Chapter 27
Bastian knew there was a reason he couldn’t shake Salvador’s warning. He had tried to get De Luca to open up, but now his secret was laid bare, and he looked like he’d been struck across the jaw.
“It’s not what you think,” De Luca said, stepping closer.
“You could have told me you had a boyfriend.” Bastian tried to keep it light. “He’s cute. I can see the appeal.”
“Bastian—”
“Look, love, it’s no big deal. Monogamy isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. I don’t mind sharing. It would’ve been nice to not have been kept in the dark, though.”
And you wouldn’t have wanted to share De Luca.
You want him all to yourself.
“Just listen—” De Luca said, voice low, like he was afraid to wake up his boyfriend.
“You don’t have to worry, De Luca. It’s perfectly fine if you—”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” De Luca had grabbed Bastian’s wrist, and the contact silenced him.
De Luca’s blue eyes shone in the dark as he said, “He’s my brother.”
Bastian frowned. “Brother?”
He looked at the man in the bed, taking in the black hair and high cheekbones. His eyes were closed, but what if, under the lids, they were the same blue as De Luca’s?
“You have a brother?”
“He’s been ill for—” De Luca broke off as the man in the bed groaned. “Not in here.”
He pulled Bastian into the room opposite.
He shut the door and left the lights off, walking over to a neatly made bed, his back to Bastian.
He looked better than he did earlier. The shock of the vampire attack had worn off and his injury seemed to cause him only minor discomfort.
Bastian remained by the door, stunned silent.
“Enzo’s been ill since he was a teenager. He used to be able to leave the house, but he’s gotten worse in the past couple of years. He’s bedbound now. He never leaves his room.”
“How terrible,” Bastian said. His chest was tight. He stared at the back of De Luca’s neck, wanting to reach for him, but he sensed that De Luca would close up if he did that.
“What’s…” Bastian began to ask.
“He has a rare blood condition. His blood is poisoning him. The doctor says he only has another year or two left.”
“I’m so sorry.”
De Luca sat on the edge of the bed. “Mum looked after him most of the time, but then she died, and Enzo became my responsibility.”
“That’s a lot to take on,” Bastian said.
“I have Rosa, at least. She’s a nurse who comes in most days to look after Enzo when I’m on shift. That’s who I was talking to on the phone earlier, in your kitchen.”
Bastian firmed his mouth to stop from speaking, because it made sense, now, why De Luca was the way that he was. Why his default position was “serious.” Why he had trouble letting go. Why he had no time for fun. De Luca’s life was all about duty.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” De Luca said, his eyes bright in the gloom. “I didn’t know where to begin.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. You’re a wonderful poliziotto, De Luca, and an even more wonderful sibling, I’m sure.”
De Luca straightened the bedsheet, which had already looked neatly tucked in to Bastian.
“I’m no angel,” he said quietly. “I spent a lot of time angry. I wanted to leave Vernazza. There was nothing for me here, but Mum needed my help looking after Enzo, and then she died…. I wasn’t a very nice person for a while.
Enzo’s the one who wanted to be commissario one day.
He’s just like my dad. But the force wouldn’t take him, not with his condition.
Enzo took it poorly and…well, I suppose I wanted to do it for him.
I joined the police force to make up for the fact that he couldn’t. ”
De Luca looked at him, then the door. Bastian’s heart swelled. But he could see the heaviness of this duty, how it weighed on De Luca. He could also see the remnants of that anger in the way De Luca sat on the edge of the bed, tense and stiff. And he knew that feeling better than any other.
“Sometimes anger keeps us alive,” Bastian said. “Keeps us going when we have nothing else.”
“Yeah, well.” De Luca squeezed the bedsheet. “It didn’t even work out how I wanted. Arianna hates me. She thinks I should be spending all my time with Enzo instead of working.”
“The gelato girl? Why does her opinion matter?”
De Luca sighed. “She’s Enzo’s fiancée. Or, she was.
They got engaged in high school. When Enzo’s health deteriorated, Arianna wanted to move in and look after him.
I told her that wasn’t necessary. I was still grieving Mum and, well, Arianna didn’t react well.
She barely talks to me anymore and she only visits Enzo when I’m not here. ”
“That’s something of an extreme reaction.”
“That’s Arianna.”
Bastian gave a small chuckle. “I guess it is.”
His smile slipped as he realized the scent of De Luca was overpowering in there. It was all over the room, infusing the air with his delicious aroma.
Curiosity moved Bastian’s hand to a lamp resting on a chest of drawers, and when the light flicked on, he looked around in wonder.
