Chapter 25
Vivi
I HAD ONE regret, and that was Luca finding me curled into a ball, with a coward’s cry scraping my throat after the final kick to my head.
Every inhale shattered my lungs into sharp edges.
Pain sliced through my body, but I refused to emit another sound.
Stefano and Vigo wouldn’t get the satisfaction.
Darkness hovered at the corner of my vision, muting the intricate pattern on the Persian rug—stained by my blood and Stefano’s spittle.
The disgusting fiend. He enjoyed beating the truth out of me, so much so that he followed everything I said with another strike just to make sure I’d given it to him.
But I didn’t, and neither did Luca. An agonizing smirk pulled on my split lip when he confirmed exactly what I’d already explained to Vigo.
I was never alone. Somehow, Luca knew that was an important clarification.
“Very well,” my father said, sick satisfaction coiling around the words. “We agree on our next move.”
Luca stepped in front of me, coming chest-to-chest and eye-to-eye with Stefano. The two traded sneers, but Luca’s was too fierce, and my brother scurried away after my father. The coward. I forgot about him when Luca’s soothing touch rolled me onto my back.
Broad shoulders. Full lips. Dark blue flames.
“Mio salvatore,” I whispered, lifting a shaking hand to trace his scar.
Fire burned through his gaze, but then it iced over when he took in my injuries.
I bit my tongue, holding in every new agony that made itself known under his examination.
I didn’t want to move, but my greatest desire was to leave.
“Help me—” I meant to add “stand,” but I lost the word to a sharp breath.
“Vivienne.” Every syllable of my name was filled with anguish.
“I’m fine.”
He groaned, checking again for broken bones—ribs this time. I shuddered when his fingers brushed the underside of my breast. I did it again when his touch disappeared.
“Don’t stop now,” I mumbled. “I’ve waited five years for you to feel me up.
” I meant it as a joke, to release some of the tension in his jaw.
Dante chuckled. Luca turned to stone. An angry statue with a dark, heated gaze that grew darker as it touched every inch of my skin, categorizing my welts.
Mio Dio. I kept my mouth shut; afraid he’d have a stroke.
That was for the best. Speaking hurt. Everything hurt.
“Take her,” Dante said. “I’ll bring Doc Straus to her room.”
Luca scooped me up. I was cradled and held so gently that it was easy to imagine his affection for a lifetime. So, I let myself dream as darkness consumed my world.
?
I WAS LOST to the devil when all I wanted was my angel. I shouted my dissent. Then I fought the fiend, hitting and kicking until my limbs grew heavy and weak.
“You can’t have me or my secrets,” I screamed, using the last of my strength to lash out.
His head whipped to the side before turning back toward me, a slow glide that brought his diamond eyes into focus. So blue, they were almost white. The Cabello blue. “You’ll give me both,” he insisted through his teeth.
I grunted, jerked out of his hold, and raised my hand. He caught my wrist. We wrestled. I twisted and squirmed as his weight settled over me, both of my arms pinned to the sheets above my head.
“Let me go!” I demanded, writhing beneath this monster.
“Say, please.”
“I’ll never beg you.”
“Oh, little bird. I hope that’s not true.”
The fight left me with a rush of breath. My heart pounded in my ears. I blinked the scene into crisp, beautiful detail.
Broad shoulders. Sharp jaw. Jagged scar.
“Luca,” I breathed.
The smile spreading into his cheeks stole the oxygen from the room. I tugged my hands free and hugged him tight while I inhaled the sun, fresh air, and man.
“Uccello.” He pressed his nose into my neck, groaning low in his throat. Then his arms were around me too, his bare chest pressed to mine, leaving a thin cotton T-shirt as the only barrier between us. My skin burned under the heat of his body.
His heartbeat thrummed in a perfect melody to my own.
Proof that no one else in this world would ever make my heart sing the way that Luca did.
I petted the smooth expanse of his shoulders and back, reveling in the flex of muscle beneath my touch.
He held on incrementally tighter—just a smidge—and we stayed in the embrace for an eternity I never wanted to end. It did with his sigh.
He pulled away until our eyes met. “How do you feel?”
Aches and pains flared all over. A bright sting flashed in my lips, mostly because he stared as if he’d like to lick them.
Maybe he preferred to bite, and a little thrill zipped through the discomfort.
One day I hoped to learn how he kissed, but right then, the crushing soreness throughout my body couldn’t be ignored.
“Like I was hit by a bus,” I confessed.
