“Don't hit your little brother.”
This made him break out into deeper laughter. “Yes. Be nice to me, bigger brother.”
“Youshhh,” she said to him. Scarlett was still half asleep, her body moving in even closer to mine, so pliable that she was almost liquid with sleep. Her hand fluttered over my hair, pushing it back, then caressed my bare chest, cool and soft like wings over my heart. She kissed me behind my ear. “Did you take the pill Uncle Tito gave you for your stomach?” she asked.
“Yeah, I did.”
“All right,” she sighed. Her breath was as soft as her touch. She fell asleep again, the buzzing back in my ear. Fifteen minutes later her hand slid to my back, even lower, searching underneath my sweatpants.
I clenched at her fondling.
“Keep still.” She laughed real low. “You have the nicestculo.” She squeezed my ass.
“Scarlett.”
“That tickles,” Romeo said, not bothering to hide his laughter.
It did. I didn’t fucking like it.
She stilled, like she had forgotten that he was in the same room. Then remembering that he was, she let out another sigh, and in just a few minutes was back to sleep.
Our cabin became filled with silence until Romeo stirred. “I do not usually allow women to sleep at my place,” he said quietly. I heard his hands hit his chest—he must have brought them up and then down. “When I get the loneliest, I sometimes do. However, it is rare. Yet when I do, I am theleonein my den. She brings it out in me. There is nothing close to the scent of a female. I breathe her in, and my lungs swell with the air I know she has breathed out. How soft the female creature becomes in sleep. So soft, I could absorb her in my skin and make her mine forever—per sempre,” he whispered the words even lower. “She could race through myvene, causing mycuoreto pump with pride.Mine. All mine.The right female can bring out the most primal instincts in a man. Can make you feel like the animal that you are. Ah, and the mating.Combaciamento.” He sighed. “A savage hunger and thirst for it.”
I grinned. I could sense his too.
“Come morning, I see her in the light, and she is only a woman. Could be any man’s woman. Not mine. This is what the men—even myself—admire about your wife,fratello. I suppose, more than your wife, the connection the two of you share is what we crave. It is not that they truly want her, though she is desirable. She is made of the stars—her beauty, her dance, her tender but hardheaded nature, and she can cook. She is virtuous. She is loyal, to you and to those she loves.
“She makes you feel primal, past the night, and that is what men want. They want to feel primal beyond the darkness. Morning brings the truth, doesn’t it,fratello? You know then if she has returned your missing rib. We feel it, don’t we? There is a hole where it should be. The one she makes whole when she returns what is ours.”
“Yeah,” I said, just as quietly. “It’s not just the morning that brings the truth though. It’s a moment. Sometimes you expect it. Sometimes you don’t.”
“Yours?”
“Conosci questa storia,” I said.You know this story.
“Once again. You hear it twice, or more, you get more details. This is where the true story is, no? In the details?”
“Scarlett was only fifteen. She was dancing in the window of her parent’s studio. It was dark out and snowing, cold as hell. And she reached out and seized my heart, at the same time she returned my rib.” My mouth twitched at this. “I was whole again, though I lost even more to her in that moment. My entire life.”
“Your body as well.”
We both laughed—such a similar sound.
“It’s a slave to hers. When you lose your heart and soul, the body goes without saying. The mind too.”
“Ah,l’amore è follia.”Love is madness.
We both settled down for a while. Scarlett’s buzzing was almost hypnotic, the whirl of the yacht’s noises adding to it. We came to a quieter section of the sea, sluicing through the water with ease. More tempestuous waters would come soon.
“I would not mind being a slave to my woman’s body.” His voice seemed to float; he was starting to fall asleep. “I love to mate.” He attempted to do a version of a lion mating with a lioness. We had seen this happen in Africa during one of our safaris—three times in the span of seven minutes.
I threw another water bottle at him. The plastic hit him with a crinkle noise.
“Do not wake Sissy up!” he hissed. “Or she will ride the bull.” He said bull likebooool.
“Go to sleep,Romeo, or your rib will never come.”
“Ahhhh,” he yawned. “It will. Hopefully not too soon.”