Guitars hung over the bed. An electric piano sat in front of the window. One wall was covered in CDs, and Bastian saw that they were meticulously alphabetized. He recognized the spines—A Flock of Seagulls, Bronski Beat, Cocteau Twins…
“Is this your room?” Bastian asked, even though the answer was obvious.
De Luca’s ears flushed, the most endearing kind of confirmation.
“I didn’t know you played,” Bastian said, nodding at the instruments.
“I haven’t in a while.”
“Play something now?”
De Luca’s hands knotted together and he ignored the request. “I’m sorry for keeping Enzo from you. It’s just difficult to talk about him sometimes.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“You’ve been so open with me from the start, and I’ve told you nothing.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Bastian said, voice soft. At De Luca’s questioning gaze, he added, “I know what it’s like to live with guilt. With anger. It follows me around every day.” He arched an eyebrow. “You’ve met Whitby.”
“I have, but what does that have to do with anything?”
Bastian ran a hand through his hair, his fingers trembling. “She’s the last person I killed.”
De Luca slowly straightened. “I don’t follow.”
“Five years ago, I was just like the mayor’s husband.
A little less crazed, perhaps, but I allowed the hunger to control me.
And I was so angry. All those years I spent being called a monster by the people back home, it left a mark on me.
When I was turned and became an actual monster, I found an outlet for that anger.
A way to punish people who would judge and condemn me.
I hunted the kind of people who made me feel small and broken, and I made them feel small and broken. I killed a lot of people.”
He bowed his head. “One night, I was so angry, I was half mad. I attacked the woman who lived in the flat next door. She had invited me in once before, when she was new to the building and needed help moving in her possessions, and I had left her alone since, perhaps on some level sensing that she could be a problem. But that night, I forced my way inside and I fed on her. When I was done, I passed out. When I woke up a few hours later, the woman’s cat started screaming at me. ”
Bastian could see that he had lost De Luca.
“She was a witch, love. The woman I killed was a witch, and the cat was her familiar. The witch—Whitby—must have known she was about to die. With her final breaths, she cast a spell. She cast her soul out of her body, and into the cat. A magical survival mechanism, I suppose.”
De Luca ran his hand over his face. “That’s…I didn’t…”
“It’s a mindfuck, I know.”
“Actually, it explains a lot,” De Luca said. “But if you did that to her, why doesn’t she hate you? Why are you on holiday together?”
Bastian chuckled. “Hate requires fuel, and Whitby had plenty of it for a long time. When she magicked herself into the cat, she also cast a spell that trapped us in her apartment. Sealed us inside. I couldn’t get out no matter what I did.
We fought and screamed for weeks. I even tried to feed on her again, but she was too nimble for me.
Eventually, I grew so weak from the lack of blood, I couldn’t speak. All I could do was listen.”
He swallowed, shame shuddering in his rib cage as he remembered that time.
“I experienced something I never had before. Guilt. It consumed me. Whitby cried and raged for months. Before Whitby, I killed without remorse because, for the first time, I was strong—something to fear for all the right reasons, rather than the wrong. Before Whitby, none of my victims could tell me how it felt when I attacked them. What it was like when life bled from their body. What I had taken from them.”
Bastian stroked his neck. “Whitby took advantage of my weakened state. She hunted mice and fed them to me, kept me just lucid enough to hold a conversation, and I found myself opening up to her. She helped me process all those years of pain and resentment, and as angry as she was with me, I believe she began to understand me. We began to understand each other. She told me about her life as a witch, the wretched family she had fled when she moved to London, the girlfriends who came and went over the years. She told me all about the life I had taken from her, and I pledged to make it up to her, to look after her, and to never kill again.”
He couldn’t look at De Luca. The guilt still burned.
“So, that’s me,” Bastian said. “Not so dashing after all. Just another monster.”
“Oh, Bastian.”
Bastian smiled sadly, certain that he had pushed De Luca away for good by sharing his story.
“I love it when you say my name,” he said.
“Bastian,” De Luca said, standing. He crossed the room and Bastian wondered if he was leaving. Leaving because he couldn’t bear the thought of all the people Bastian had killed.
But De Luca was at the shelf of CDs. He took a disk from its case and slotted it into an old-fashioned stereo. Hit Play. “Smalltown Boy” came from the speakers as De Luca moved toward Bastian, shrinking the space between them.
“Bastian,” he said, taking hold of Bastian’s hands, saying his name again and again as he brought his mouth to Bastian’s.
