Chapter 19
Vivi
The television screen flickered. Thunder bellowed, shaking through the walls. I threw my comforter over my head to dull the lightning flashes sure to follow. But the feather down didn’t mute my imagination or the sudden burst of panic bleeding through my veins.
Pop, pop.
Bullets and blood.
Mama’s eyes and a cold sheen of sweat on my skin.
I threw off the covers and slid to the side of the bed while raindrops tap, tap, tapped onto the windowpane. A shiver ghosted over my shoulders while I stood. As soon as I was on my feet, rain sliced through the sky in a deluge, hammering the glass in a constant barrage. I flipped on my lamp.
“Breathe, Vivi,” I said to myself, racing to flick on the overhead light.
Relief smothered some of the anxiety as my room lit into a bright glow.
“It’s just a storm. You like storms. You used to like storms before…
” I swallowed, shaking my head so my thoughts wouldn’t track back to the mission.
Too late. “Rain, rain, go away. Come back—”
A loud clack stopped my heart. Lightning zigzagged from the sky, bursting into a halo of sparks when it hit the ground. A second zap followed, brighter than the first. The bulbs crackled and died, smothering me in darkness.
Mio Dio.
I squeezed my eyes closed, waiting for the generators to kick in.
Any minute. One, two… I counted the seconds, holding myself together with my arms wrapped around my chest and a T-shirt that didn’t belong to me.
Technically, it must be mine now because I wasn’t giving it back to its rightful owner, who slept in the room just inches away.
Somehow his beloved Navy tee landed in my pile for the wash, but it never made it through a cycle.
Oh, God, I was a fool. I was such an idiot, but I couldn’t help myself from stuffing my nose into the cotton.
It smelled like the sun. Like fresh air and man—the only one who ever made my pulse explode.
Like now, but this was different. This was wrong.
This was a storm like the last one I lived through when my mother did not.
What was left of my nerves unraveled, and I covered my ears, waiting for the next blast.
Electricity zipped. The lights sputtered on. Boom. I jumped. A flash lit up the rolling, angry clouds, and then I was pitched into darkness once again. Wind howled and gusted, muffled shouts biting into the silence. Men rushed across the lawn and through the pelting rain.
No.
Stark terror shook my knees, and I almost crumbled, but I didn’t want to die alone. I turned, running to the door, throwing it open, and stopping midstep when a larger-than-life Luca shadow blocked my escape. A scream stuck in my throat.
“Uccello, che c’è?”
What’s wrong?
“Tutto quanto.” Everything.
I lunged at mio salvatore. He caught me with a grunt, having no choice but to hold on because I clung to him like a spider monkey, and I wasn’t letting go.
His fingers threaded through my hair, and it didn’t seem as if he was frantic to set me aside and protect anyone from the shady figures racing across the yard.
“They’re coming,” I managed to squeak, clenching my legs around his waist even tighter.
“Who’s that?” he asked, his other hand running up and down my spine.
“An army. Outside.”
I tucked my nose into his neck. Bad idea.
He was like a drug. One good sniff, and I was high as a kite and lacking inhibitions.
That’s why I circled my hips a fraction, just to feel the rioting pulse move from my throat to the central region between my thighs.
The thin slip of my underwear was the only barrier between his body and mine.
This. This right here was how I wanted to die, so I rolled against him again.
His hand slid to my side, and he pinched.
“Those are my men,” he said through my yelp and while moving into my room.
“Your men?”
“Sì. They take direction from me, so they’re mine. There’s nothing to worry about, il mio uccellino. The generators blew from a power surge. They’re working on the repairs.”
He sat on the side of my bed, all calm and cool, when I was anything but.
“That’s all?”
“Mm-hm, that’s all.”
His tone was low, his fingers lower and right by my ass in my prim white cotton panties.
Oh. I froze, holding my breath as he played with the hem of my—his—T-shirt, and then he slipped his hand under the fabric to my skin, skin, and more smooth skin.
“Luca,” I breathed his name, and it was like a dirty prayer on a warm, sweaty night. Needy. I heard the longing in my voice, and if I did, then he did too.
His Adam’s apple bobbed by my nose, but he kept on with the sweeping motion. Up and down, he soothed the terror from my limbs, and I relaxed, allowing my body to mold into his. The dark was not so terrifying with Luca hot and hard beneath me. He was all muscle, and… I gulped, more skin.
