Chapter Twenty-Nine
Angel!”
“A girl angel!”
The news ripples through the crowd, a wave that crashes into every corner.
I lace my fingers through Lupa’s, wanting to drag her somewhere safe, even though every eye in the cathedral is on her. I can’t forget what happened at the fountain, her eldritch scream and ravenous eyes. They don’t see her as a person. They won’t care if they hurt her.
And if they do, she might not be able to stop herself from hurting them.
“Lupa?” Oh God, Verrocchio. There’s a bulge in the crowd ahead, as if someone is trying to push their way through. “What are you doing here?”
The demon’s eyes flare with gold. She pushes me away. “He can’t see you!”
I open my mouth, ready to protest, but Leonardo is already tugging me away, shouldering his way through the crowd and the double doors outside.
The piazza is deserted, save for coaches parked and waiting for their wealthy owners. The drivers’ heads perk up curiously. They’re gathered between the cathedral and the white-and-green marble bell tower. Mass doesn’t end for another quarter hour.
Acid bursts in my stomach. This was a foolish, stupid idea. I should’ve listened to Leonardo. We should’ve scrapped the plan the moment I saw Verrocchio.
“Don’t run. It’ll look suspicious.” Leonardo motions me down the steps, toward the coach queue.
“Is running away not exactly what we’re doing?”
“Leaving mass early is a sin. Fleeing guiltily across the piazza is a crime and infinitely more interesting to anyone watching.”
The clamor of voices swells louder from inside the church. Then a door slams open.
“Virgil!” Verrocchio’s furious voice cracks across the courtyard. “I know you’re behind this!”
Panic floods me like a slick of oil. If we run down the empty piazza, he’ll see us. If we freeze on the other side of the coaches, the gossiping drivers will see us. There’s nowhere to run.
But there’s somewhere to hide.
Leonardo shoves me toward the nearest coach. “Inside, inside!”
My fingers fumble on the latch, and the door flies open. We tumble onto the bench.
Leonardo reaches back and closes the door right before a familiar silhouette appears beyond the linen curtains.
Leonardo watches Verrocchio’s shadow, breathing hard. His hair is in my mouth. His elbow is between my ribs.
And his body, beautiful sweet Cristo, his body is spread over every single inch of me, hot and heavy and glorious.
I want him to move. I need him to move before it becomes glaringly obvious how I feel about him being on top of me, but all he does is sigh and rest his brow in the divot between my neck and shoulders.
Our ragged panting fills the tiny space, somehow louder than all the conversation happening outside.
Yes, the drivers saw two boys leave mass; no, they didn’t notice what they looked like.
Do they look like they’re paid enough to play driver and guard at the same time?
Verrocchio’s silhouette disappears, and even though I can still hear him arguing, my pulse starts to slow.
Leonardo fidgets and slips into the footwell. My arm shoots up and hooks around his waist, pulling him closer to me.
“Virgil.” His nose traces a line along my neck. By accident, obviously.
Still, the movement makes my skin prickle with want. “Yes?”
“I think—” He tries and fails to move again. “I think this coach might’ve been made for one person.”
“You don’t say.”
He laughs, and the warmth of the sound races down my entire body. “I also don’t think we can move for a while. Not until Verrocchio leaves.”
Someone will definitely notice a rocking carriage, even if it’s rocking for reasons different from what they assume.
I make a noise of agreement—all right, you could call it a whimper—and stare at the dusty ceiling, my trousers growing tighter.
The landscape of Leonardo’s back presses against my hand with each breath, the furrows of his ribs, the deep channel of his spine.
It takes all my self-control not to crook my fingers, trace senseless patterns across his jacket, ones he could imagine on his skin.
This is the punishment I get for bringing a demon to mass. I should’ve known better.
“Do you think Lupa is all right?”
Leonardo shifts the tiniest bit. His elbow slips off my ribs into my stomach. “It’s illegal to harm an angel.”
It’s not the comforting answer I was hoping for. “Verrocchio already thinks it’s my fault.”
“And he’s right, but he doesn’t know that yet. We’ll go to Santa Croce after this. Their mass starts later. If someone sees us there, he can’t know for sure we were here.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “We shouldn’t have come here today. I fucked it up.”
My brother is trapped in hell, and I’m trapped in some rich person’s coach. Instead of finding answers, I’m hiding from the consequences of my own poor choices.
Leonardo elbows me again. I’m starting to suspect he’s doing it on purpose. “No, we both fucked it up. And that’s all right, mistakes happen. How were we supposed to know Verrocchio would be here today?”
I sigh and let my eyes drift closed. Try to focus on the bitter tang of old sweat and not the way Leonardo’s scent swirls around me like summer flowers.
How that “we” makes my insides twist. He won’t let me blame myself for this, and I don’t believe him, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel a bit better.
