“He loves Rosaria,” I said.
“If you say so.” He held me to him tighter. The beat of his heart echoed the earlier fighting. “Come. Let’s get you inside. You’re freezing.”
“No,” I said, grasping him by the fabric of the hooded sweater. “I can’t breathe inside.”
He heard the panic in my voice. I know he did. I could feel it.
“Scarlett. Tell me what to do. I’ll do it.”
“Look at me!” I demanded. “I need you to look at me, dammit!”
He set me back from his body. His eyes came down slowly to meet mine and I whimpered. I didn’t realize until then that we stood in the same spot Rocco and I had. My husband’s heart was wide open. There was no escape for him to hide from me.
“You’re afraid.” Not only could I feel the suffocation of his fear, I could see it drowning him. “What are you so afraid of?”
“Everything,” he whispered.
* * *
Everything,said the beast who was never afraid of anything.
“Are you even afraid of the trees?” I asked later as I readied to dance at the secret club in Volterra. I leaned forward, smoothing out the cream on my face in soft strokes.
“Yeah,” he said, taking a seat on the bed, watching. He bent forward, hands clasped, eyes narrowed. Ever since he started meeting my eye, he refused to stop. He was almost starved for the connection. “They can fall.”
“The ground beneath our feet?”
“Can rise up and cause us to trip.”
This line of questioning continued on as I finished my makeup and then dressed in the costume I had prepared for this performance. It resembled the outfit I had worn many nights ago in Paris, for my first dance at the underground club—dark with onyx and crystal embellishments to catch the light. Only when I met my mother at her door on our way down, silk robe fastened tight around her, did I stop asking him questions.
“Mati,” I said. “It’s date night for my husband and me.”
She looked me over, eyes narrowed, attempting to see past the fur cloak that covered the outfit. As tempting as it was to reveal what lay beneath, I knew my sister would probably choose that particular moment to emerge from her lair if I did. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
My mother turned her eyes to Brando, taking in his custom-made Italian suit, guns tucked behind his jacket.
“Would you like to join us? This show will probably be more entertaining than a movie.”
The pressure Brando had on my lower back increased. My mother scowled and then slammed the door in my face.
I resented her for many things. Nothing compared to this. She had done me in when she signed over my life to Nemours out of fear. Though some of this rested at my feet, it still made me breathless when I thought of how she had sealed my coffin by making a deal with the devil. She wasn’t a heartless person, just a focused one. Still, it was a hard grievance to move past.
“That went well,” I said, sighing.
Brando gave me a reproachful look but didn’t comment.
The new Maserati woke with a smooth growl, lights illuminating the snow twirling in the air before us. Seven cars followed. We had an hour to kill, so my questioning started again, and he was tame enough to keep answering.
“I’m your beast now,” he said during a slight lull, glancing at me.
Rarely did I call him my beast. He knew all of the roles he held in my life; I only reminded him of the more docile ones. He needed to hear those. My beast was what he needed to be reminded of now. If he could stop it, he’d never allow harm to come to me.
I leaned over the seat, putting my mouth to his ear, my hand on his thigh, moving toward his zipper. “You’ve always been my beast. When you take me. When you protect me.”
Our eyes met, a quick glance, and his chest vibrated. When my mouth found his hot skin, a noise rose up and out of his mouth that turned me on even more, mingling with the ferocious growl of the car. His grip tightened on the steering wheel, veins underneath his skin rising with restraint, but he was as steady as ever, keeping us on the path, speed still at an obscene pace.
The car swerved at some point, and I grinned. It was subtle, but for Brando Fausti that meant something. His eyes were lowered, one of his hands coming down to rest on my head, and I could’ve sworn I heard the frantic beat of his heart. The inhuman sound that came from him then went straight between my own legs. He rarely allowed me this much power. He cursed and shuddered a second later, and I fixed his zipper, moving away from him, satisfied.
