“You’re a good dancer, Macchiavello,” she said, gazing up at me.
“When I need to be.”
“I bet you tell all the girls that.”
“Nah,” I said, inhaling her lavender scent like a fiend. “Only a woman. You.”
She nodded. “I have to—”
“Don’t,” I said, and my voice was harder than the rain outside.
“No,” she breathed out. “That’s not what I was going to—I mean, tell me you feel it. Thisthingthat moves between us. When you look at me like that…it’s…I can’t breathe, but at the same time, I’m breathing—” She took a deep breath and released it slowly.
I leaned close to her mouth, breathing her in, as her eyes closed. “I do.” I felt her in my bloodstream.
Her eyes slowly opened. The song ended. And the spell seemed to melt with the rain.
“We better—” She nodded toward the table. “Your head. It’s not clotting.”
She touched it, pulling back blood on her fingers. I touched her chest and did the same.
“You, too,” I said, then I wrapped my bloodied hand with hers, holding tight as we took seats at the table.
“Let me go first,” she said. “Yours is worse. I’ll talk while I clean.”
“No,” I said. “You—”
“Please,” she whispered. “Let me do this for you.”
I nodded, sitting back.
“You need stitches, I think, but I’ll do my best to clean it.”
“Talk to me.”
“Okay…” She used the kitchen sink to wash her hands before she took out each item of the first-aid kit and then got to work.
She told me about meeting Livia at the club, and how she pulled her into a room. My hand on her wrist stopped her from dabbing something against my head.
“What?” she said.
“This life isn’t worth living without you,” I said in Italian. The thought of her being alone with anyone from that family made me murderous and anxious at the same time.
Her face turned pale, as silver as a droplet of moonlit rain. Her eyes focused on the wound on my head. Anything to avoid the truth in my words. I let go of her wrist, and she took a deep breath.
“She didn’t want to hurt me.” She shrugged. “But she won’t stop this war. It’s nothing personal against me, she said.”
“She can’t stop this war. Cerise has too much of a hold on her. Arsenius Bykov is power hungry. That’s a marriage made in hell, and it’s not even between Livia and Arsenius.”
I stood up, towering over her. She gazed up at me, a bloodied bandage in her hand. I took it from her, making her take a seat.
She closed her eyes when I ran the gauze softly over her skin. “But Livia is truly in love with him.”
“She’s in love with a fucking madman.”
She set her hand over my wrist, stopping me. “Aren’t we all?”
Couldn’t argue with that. But I urged her to say more, to actually tell me how she felt. She’d never said the words to me before.
