And this time the touch is deliberate and different. Loaded with sensual promise.
I swallow. “I know what you’re doing.”
“And? You object?”
“How can I? You’re… relentless.”
“And you,” he murmurs, “are finally here.”
My pulse stutters. I try for snark, for armour. “Are you saying it was a good thing I ran away?”
His gaze turns lethal in an instant. “Try it again,” he says softly. “Bella mugghieri. I dare you.”
Heat floods me and I don’t answer.
Because the truth is in the way my body settles into his, in the way his arms tighten around me as though he’s anchoring us both to the fact that we survived.
The wait has been worth it.
The hunger is only sharper.
And somewhere beyond these walls, the storm is still gathering.
But tonight?—
Tonight we are alive.
And Giovanni Dragoni intends to make sure I feel every second of it.
16
LUCIA
Dinner ends the way everything with Giovanni ends lately. With him watching me like I’m a decision he’s already made, and me pretending I still have choices I’m not already giving away.
The plates are cleared away and the wine sits half-finished an hour after this started. The candles have burned enough that the room feels softer, fragrant, with more benign shadows gathering in corners.
I should be exhausted and in one way I am. But my body is still humming, wired with the aftermath of Red Hook, of survival, of his mouth on mine and his body moving inside me in the dark, of the knowledge that we finally arrived at the place we were both destined for, both recognised the second he stepped out of his car in Queens.
Giovanni doesn’t move to stand, more than content to keep me right where I am, on his lap, his hand spread at my waist as if the simple act of holding me there is a kind of proof.
“You’re quiet,” he murmurs.
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.” I hear the dark amusement in his voice.
And I huff a laugh. “For who?”
“For me,” he says easily. “I never know what you’ll do when you think too much.”
I tilt my head, watch the sharp angle of his jaw, and curb the need to trail my mouth over it. It’s not because I don’t want to or that he’ll stop me. This is purely a temptation test on myself. One I note with a sinking heart that I want to fail. Spectacularly.
“Hmm. Maybe I’ll run again,” I try again.
His arm tightens, his voice drops, velvet over steel. “Let’s retire this joke,amuri. Or you will learn, sooner rather than later, the full benefits of a neat spanking.”
Heat curls low in my stomach. I look away, because if I don’t, I’ll fall straight into whatever this is.
