Ah, our meet-cute was light on the cute and heavy on the pungency. I’d barely stepped pastBottom of the Jug’s threshold when Syb had wrinkled her nose and pointed to her apartment at the very top of the tavern, requesting I visit her bathing room and closet.
“That was three years ago . . . Surely I don’t plagueallyour nights.”
“You don’t plague them; you enchant them.”
He must be exaggerating since he and Sybille slept together last year. Not to mention all the other women I’ve spotted him with. He can’t possibly be thinking of me while lying next to them. Even in slumber.
“No need for winsome lies, Antoni; you’ve already captured my attention.”
His crooked smile falters. “They’re not lies.”
It’s because I’ve refused him. Challenges spur obsession. I’m well-placed to know this. Except, now, according to a crazy lady in Rax, Icanhave Dante.
I mentally pull apart the letters in the prince’s name and toss them to the warm summer breeze, then latch on to the collar of Antoni’s shirt and tug him close. He backs me into my front door, pressing all the hard bulges of his body into all the soft valleys of mine.
“Gods, the things I want to do to you, Fallon Rossi.” He knuckles the slope of my neck to the ridge of my collarbone, then glides his loosely-balled fist back up the length of my throat and the underside of my chin, tipping my head to align our lips.
My blood steams at his words. I want to know what things. I want to experiencethe things, but I cannot possibly bring him upstairs, not with both my mother and grandmother at home. Our walls are too thin and Antoni too large to pass undetected.
I may be twenty-two, yet bringing a boy home still seems terribly illicit. I wonder if I’ll ever feel differently. Perhaps, once my age is in the triple digits . . .
He presses his palm into the wood beside my head and rests his forehead against mine. A hard shuddering breath later, our lips connect, and oh, the sounds he coaxes from my throat with that skilled tongue of his. His hips grind against me in a slow, sultry dance that makes warmth converge behind my ribs and between my thighs.
Tonight feels surreal. A delicate dream that will evaporate like morning dew at first light.
Antoni’s teeth scrape against my lower lip, teasing the flushed skin, nibbling it, as though to remind me that he’s real. That this is really happening. Thatweare really happening.
After another lustful minute, I skate my mouth off his. “Antoni, we have to—”
The door at my back gives way, and we’re falling. By some miracle, that miracle being Antoni’s palm, we don’t crash onto the honeycomb tiles.
“Buonsera, Signora Rossi.” Red creeps up Antoni’s throat and bathes his jaw.
Nonna narrows her green eyes on his face and then on the arm wrapped around my waist, which he retracts like a child caught stealing sweets from a jar. “Good evening, Signor Greco.”
He scrapes one palm down his face, as though to mitigate his blush.
“Antoni was just walking me home, Nonna.” Perhaps because it’s my grandmother, or perhaps because Antoni’s skin is as blotchy as Mattia’s, I cannot help but smile. “No need to give him the third degree.”
“Walking you home, you say?” Her gaze doesn’t soften on poor Antoni. “Were you two having trouble locating the doorknob?”
My smile intensifies. “We hadn’t gotten to looking for it.”
She sends Antoni a glower as strong as the tea she brews morning and night.
I’m no longer smiling now. “Stop it, Nonna. Antoni did nothing wrong.”
My grandmother’s attention finally shifts off the poor man and onto me. “Where were you all night, Fallon?” Her irises are as dark as the forest on the mainland, and the skin beneath her lash line a darker lavender than usual.
I turn to Antoni and whisper a quick, “Go.”
He doesn’t. Not immediately, anyway. But he must realize leaving is the best option—the only one—because he finally spins on his mucked boots.
He lingers by the door. “Thank you for tonight.” He’s no longer blushing. If anything, he appears exceedingly sober and exceedingly worried about letting me deal with my grandmother on my own.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Another heartbeat of resounding silence.
