“Because you’re still in control?”
“Because it keeps me sharp.”
I grinned at that.
His voice was low and still raspy. “Sometimes I’m sure you’ll kill me, but like any addiction, something in me dares you to, to give me all you have, to see if I can take more.”
After a few minutes of stroking his wet hair, the strands long and luxurious, close to the texture of fine silk, the underside short and coarse, I cleared my throat. “Well, do I? Give you all of me?”
“You’re askingme.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“More than words can convey, Scarlett Rose Fausti.” He smiled, the white of his teeth almost ghostly in the darkness of the room. “I had nightmares after you left for Paris.”
I sat up some, to get a better look at his face. “You never told me that. You’re smiling about it?”
“You will too, once I tell you what they were about.” He had a distant look in his eyes, staring at nothing. Whatever held him broke loose then and he looked at me.
“You were always alone in a room, naked, and painted gold. I’d check you over for handprints. A few times I found them. And I’d rage, but everything was slow, like I was fighting against a bog to break free. You’d refuse to look at me. I’d demand that you tell me who touched you. The words were slow and hard to get out. But you never would.”
He ran a warm hand down my arm. “I’d wake up sweating and feeling like my heart was about to burst from anger and betrayal. I’d have to reason with myself not to fly to Paris so I could throw you over my shoulder and demand you tell me all of the things I wanted to know.
“Then I’d remind myself that I had to keep my distance until the time was right. I was being tested, and I had to be strong for the both of us. I’d call Pnina, and she’d tell me all that was going on in your life—no other man. Still all me. I breathed easier after that.”
I slid my pointer finger against the slope of his nose. It was angular, but wide enough to fit the strong bones of his face. “If there would’ve been?” I asked softly, tracing the lines of his lips, so full and wide.
It took him a minute or so to answer. The silence swelled with the falling rain. I continued my journey, stroking his strong jaw.
“You’re mine,” he said, finally, as though those two words answered every riddle.
Another silence grew, punctuated by lightning and thunder, and then the whirling of the wind. I found my way to his wrist, pressing against the throbbing pulse there.
“You are a wonderful husband to me, Brando,” I whispered. “I always knew you would be.”
His eyes lifted and found mine, so innocent in that moment that it almost broke my heart. “Do I serve you well, my wife?” he said in Italian.
“Voglio per niente,” I said.I want for nothing.
“Ti adoro,”he said.
“Will—” I picked at some nonexistent thing on his chest, trying to get the words out. “Will you always love me?”
“Guardami,” he whispered, but it was an undeniable demand.
I met his eyes.
“As long as the heart beats in my chest, and even longer,” he said in Italian.
For some reason, this night brought back memories of our wedding night, when I sought the same reassurance from him. I had been scared to move, almost to breathe, because I didn’t want time to remember us, to find us and push us toward a new day. A day without what we had shared and all that we had felt.
“I love you even more now,” he said, perhaps reading my mind or the look on my face.
I nodded once, resting my head against his chest, to be closer to his heart. He inhaled, murmured something about strawberries, and with a move that made me whoop, flipped me over and claimed me once more.
We outlasted the storm.
Sometime after dawn, I fell asleep wrapped in his arms and nothing else.
