CHAPTER 28
"The first time, you discover the other's body. The second time, you discover what you'll do with it for the rest of your life."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I wasn't sleeping.
Luca was. Face down, head turned toward me, his arm thrown across my waist. His breathing deep and long, in the way of a man who learned to sleep in the middle of a war and never unlearned it.
The tattoo on his back rose and fell with the rhythm of his breath. The Moretti family crest, above his kidneys, in black ink almost twenty-five years old.
I couldn't stop thinking about what Matteo had said.
Ask her who else used to go to Capri to visit me.
The day had already come and gone. Dinner had already come and gone without a single word about what my brother had told me. But three in the morning arrived, I stared at the ceiling, and cazzo, I wasn't going to sleep anymore.
I took a deep breath and touched his shoulder lightly.
"Luca." He woke. His black eyes opened with no start, no confusion. As if he'd only been waiting. "I need to tell you something."
He pushed himself up, hair mussed to one side, the scar on his eyebrow more exposed in the weak lamplight.
"Bella mia."
"In the cellar today. Matteo told me something I didn't tell you. He brought up Bianca. He said she used to visit him in Capri, but that she didn't tell me everything." I clutched the sheet between my fingers. "He told me to ask her who else used to go to Capri to visit him."
Luca went still.
I didn't see his jaw lock. I saw his hand—his right hand, resting on the sheet—close slowly into a fist. Then open again.
"Capisco."
"Do you know who?"
"I suspect."
"You're not going to tell me."
"I'm not." He sat up. His back, the tattoo, the shoulder with the old bullet scar. "Bella mia, not yet. I'll handle it."
Look at the man I'm marrying in four weeks, asking me to trust him with something that has his own brother's name attached to it.
"Va bene," I murmured.
"Brava."
He reached out and touched my face with his fingertips, slowly, from my chin to my temple.
"I trust you," I said.
"Lo so, bella mia."
He turned slightly, and his gaze went toward the dresser. The dagger was there. Bare blade, ivory handle gleaming in the yellow lamplight, forgotten since the afternoon.
He stretched his arm out without getting up and reached it, turning the handle between his fingers.
"Three hundred years, huh?"
"Three hundred."
"I asked you to leave it in the room."
"I did leave it."
"Brava twice today."
He smiled quietly. He set the dagger on his nightstand, beside the pistol that was always there.
Ivory handle next to steel.
"Luca. Come here."
He came.
Not in a hurry. With that calm of a man who knows he has the whole night, and who knows that I know it too. He laid me back slowly, his big hand under the nape of my neck, and held himself over me without weight, propped on his elbows.
"Bella mia."
"Sì."
He kissed me. It wasn't the kiss from his room after the attack, with blood on his shoulder and adrenaline in both of us. It was a different kiss, a kiss with time in it.
His hand moved down my neck, along my collarbone, found the string of pearls I'd forgotten to take off before bed.
"Take them off," I murmured.
"No. Leave them."
Madonna, I thought. Leave them.
He drew the strap of my nightgown down off my shoulder with the tip of his finger. He kissed where the strap had been, then the other shoulder, then the curve of my breast through the fabric, slowly, his mouth warm through the white silk.
A shiver ran down my spine.
"Sit up. I want to be on top."
He looked at me, and did exactly what I asked—sat back against the leather headboard and brought me up onto him by the hips. The nightgown rode up on its own; he pulled it off over my head in one motion and tossed it somewhere on the floor.
His shirt had been open since before. The muscles of his chest, the Latin words over his heart. I pressed my palm there, felt the ink under his skin.
"Bella mia."
"Wait."
I stayed like that for a few seconds. My hand open on his chest, my knees on either side of his hips, the pearls still at my neck, my hair falling forward.
Four weeks until I become this man's wife on paper. And tonight I'm already becoming his in another way.
I kissed the tattoo. Right over the letter M.
He let out a breath. It was a short sound, held back, but it was him letting go of his control.
His hand moved up my back, slowly, found the clasp of the pearl necklace, and closed around it without opening it.
"I told you to leave them," he murmured.
"You did."
He pulled me down. Mouth on my mouth, with more weight now, with more hunger. His hands moved down my waist, found the curve of my hips, and settled me against him.
I swallowed hard. When he was inside me, I closed my eyes.
It didn't hurt. The first time it had hurt a little at the start.
Not tonight. Tonight my body remembered.
I moved over him slowly. He let me take the lead, his hands open on my waist, not pulling, not rushing. Only his black eyes fixed on mine, and his breathing going shallower minute by minute.
"Brava," he whispered.
That man was going to destroy me.
That man had already destroyed me.
I leaned forward, pressed my forehead to his. My hair fell around my face, making a black curtain. The pearls knocked against his chest.
"Luca."
"Sì."
"I love you."
I hadn't planned it. It just came out.
He stopped for a second, just one. His hands tightened on my waist, his black eyes locked on mine.
"Bella mia."
"Don't answer now." I kissed his mouth lightly. "Answer later."
"I'll answer now."
"No."
He laughed. A real laugh, inside the kiss, and pulled my hip harder against his.
"Va bene. Later."
I moved again. He moved with me now, no longer letting me do it alone. His hands had come up—one at the nape of my neck, in my hair, holding; the other braced at my waist.
When I came, it was with his forehead against mine, his name leaving my mouth in a half whisper.
I felt my legs go weak even sitting, felt the air leave me all at once.
He held me, waited for me to catch my breath, then turned me over.
Him on top now. In a hurry, finally, his mouth buried in my neck, his hips hard against mine.
I wrapped my legs around his back. I felt the tattoo on his back under my hands.
Time went on, and a few minutes later he came against my neck, his mouth to my skin, without making a sound. Just his whole body locking once, and then letting go.
I stayed on top of him afterward.
My ear to his chest, right over the letter M of the Latin tattoo. His heart coming down from eighty-something beats to fifty. His hand moving up and down at the base of my back, slowly, at the rhythm of a man who was no longer in a hurry about anything.
"Four weeks, bella mia," he murmured.
"Four."
The window was open. Somewhere in Posillipo, down below the hill, a dog barked once and went quiet.
"Luca, your tattoo, when did you get it?"
"Nineteen. At my mother's funeral."
"I know." I pressed my hand against his chest. "But I wanted to hear it tonight."
He was quiet for a second.
"I swore to her I'd never be the kind of man she hated in my father," he said, low. "That I'd kill before I dishonored anyone who was mine."
I felt a knot in my throat.
"I'm yours."
"Lo so, bella mia."
His fingers kept moving up and down my back, making me close my eyes.
Four weeks until I marry this man.
Four weeks until I become his wife in the eyes of the world.
Four weeks, and I already can't remember what it was like to belong only to myself.