Her leg hitched up and wrapped around me. She had on a thin cotton dress and was barefoot. She left her sandals in the gym. Smoothing my hand along her outer thigh, slick with my sweat, I watched as her face melted into softness but her eyes hardened into something else: want.
She had worn the dress on purpose, no doubt.
I made a hand motion when Donato peeked his head in, either looking for one of us, or checking on the noise. He left in a blur. Scarlett hadn’t even noticed.
“I’d lose for this every time,” I said, close to taking her against the wall. She used her leg to pull me even closer, her body searching for friction against mine. I slammed my hips against her, and she sucked in a breath.
“You were supposed to just let him win,” she said, breathing out, her mouth coming to my throat. The way she moved her lips made a tremble move through me. “Not let himhityou.”
I laughed, low and raspy. “You can’t have one without the other, baby. You wanted proof of the hold you have on me—you have it. I have you to show for it. And a swollen eye and a bruised ego.”
Her mouth stilled—she had been sucking—and she gazed up at me with stained-glass eyes that shimmered with the soft sun pouring through the windows. They were a true emerald with golden flecks that brightened when she was content, or in a certain light. “Is that why you think I did it? Because I wanted you to prove something to me?”
“Isn’t it?” I said, using my thumb to dry some of my perspiration from her neck.
She shook her head. “No. Well, not entirely.” Her fingers stilled on my collarbone. “It’ll do you good to remember. I don’t know what’s coming, but whatever it is, I refuse to lose you to it. You need to remember that even a beast can fall.” She bit her lip.
Leaning in closer, I removed the hold on her lip with my mouth. I rubbed my nose against hers, my hands biting into the thin fabric of the dress. Her soft behind and sharp hipbones pressed against my palms. “That wasn’t for Livio’s benefit?”
She shrugged and sighed. I could smell cool cranberry juice on her breath and the scent of summer in Tuscany on her skin. A subtle undercurrent of rose drifted in the air around her. “Some. He needed it too, for a different reason.”
“My brothers?”
“Just like you.” She smiled, but it fell fast. “You all need to remember. None of you are invincible.”
Tucking a finger under her chin, I forced her to look up at me. “How can I forget?” I kissed her lips, real soft. “You bring me to my knees, always have.”
“That’s different,” she mumbled.
She was right. Bring me a monster and I’d chose death before I bowed to him, but bring me my wife, and I’d fall before her as though I had no knees.
Le donne sono più distruttivi della guerra. Women are more destructive than war.This was something Donato was fond of saying.
Così vero. So truewas my constant response.
“I’ll remember,” I vowed to her. “I know what I stand to lose.La mia vita è tua.”My life is yours.
“Yours is mine,” she said, her voice ringing with conviction. She came in closer, making me laugh when she started to sniff my neck. The move brought back memories of our time in Fiji. “You have such a distinct smell,” she said, her voice full of pleasure. “It’s just one of those—things. Like people who enjoy the smell of gasoline.”
“I smell like gas?”
“No.” She shook her head, sniffing again. “Not at all. It’s just one of those odd things that I love to do. Sniff you. Your smell is so ingrained that it has become a precise thing for me.”
“You could pick me out of a crowd of men.”
“Yes,” she said, without a trace of doubt. “I know I could.”
“Let’s see.”
I took her by the hand, leading her back into the gym. The thick smell of sweat and anger was apparent even to me. Once you were immersed in the musk for a while, it became hardly noticeable, but if you went out in the fresh air and then came back into the thick of it again, it threw a punch to the nose.
I explained our wager to the room.
Scarlett kept a basket full of handkerchiefs in the gym. Sometimes I would tie them around my head to collect the sweat when I worked out. Some of the other men used them too. I snatched one from the basket, securing the fabric around her eyes. A quick hand gesture toward her face yielded no flinch. All secure.
I didn’t want her to know the men I chose, so I called them with a finger. Ten men in total, including my brothers, Mitch and Mick.
Chiara stood next to her, ready to lead her down the line to see if she could tell me apart from the other men.
