Stefano or any other man in the Cosa Nostra,” I whispered while approaching him, stopping when we were inches apart.
Years ago, guards claimed that Luca was a ghost, a shell of a man without feeling.
An apparition my mind had conjured tonight from the copious amount of wine I consumed.
Yet his presence overwhelmed my senses, permeated my skin, flowed through my veins, and filled my bones.
He was so real, at least to me, and to prove it, I placed my palm against his chest. Against his heart, the frantic beat beneath my palm.
With my free hand, I caught his neck and pulled myself up and onto his feet. He tensed, holding as still as a statue, while I rose onto my toes to reach his ear.
“The only thing that scares me,” I whispered, my breath hitting his neck.
“Is never knowing you in the way a woman knows a man. I’m afraid I’ll never feel your hands against my bare skin.
I’m so afraid I’ll never truly live, because you’re the only man to make me come alive, and you keep walking away. That is the honest-to-God truth.”
Waiting for his answer slowed the blood in my veins.
It gave me time to contemplate what it would feel like to have his weight pressing me into a mattress and how his hips would spread mine apart.
A throb detonated at the apex of my thighs.
Seconds passed into a pulsing minute, eating away the oxygen in the room.
But he didn’t move. He didn’t pull away.
Hope exploded inside my chest. The longer he stayed, the more I believed he was exactly where he was meant to be.
With me. It was confirmed when his hands found my waist.
Mio Dio. I melted against him, clawing my fingers into his hair. His low hum of appreciation urged me closer.
“I can’t promise you a future, Vivienne,” he whispered.
I held on tighter. “But can you promise me rough hands and dirty words?”
A dry sound of amusement scraped his throat, and I swear his half smile pressed into my hair. “You just want to get laid.”
“Among other things, yes.”
“Tell me.”
My mouth opened.
A knock wrapped on my door.
“Mancini,” Dami called.
We burst apart as two men rushed into my apartment.
Damian shot me a harsh glare, then blinked his vision to Luca.
My heart thump, thump, thumped, but I didn’t stick around to learn what prompted the interruption.
Luca didn’t stop me. He didn’t do anything that night, but I was convinced the truth would set us free.
From then on, I’d push him with honesty.
If I felt something, if I thought it, he would know.
It was only fair after I bared my soul. Without a doubt, he was the only man I would ever love, and I promised myself I’d make him want me with the same raw ache consuming my soul.
By the end of this, he’d burn with me, or for me—of that, I was certain.