“Or,” I said. Hesitation was deadly. It was like hesitating when pulling into oncoming traffic. Either fucking go or stay put, but don’t brake.
“You will not see me coming,scorpione. I will kill you in your sleep.”
A few cats ran after her when she left. I could hear her talking to them, telling them to go back home, until her voice faded and I knew I was alone with Alcina.
The radio turned lower, almost off, and I knew she was doing it so she could hear. I put my head back against the tree, closing my eyes, thinking about what Nicodemo had said to me, about the ones who came out to play in the moonlight.
I wondered if he had ever watched them dance.
An unfamiliar feeling burned me deep, and I thought about getting up and finding him—to take his eyes out with his memories. Even in those plain dresses, Alcina’s body made them seem indecent.
It didn’t take a man with a creative brain to imagine what was underneath. Her body was a fucking gun. Her eyes the trigger. Her love the killer.
A woman like Alcina Maria Parisi was the strongest weapon known to man, and she belonged to me.
“Judge a man by what he’s willing to die for, not by what he’s willing to kill for,” my grandfather said to me often. “What a man dies for makes the man.”
She made me.
It was fucking insane, I never saw it, or her, coming, but so was the moon, and it still took over the sky when the time was right. I was a mere man.
I must have drifted for a minute or two, comfortable in my spot, but her voice had me straightening up.
She was bent over, petting Arista, telling her how bad she was for pulling down a quilt that had been blocking my view. It was on the ground, and the cat was sitting right next to it.
That cat was getting the best fucking tuna from me. I’d been planning on moving it once Alcina fell asleep. A candle next to her bed went out when she did. Her room would glow and then go dark.
My eyes narrowed when Alcina picked the quilt up and laid it on top of one she must’ve brought out when my eyes were closed. She’d put it down between a patch of moonflowers. Her hair was up, as usual, and she was in the same dress she had on earlier. Her feet were dirty from going barefoot, and I could smell candle wax and fresh laundry when the wind blew.
She turned to the side, facing the moon and Mount Etna, but she was more outlined by the darkness than brightened by the moon. She was caught in the middle of the contrast.
Her mouth moved to the music playing in the background—I’ve always been in love with you— before she released her hair from the scarf. It fell down her back like dark waves.
I’d never seen her hair down. It became a sacred thing to me then, something for me only—to admire, to touch, to pull when my cock was buried deep inside of her and she was screaming out my name.
She swayed a little, still mouthing the song, and then started to unbutton her dress with slow moving fingers.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
She slid one shoulder out, then another, and then she let the dress fall to the ground. She stepped out of it and then threw the dress in a basket that had been left outside. Left in only plain cotton, she became as stark as the flowers at her feet.
Her hand came up, and she placed it in the crook of her neck, moving it from one side to another, something she did to ease the strain. Her neck was graceful, and the cross that hung around it glinted gold against her skin.
The wind blew again, and she seemed to close her eyes even tighter, as I opened mine even wider. I could taste her on my tongue. Her scent was something I’d kill to keep—to claim.
She unhooked the plain bra, throwing it toward the basket. Her throw wasn’t long enough. It hung on the side, halfway in, half-way out. Then she hooked a finger in each side of her underwear, just as plain as the bra, and shimmied the fabric down until she was naked. This time when she aimed for the basket, she made the shot.
A decent man would have closed his eyes. Would have walked away.
I wasn’t a decent man, and I never would be. And where this woman was concerned, what she had, who she was, every breath she took, was mine. Even if she hadn’t grasped the enormity of that fact yet, and what it meant.
