“In the chocolate shop?”
“Yeah.”
Thatput the kibosh on fancy chocolate. Which had been one of my favorites.I kept having explicit visions of the two of them painting each other with chocolate, licking…
“Where are you going?” he had asked when I walked to the door, more cautious than before.
I had shrugged. “I need some water.” I threw on a pair of leggings, a thick sweater, and a pair of Italian sneakers. When I came to the front door, I bolted.
With only a few minutes head start, I knew it was very likely that he would catch up, which he did, only a few seconds later. He caught me by the arm, and I whirled on him, cheeks aflame from anger.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he’d demanded. He wasn’t panting from the run but from the hunt.
“To Violet’s! Don’t touch me!” I took another step back when he reached out for me.
He put a hand to each hip. The embers in my cheeks matched the fire in his eyes. He was naked from the waist up, goosebumps rising on his bronze chest, puckering his skin.
“You asked for the truth,” he had reminded me.
Yes, I had wanted to scream! But not to visualize… I had made a disgusted noise in my throat.
Common sense, and a bit of maturity, reminded me that his past was not a secret and it was what it was. I loved him regardless. But the eighteen-year-old, inexperienced me shouted a lot of mean things in the privacy of my mind—man-whore, to start—and wanted nothing more than to hurt him, just as the explicit visions had clawed me from the inside out.
“How about I give you some truth too?” I had said, a vicious taunt in my voice. That was when I had told him that he was my first, but he wouldn’t be my only. Words were all I had in my arsenal, nowhere near as effective as experience, I had convinced teen me.
Words were enough for him. In the middle of that cold street was the first time I had met the Italian version of a berserker.
At the time, I had thrilled at the madness in his eyes, hoping it matched mine. I wanted his skin to crawl, for bile to rise in his throat, for the visions to attack him, so real and so disgusting. I couldn’t even imagine his hands on another woman, or the want, the need, the feral expressions he made just before he lost himself to the power I wielded over him.
He had thrown me over his shoulder before I could protest and carried me back home. He had showed me why he would be my only—things had become hot and dirty between us, nothing like I had ever experienced with him before. Up until that point, he had been almost careful with me. The experience had turned me on and then turned me inside out. He was as savage as a beast and as relentless as one; nothing remotely apologetic about the battle wounds after. We both had a hand in them. The bruises, claw tracks, and bite marks.
“Signora Fausti? Champagne?”
“Oh!” the unfamiliar voice startled me.
Brando blinked, and so did I. I had been staring at him, and from the sour look on his face, I had brought him back in time with me. We were both on Snow Street again, in the cold, consumed by passion and fighting for each other.
It couldn’t be avoided. The memory. Rocco’s past with Monica was similar to Brando’s past with the chocolate-killing Swede.
“Sì,” I said, taking a glass of bubbling strawberry champagne from the silver tray. I thanked the server before she handed Brando a glass. She nodded to Monica on her way out.
Monica took a sip of her champagne, closing her eyes in bliss for a moment. “Luca?” Monica went on, as though no time had lapsed between her last comment and this one. “How is he?”
LucaandRocco? I wondered if Luca had taken from her what she took from Rocco? I had heard it before. Apparently, “virgin” was a common theme for Luca.
“Still in jail,” Brando said, raising the glass to his lips.
She lifted her glass to this, but a look comparable to the one that came into Maggie Beautiful’s eyes came into hers. Remembrance, whether welcomed or not.
“This is the best champagne,” I said, attempting to change the subject. It was one of my favorites—tingling strawberries and seductive blackcurrants tickled my taste buds. “Armand de Brignac?”
“You know your champagnes.” Monica nodded with approval. “Have you been to their place in France?”
“I have—” Then I stopped, bringing the glass up to my mouth again. I downed it.
Brando narrowed his eyes. I had never mentioned that to him. I had met the man who took me there through a dancer in Paris. He had been her brother, and I had assumed we were going as friends, but soon after we arrived, it was obvious that he thought it was a date. It would be nice to think that I was oblivious, given my limited experience with men, but when it came to matters of the opposite sex and their intentions, I realized that I was obtuse.
I cleared my throat and then continued. “When I lived inParigi. I’ve loved it ever since.”