The kiss was gentle. Timid. De Luca’s hands moved to Bastian’s chest, warm and firm, and his lips moved with increasing force.
Bastian shivered, tasting De Luca, smelling him, trembling with surprise, relief, and excitement. He hadn’t run. He didn’t think Bastian was a monster.
“Thank you for telling me,” De Luca whispered. “Grazie, tesoro mio.”
Bastian pulled De Luca close, bringing their bodies together, just like their dance at the gala. But they were alone now. Alone at last. And they knew each other in a way that Bastian had never felt known, not even by Whitby.
De Luca’s kisses grew more insistent, and Bastian felt his own body warming, filling with De Luca’s heat.
There was that heartbeat. Quick and loud. Vital and demanding. It thumped through Bastian’s palms when he touched the inspector’s back, his arms, his ass.
Be still my unbeating heart.
De Luca’s hot breath against Bastian’s mouth made him shiver with delight. Their foreheads rested together, and Bronski Beat were still playing on the stereo, singing about smalltown boys finding their home, then De Luca’s hands were at Bastian’s shirt, unbuttoning it one button at a time.
“De Luca—”
“Nico. Call me Nico.”
Bastian frowned, then remembered that De Luca was his surname. His first name was—
“Nico,” he said softly, feeling the name on his lips, like a kiss. “Nico.”
De Luca kissed his neck. “You were right, what you said at the mayor’s house.”
Bastian tried to focus as De Luca’s hand slipped inside his shirt, grazing his skin, leaving a trail of warmth across his chest.
“What did I say?” Bastian murmured.
“You only have to let go once,” De Luca said, kissing him. “I’m so tired of holding on.”
He saw the heat in De Luca’s gaze. The determination in his jaw. Bastian resisted, not wanting to take advantage, but then De Luca’s fingers teased Bastian’s nipple, sending a jolt of arousal through him, and Bastian gave in.
He felt a swelling in his briefs as De Luca undressed him, and he marveled at De Luca’s sudden confidence as he peeled away Bastian’s shirt, unzipped his trousers, and then tugged down Bastian’s white briefs, freeing his aching erection.
De Luca pulled back a fraction, breathless and smiling. Bastian stared into perfect blue eyes, darker than before, glinting with hunger. De Luca ran his fingers over the bruises on Bastian’s chest, bruises inflicted by Matteo’s gang when they attacked him in the piazzetta.
“They hurt you,” De Luca said.
“They’ll be gone by the morning.”
De Luca’s lips grazed the bruises. He kissed Bastian’s chest, kissing away the hurt, then he went to his knees. Bastian remembered the way he had looked when they were alone in the boat, the sense that De Luca was desperate to let go but resisting, and that expression was long gone now.
De Luca’s warm mouth around his cock made Bastian groan and push his hips forward, tugging at De Luca’s ears.
When they first met, he hadn’t expected to want every inch of De Luca like this.
When De Luca came into his life, Bastian had noticed how beautiful he was, but he hadn’t expected to feel this way.
He moaned with pleasure as De Luca’s tongue teased his cock, making it throb harder, the ache agonizing.
Bastian lifted De Luca up and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his flat stomach and firm pecs.
He loosened his belt and pulled down De Luca’s suit trousers, freeing his smooth, hard cock.
He ran his hands over De Luca’s hips, down to skim the soft hair at his thighs, their erections throbbing against one another.
“Kiss me, amore.”
They kissed, and De Luca’s pulse pumped against Bastian’s lips.
They maneuvered to the bed, De Luca sitting back against the headboard, his legs parted so that Bastian could crawl between them.
Bastian took a moment to admire De Luca’s smooth olive skin, the lean muscles beneath, his cock twitching with excitement.
“You’re beautiful, darling. All that time you’ve been hiding behind the uniform.”
“Just come here,” De Luca said, and Bastian did as he was told.
Their bodies fitted together like they were made for one another.
Bastian’s hands skimmed over De Luca’s soft skin as De Luca’s knees drew up and, finally, Bastian spat into his palm and then pushed himself inside, staring into De Luca’s eyes, watching his pupils dilate with pleasure.
As Bastian thrust, gently at first, then with increasing urgency, De Luca’s heartbeat filled his ears.
He felt it pump through his rib cage; through the parts of them that were connected.
He kissed De Luca again and again, tasting him, teasing him, savoring him, memorizing every part of him, and even though he knew it was impossible, knew there was no way it could be true, for just a moment, as De Luca’s heartbeat pulsed around him, Bastian was sure he felt his own heart emit a single joyful thump in response.