He pushed up with a grunt. Real, dangerous anger vibrated through him as he flipped his legs over the side of the bed, placing one hand next to my hip to brace himself above me. He used his free hand to scrub his face. “Kind of accurate. The bastard didn’t leave a spot untouched.”
The moon struggled to shine through a blanket of clouds, leaving my room fairly dark. Though a beam of light from the cracked bathroom door cast a halo around his tense body.
“I’m okay.” I caressed his taut triceps and the indent it created, as if I had a right to do so.
That same rough sound caught in his throat. “Are you, though? It’s been four days, Vivienne. Four blistering days of fever and fight with moments I didn’t think you’d ever wake.”
“What?” Shock stunned the breath out of me. “How is that possible? Do I have a concussion?” I touched my scalp and yelped when my finger made contact.
He growled, pushing my hand to the sheets. “Stitches. A hell of a lot of them too. Stefano’s boot did a number on your head, and it got infected. Doc Straus had to give you IV antibiotics because I couldn’t get pills down your throat, or food for that matter.”
I glanced at my right arm and the white bandage wrapped around it.
“Scared the life out of me,” he grumbled, and my heart swelled. I reached up and hooked a finger under his chin to bring his eyes back to mine, an aching blue.
“When I do sleep, it’s like the dead. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.” He stood, and I didn’t like the distance or the hands in his hair, as if he was trying to pull it out.
I did, however, 100 percent appreciate the pajama pants hanging on for dear life over the swell of his ass.
His chest and abs too; the tight definition was a veritable stepladder I wished I could climb or descend.
Before I could decide, he stopped to face me, changing my view to the killer smirk that stalled my heart.
I wouldn’t recover after all. “Father Musa and Sam are out of their minds. It was harder to keep them away than to fight you off.”
“Fight me off?” I sat up, regretting it when the world swam before my eyes. Holding my forehead, I demanded clarification. “What are you talking about? I was sleeping. Sleeping people are docile.”
“Not you, slayer. Expert right hook, you’ve got there. Who taught you how to punch?” He moved his clean-shaven jaw around, as if making sure it still worked. I missed his dark whiskers, but I caught his reference.
“Dante, but I didn’t. I would never hit you.”
“You did. Quite a few times, actually.”
I fell to my pillow with a groan. “I’m doubly sorry. Are you injured?”
The bed dipped. Then he loomed over me again. “A little bird can’t hurt a wolf,” he said, not looking as confident as his tone indicated. I really scared him.
I cupped his cheek, my thumb rolling over his bottom lip. “And you’re a wolf?”
He nodded, easing more weight into my palm. “Spelled with an e. It’s my middle name.”
A rose bloomed inside my chest, and I was warm like the sun beaming down on a hot summer day.
His gaze dropped to my lips again, then a tremor shook his shoulders, and he moved, tugging the signet ring from his pinky.
He held it up in the limited light so I could see the etched lines on the underside.
A wolf was surrounded by intricate scrolls.
“It was left with me at the church. I was never a Ricci.”
“Always Luca Wolfe Mancini,” I confirmed.
“Wolfe White Russian.”
“Whisky Sour Wolfe.”
The smile was back, and I wanted to cry or kiss him—definitely both. Instead, I gave him my own grin, regretting it when a scab pulled taut, and I winced. His finger found the wound, brushing it until the sting moved between my legs.
“We have a lot to talk about.”
I’d never recover from his voice, which was deeper and rougher than normal.
It gave me ideas that didn’t involve speaking unless it was dirty talk, but my heavy eyelids said I didn’t have the time to give him all of me right then.
And beyond the topic of us, there was an important matter I had to mention.
The cameras were gone, but I didn’t really believe anything in this house of lies, so I pulled Luca to where his ear met my mouth.
“At the restaurant, the man who took me hauled me to the cooler and shoved a gun in my mouth. The other soldier, the one you found, pulled him off me and said I wasn’t to be injured.
They argued, and I couldn’t hear everything they said, but there was a name. ”
I paused. Luca’s breath was hot on my neck, his nose trailing along my jaw. If anyone watched, they would’ve seen a pair of lovers embracing, teasing each other with lips and words.
“What was it?” he asked, stopping at my rioting pulse. His mouth pressed down, moving the beat to my core.
“Luca,” I breathed.
He chuckled, flicking his tongue along the line of skin I opened for him by stretching. “The name, Vivienne.”
“Oh. Catarina.”
He jerked up, his eyes meeting mine. “Vigo’s first wife?”