“If I’m your air, you’re the blood in my veins,” I said, rising to meet his guileless eyes. “He didn’t—”
“Even if he would have—” he spoke gently, but beneath the surface, an ice-cold barrier had formed “—you’re all mine. Always have been. Always will be.”
“I am.”
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, and after loosening my hold on his wrists, he continued to stroke my skin with a feather-soft touch.
“I need this. I need you, Brando.”
He hesitated, but then his eyes closed, and he kissed me. It was tentative and soft, at first, and when it became too much, he broke it. His face was smeared with the blood from my mouth. I went to wipe it clean, but he wouldn’t allow it.
A low growl emanated deep in his throat, it was almost anguished, and his grip on me became even tighter.
“Leave it,” he said, his voice fierce. “It’s mine.”
“I amyours,” I whispered, the first painful, conscious teardrop slipping down my cheek. I took a handful of his hair, placing my forehead against his, not sure whether I wanted to punch him or kiss him again. Feral one minute, hiding inside of myself the next, tears streaming down my face, my voice reflecting both ice and heat—all my convictions and strength, along with rising memories and fear. “And you aremine.”
“Only God can know how much,” he said in Italian, his breath ragged and his eyes haunted.
Lightning flared, shocking the room with phantom light, and thunder barreled, rattling the windows.
Pure white snow came down in thick sheets around us, burying the impure, so the oncoming spring could turn it into a bed of crimson roses, their thorns the only reminder that even sharp edges have a purpose—to remind us that when we bleed, we still live.
35
Brando
Oba, the lion, had been released.
Luca had released him to the wilds of Africa, where he and more of his kind would be treated to hundreds of acres dedicated to the preservation of the species.
It would be a multimillion dollar funded project, in the name of one Scarlett Rose Fausti, and led by Oba’s handler, Naomi.
Luca had convinced all the wives to choose a cause that was close to their hearts, and in the name of the women who held his son’s hearts, had donated enough money to raise eyebrows.
Scarlett was involved in a few different causes, being that her name was so well known, but when Luca told her what he’d done before she entered the villa on his premises in Florence, she fell into his arms, called himPapà, thanked him in the sincerest voice, and then held on to him even tighter.
“You freed him,” she’d whispered against his shoulder, her voice thick with emotion.
Though the words were aimed toward the lion he’d kept for his own personal uses, there was something she hid from the both of us in that apparently obvious statement.
Luca missed nothing either.
A look came over his face at her words, one I couldn’t read. It seemed we both had situations we were dealing with, both surrounding my wife, but I had seen that look on his face before, when Maggie Beautiful did or said something that confounded him, as though she were speaking a language from another planet.
He grasped the gist of it but had no idea how to react.
It was a rare woman who could confound Luca Fausti—it took the same to captivate him enough to stick around.
It was with a sick feeling in my stomach that I realized, had Scarlett been born in another time, she would have been the kind of woman to charm Luca Fausti into marriage—as she had done me.
Like father, like son,a voice in the back of my mind said.
It didn’t help matters that their relationship had taken a turn.
He was the one who had held her close, protected her, while I had been in no mind to even offer comfort after we’d found her.
When my mind was on as straight as it could be, she had clung to him, hesitant to come to me at first.