Merda. I really was an idiot, reading into his swaying hand as anything but a soothing gesture. He would never tempt me like this. Not Mr. Five Years of Silence. Master of Control Mancini. Mr. I Can’t Touch You So The Wind Will Have To.
But in the dead of night, with the storm raging outside and inhibitions loose, I could take liberties. In the morning, he’d see a blush sear my cheeks while I sipped my latte and remembered how good we really did fit together.
“You’re almost naked,” I murmured into his neck.
Amusement rumbled through his chest. “Because you stole my shirt.”
He tugged on the cotton. I toyed with the short hair at his nape, scraping my chin along the scruff of his jaw. “If it’s in my laundry basket, then it must be mine.”
He scoffed. “Is that how it works?”
“Sì. Just like the soldiers. If someone takes your direction, then they must belong to you. Isn’t that right?”
I prodded against the theory I wanted to test.
“Hmm.”
His noncommittal response didn’t deter me from leaning back.
My ass settled onto his legs as I straddled him.
I thought of this position often, but reality was so much better than fantasy.
My arms remained looped around his neck, and for a minute, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Then again, maybe I was dreaming, and it’d be a wet one if I was lucky.
Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed Luca into a bronzed statue with high cheekbones and full lips.
I longed to touch his scar, and I moved to do so, but he caught my hand before I could.
His eyes slid down my heaving chest, lower to the junction between my thighs.
The heat of his stare was as solid as if he touched me, brushing his finger over my clit.
A heavy ache blossomed in my core, and my hips rolled on their own, seeking friction. Something. Anything to relieve the throbbing need. As I inched forward, everything dark and forbidden flashed in his eyes. His hand clamped onto my ass, holding me still.
“Is this what a good Catholic girl does, Vivienne?” His voice was black silk, soft and smooth.
I glanced at the rosary beads on my nightstand. How many times had I prayed for this exact moment? I wanted this. I wanted him so badly that the blood in my veins simmered hot. My gaze flew back to his and stuck with the hard thump of my heart.
“God allows good girls to go bad,” I murmured. “For the right man.”
Rain pelted the window. One of Luca’s men shouted. But the storm and the army outside were lost to the jagged sounds of our breath and his frustrated growl.
“And you think that’s me?”
“Why don’t we find out?” I added, shifting my hips.
He fisted my hair, tugging and exposing my neck and chest. His eyes slid down, dropping to stare between my legs, where the ache erupted.
“If I slipped my fingers under these prissy little panties, how wet would you be?” he asked through his teeth.
“Like the ocean. One of God’s greatest wonders.”
His nose pressed into my rioting pulse, and then he dragged it over to the sensitive skin beneath my ear.
“When I touch you, you’ll call my name. Do you understand, uccello? You’ll beg me to let you come, and when you see heaven, you’ll think I’m God. I’ll be your god.”
I rolled my hips and pulled back to find his eyes dark as night and flashing like the storm. “Do it now, per favore.”
“Careful what you beg for.”
“Why?”
“You’re playing with fire.”
I smiled through the truth. “But you would never burn me.”
He rolled us over so fast, a squeak got lost in my throat.
When I blinked him into focus, he hovered over me.
Hair slashed across his forehead, but it was his hips lying hot and heavy between mine that spiked my pulse so high that I gasped.
Then I squirmed. I writhed and wiggled for friction with my wrists bound above my head.
Pleasure erupted inside me with such force, I arched beneath him and groaned.
Wicked, wild images flashed in my mind like a strobe light.
Hips pumping.
Ass clenching.
Muscles rippling.
My God, his dick was hard and long and thick, and I felt every inch of my damnation grow even harder.
My breath came in a heaving wave, drawing his gaze to my breasts and pebbled nipples poking against his shirt.
His mouth parted, the tip of his tongue glancing over his bottom lip as if he wanted to taste me there.
Lust exploded in my veins, centering my heartbeat in my core.
“Let go,” I whispered, tugging one hand free to trace the line on his face. I could find his scar if I was blindfolded. Over the years, I’d memorized every curve and jagged edge, and somehow, I thought my touch would soothe the memory of whatever pain lingered.
A rasping sound rolled through him as if he agreed.
“Mio salvatore,” I whispered.
He blinked up to my mouth and stared for a second that dragged into three; then his eyes pinched shut, and I knew this was over.