I wasn’t even sure if my words were making any sense. But when he took my face in his hand, making me look at him, it didn’t matter how fast he moved or how deep he was. The moment our eyes connected, we both let go at the same time.
Again, I wasn’t sure if it was possible, but it felt like my body orgasmed more than once. I came hard around him, the intensity lingering, lingering, almost burning, while he spilled himself inside of me.
Without pulling out of me, he picked me up again. My arms went around his neck and then went slack, like a rag doll that’d been used in a rough game, so they just hung there.
He shut the door to my room with his foot, closing out the world.
* * *
My eyes openedto a dim room. The sun was starting to set. The solar candles in my room started to burn to life with the energy collected over the day.
I reached out for Aniello, but his side of the bed was empty. I sat up in a panic, wondering where he’d gone. The fan in the corner swung in my direction, cool air brushing over my breasts when it moved across my heated skin. I went to grab my phone when movement stopped me.
He was sitting in the chair in the corner, partly highlighted by the fading light and partly hidden by the darkness. He’d sat forward so I could see him better. It seemed intentional, so maybe I wouldn’t be startled by him.
I’d been having a bad dream I couldn’t remember. My heart carried enough weight that it felt like it was hunkered down in my soul. Maybe it was because every so often, I realized what we were up against, and it saddened me, the reason behind the fight.
When it came to love, why couldn’t all transgressions and rules and everything else that applied be wiped clean? Why couldn’t love win over all? Why couldn’t it come first?
If we felt this—love—was worth dying for, why couldn’t our world understand that love was worth living for too?
If love was even the right word. When I looked at him, it was hard to reconcile one word with what I felt for him. Even though love was powerful, the one word didn’t seem to do my feelings justice, though somehow it did.
It was the most forbidden word in our vocabulary unless the sentences were: love of power; love of controlling oaths; love of money.
Releasing a trembling breath, I whispered, “Are you leaving?”
He nodded. “Business.”
“For how long?”
“Depends,” he said.
My eyes fell to my hands. “Would you tell me where you’re going? If I wanted to know?”
“Sì,” he said, no hesitation. “I would tell you what I’m going to do as well.”
I didn’t want to know. I only wanted to know what he was going to say. I met his eyes. “I need to hear from you—”
Before I could finish, he was up and already to me, my face in his hand and my lips pressed to his. When he pulled back, the tingling feeling lingered. I set two fingers there, greedy to keep the sensation for as long as possible.
“Let’s leave,” I said, my eyes closed, my voice a whispered hope in the dark room. It slipped right between my two fingers, soft and warm. “Right now. Let’s take off and never look back.”
He released my face, then his lips pressed against my forehead, my chin, both of my cheeks, then my lips once more. “In tempo,” he said.In time.A few seconds later, he said my name. “Rosalia.”He might as well have said “mine.”
My eyes refused to open, because I hated to watch him go.
“I need you not to worry,” he said in Italian.
I sat with my eyes closed, my fingers to my mouth, until the kiss faded from my lips but seared itself on my soul. When I opened my eyes to an empty room, instead of the wordloveenveloping all that I felt, the wordlostwas added to the description of what it felt like for my heart to belong to Aniello Assanti.
I was lost without him.
19
Rosalia
It had been a week since Aniello left, and I was a sad sack of bones without him.
