She brought my heart to life.
She made it softer, yet stronger.
No other woman had the power to do that.
The flesh could be weak. She had turned my heart into an untouchable animal, therefore she held the key to the rest of me.
She tucked her face in my neck, her breaths washing over my skin. “I don’t even know what came over me,” she whispered. “One minute the world felt unreal, like it usually does when we’re together, and in the next…I felt hate. A hate so hot it could have been the reason the water is so warm. I love you, Rocco, I love you so much—though that’s not enough. It doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to be enough?—”
I kissed her, and kissed her, and we held on to each other as if the consuming passion of Mount Vesuvius was at our door and this was our last moments together. I could not speak. All words in the face of the feeling between us were lies. But she knew. She told me she understood without me speaking the words, but as my wife, she could say all these things to me, even if they sounded frantic and nonsensical at times. We were behaving as if tomorrow may not come for us. I held her body as close to mine as physically possible, bringing us back into the water, fusing our lives together in the warmth of the pool.
This fountain of youth, as she had called it, but for whatever it was that existed between us.
She rested her head on my shoulder, the sweet coolness of her breath washing across my racing pulse, and she made pleasurable noises as we drifted. As if she had been drained of all life except for me. I was the man who had the honor of being with her this way. Knowing her this way. Taking care of her in this way.
All mine.
The lion inside of my chest stood prouder. Bolder. His gold mane impenetrable, his claws made of steel. I had never felt such aprotective instinct before. I would stand against all lions for this woman. I would kill armies. Battle serpents. Lay down my life for her—live my life for her. It was as if every day was a new vow in her name.
I realized after a moment that I was making rounds. The confusion in my mind at my heart’s new direction sent my body in a never-ending circle. Just as never-ending as the new platinum band on my ring finger engraved with the words ‘senza fine’ and her name.
She started to hum in my ear, and I realized she had fallen asleep in my arms. I stepped out of the pool, and she did not even stir. I slipped my T-shirt over her body. It covered her as a blanket would, and she tucked her arms in the sleeves, burying her face in it.
It was almost lunchtime, and Guido was to have one of the soldiers deliver lunch. The soldier was to wait outside of the cave for me to claim it. Men would be waiting at the cave opening, making a door with their bodies so no one could get past the barrier. The thermal springs were tucked deep inside. No chance of a man seeing my wife or hearing her when she was not presentable to anyone but me. When I stepped fully outside, most of the men were huddled together, staring at the solider who had come to deliver the food.
He was sprawled out on the rock, lunch scattered around him, blood running from a split in his skull.
I held my wife tighter in my arms, my eyes meeting one of the soldier’s wide eyes. The whites of his eyes swallowed his dark brown irises. His face seemed bloodless.
“She did not like you in the cave,” he stammered out in Italian. “She hit him in the head with a rock.”
Even though he was panicked, he read the look in my eyes and answered it.
He pointed behind me, toward the top of the cave, with a trembling finger. “Your wife.”
Then he hit the ground, as lifeless as the man at my feet.
Chapter 32
Nothing But An Illusion...or Is It?
The world around me was a blur as my husband seemed to fly over the narrow streets and towardCastello Sul Mare, my head on his shoulder. I’d heard him snapping orders at his men. He only usually had to look at them to get his order across, and the ending was always implied without the words…or else. I got it. They were soldiers. And these soldiers had pledged fealty to the Fausti family, so it was their jobs to follow orders and protect them. Rocco was going to be king, but he was made of a knight’s tough armor. Still. I felt bed for all of them at times.
It seemed like they all rotated shifts, but on this island…it shouldn’t have been mandatory to have protection. The island was big enough for the soldiers and their families to enjoy, just like we were doing—or were.
I was too tired to sit up and ask what was going on, but I had a clue it had something to do with the new ghost of the island. She was causing havoc on these men.
No other man as much as my husband.
Maybe he didn’t have to be admitted to the hospital for psychiatric care, but he was on the verge of burning this island down, demanding to catch the vision of the ghost in smoke,dispelling her. If she hadn’t showed up in the thermal springs—the entire cave full of wisps of it—I doubted she was going to show up during a fire.
Or maybe all of that was just a diatribe of symbolic proportions coming from the green monster inside of me—fire was usually associated with hell and brimstone. And, again, no disrespect to the dead but, it seemed like Rosaria Caffi would be at home in that type of situation. I was not sin free, but she seemed to take her role very seriously as the ruthless queen-to-be of the Fausti family. She loved the role so much, she seemed to forget she had a husband at her side.
I sat up, groggy, but a lucid thought had sparked inside of the fog in my mind. This thought had nothing to do with the other thoughts, but the state of my…entire being.
What had come over me at the hot springs?
It was like the warmth of the water was love—then suddenly, I felt the opposite side of that. Hate. I’d never felt either of these emotions so deeply until Rocco appeared in my life. I could be impervious to people unless I was watching them, studying them. But…Rocco seemed to pop the top to something inside of me that overflowed with feelings—good, bad, all in between.