“You never answered me, you know.” His voice is light, teasing.
“Answered you about what?”
“Opening a workshop together.”
I stop breathing. I only start again when I remember that Leonardo is on top of me and definitely noticed.
His fingers race, featherlight, over the back of my hand, twine through my fingers. Even though I’m the one holding him, it feels like he’s the only thing tethering me. “Why can’t you answer?”
My mouth tastes like old blood. “I thought you were jesting about the workshop.”
His hand goes cold in mine. “Jesting?”
“Weren’t you? I thought you were trying to make me feel better. I was crying.” In your arms. I swallow at the memory. I don’t want to think about it when we’re chest-to-chest again. “It was amusing. I mean, could you imagine it? We’d go bankrupt by the end of the first year.”
He smiles against my collarbone. “I wasn’t jesting, Virgil.”
I stammer out a disbelieving noise.
He presses his lips to the spot over the frantic thud in my throat. “Is that all you’re worried about, then?”
I gasp, the sound more like a groan. Us?
Together? Has he swallowed all the workshop’s white lead?
It’s a possibility. I’ve seen him drink rinsing water instead of drinking water by accident at least five times.
I drop my arm, pushing myself up and away from him, damn the carriage rocking. “We’d get nothing done!”
Leonardo’s eyes crinkle into crescents. “Probably not,” he agrees cheerily.
I shake my head, trying to ignoring the firework feeling beneath my ribs.
“You’d let a million cats live inside. You’d bounce your leg on the bench.
You’d do that thing where you breathe all deep and distracting when you’re concentrating, which would be almost never, because you miss every deadline! ”
“I know.” He’s grinning, a huge Lupa-like grin. “What do you say?”
I let out a frustrated huff and jerk away. I will not look at him. I don’t want him to know how much he’s rankled me. “I don’t think you have the slightest clue how much you get under my skin.”
He laughs and skims a hand across my forearm, dragging his fingernails across the black lines there. “Do I now?”
My skin erupts in traitorous, damning gooseflesh. I keep my eyes six inches to the left of his like my life depends on it. “You know damn well you do. You do it on purpose. Sometimes it’s all I can think about.”
He smirks when he feels the bumps. “It seems like you think about me a lot, then.”
“Yes.” I shiver as his hand moves under my wrist, traces the blue veins. “I do.”
“Look at me.” He cups my jaw. My mouth parts, a shocked, airless gasp. His thumb traces just beneath my bottom lip, eyes dark as pitch. “Perhaps I should give you something new to think about.”
Joke’s on him. I’ve haven’t gone a day without thinking about him since he set foot in Verrocchio’s workshop, so bright-eyed, I couldn’t look away. I thought it was because I hated him. I thought it was because he was an annoying fop whose art was better than mine.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “I think you should.”
He grabs my hips and crushes his lips to mine.
I kiss him back, my hands raking through his hair, dragging him closer.
It’s the first gulp of air after bursting from the river. It’s the first drop of honey after Lent, a taste so longed for and missed, I’d forgotten how much I wanted it. He slots his body alongside mine, the too-small coach bench suddenly big enough for both of us.
It’s all tongue, and a little teeth. It’s him and me and it’s everything.
“Virgil,” he whispers helplessly, a hand below my doublet, tracing the curves of my ribs under my thin shirt. “Mi tesoro, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.”
My insides go molten.
My treasure.
Except I’m the one who’s struck gold.
I whimper into his mouth and fumble with his laces.
I need more of him. Even if I had all of him, it wouldn’t be enough.
How long have we been heading to this place?
How long have I held back even thinking it, putting him on the list of things I wasn’t allowed to have?
I want to kiss him until the only word he can gasp is my name.
I want to burrow beneath his skin exactly the way he’s tunneled into me and show him the shape of my longing.
I’ve wanted him for so long, I don’t even know when it started.
He pulls back slightly, hot mouth dragging over my rough skin, as if he can’t bear to give up the contact. That’s when I hear it too.
The creaking of carriage wheels. The clop of hooves.
Mass is over. I imagine whoever owns this carriage doesn’t want a show afterward. I groan and let my head fall against his shoulder.
He laughs and nuzzles my temple. “Come on, now. We’ve got to go to Santa Croce. We can continue this later.”
Later. The word thrills and terrifies me in equal measure.
After lifting the curtain to be certain no one’s right outside the door, we sneak out and wend our way through the crowd. I can’t stop staring at Leonardo, the riot of his red-gold waves, his kiss-swollen lips. When he catches me looking, his shy smile lights me up like a torch.
I’m so distracted, I don’t notice the hooded figure waiting with crossed arms at the mouth of Via dell’Oriuolo until an arm blocks our path.
Verrocchio throws back his cloak hood, his face grave as sin. “Enough.”