But I don't want Boston.
The realization wasn't dramatic. It didn't hit me like a freight train or crack me open or any of that poetic shit. It just was there. Plain and factual. Like knowing my own name. Like knowing the sky is up, and concrete is hard, and I am Violet Quinn Murphy, a woman who doesn't want to go home.
I want to stay in this impossible house with this impossible man who kidnapped me and kept me and then tore apart half of Sicily to get me back. Who sleeps in a chair because he's too afraid to touch me and too devoted to leave the room. Who snapped a man's neck with one hand and then held me like I was the most breakable thing he'd ever touched, and somehow both of those things are true at the same time.
I'm falling for him.
Fell. Past tense might be more honest.
He opened the door. I didn't walk through it. And that changes everything about what happens next.
Tonight, I can't sleep.
The nightmare was the usual one. The guard, the belt buckle, the four-second flicker. When I shot upright in the dark, chest heaving, fists knotted in sheets, the chair was empty.
Once my breathing settled, I tried to make myself go back to sleep, but failed miserably. All I could think about was Elio, who was probably still working in his study. Pretending that documents and phone calls are more important than his lack of sleep.
I see the shadows under his eyes, getting deeper with each passing day.
My feet hit cool marble. I'm wearing one of his shirts and nothing else because I prefer them over the clothes he's had moved to his bedroom from my old room. They remind me of a different Violet. Different Elio. The shirt hits mid-thigh and smells like him. Clean and sharp. It's the most possessive thing I've ever done, and I'm not even a little sorry about it.
Moonlight seeps through tall windows, throwing silver rectangles on the floor as I cross the hallway. His study door is open. Lamplight spills into the corridor, pooling on the marble like something liquid. Inside, he's at the desk, sleeves rolled to the elbows, forearms braced on scattered papers. The lamp cuts him into planes and shadows. Cheekbone. Jaw. The dark fall of hair he hasn't pushed back. He hasn't heard me yet. Or he has, and he's waiting to see what I do. With Elio, it's never clear.
This is the man who terrified me.
This is the man who saved me.
This is the man I'm going to walk to right now because I'm done sitting on the other side of his patience.
He looks up when I'm three steps in, his pen stopping mid-page over an open file. He's got that scanning look he gets when he's assessing a situation at speed, clocking my gaze, my mouth, my bare feet on his floor, the way I'm walking toward him. Henotices the lack of fear on my face, or sadness, or any of the other things he's been bracing himself for every night for ten days.
"Violet." He's measuring me the way he measures threats. Calculating distance, reading intent. And I love it and hate it in equal measure because it means he's still on guard and I'm so goddamn tired of guards.
I don't answer rounding the desk instead. His chair pushes back as he makes room, patting his lap. I can see the assumption straight away. He thinks I need to talk. Or cry. Or be held in that careful, non-sexual, I'm-here-but-I-won't-push way he's been holding me for ten days. Palms on my back, chin on my head, steady heartbeat and steady voice andI've got you, tesorowhile every muscle in him stays deliberately, agonizingly still.
I'm grateful for all of it.
I'm done with it all.
I swing my leg over his lap. Settle my weight. Knees on either side of his thighs in the leather chair, the shirt riding up, my palms on his shoulders. His grip goes to my hips on instinct. Muscle memory, reflex, the hold of a man who's had me in this position before and whose body remembers exactly how this goes. And then they freeze. Hover. Suspended an inch from my skin as if he's hit an invisible wall.
This man. This man who runs an empire. Who gives orders that end lives... is hovering over my hips like he needs a signed permission slip.
"I need to feel something that isn't pain."
His jaw works. Dark eyes on mine. So dark they swallow the lamplight, bottomless and cracked open the way they were in that cell when he saw me against the wall.
"You're still healing."
"I'm asking." Two words to start a war I watch play out across him. The man who wants to protect me, and the man who wants me, and the man who's been sleeping in a fucking chair for tendays because he'd rather wreck his own spine than crowd me by an inch.
He doesn't move.
So I take his hands. Both of them. Lift them from where they're hovering and press them to my hips. Hold them there. Feel his fingers resist, then curl, then grip, and the quiet, involuntary sound that comes out of him is the most honest thing I've heard from Elio Marchetti sinceyou're safe, tesoro.
I lean forward and press my lips against his. He kisses me like I'm made of new skin. Careful. Testing. His mouth barely there, lips brushing mine with restraint. I can feel the effort it costs him to be this soft because he's shaking against my hips.
I pull back just enough to look at him. Lamplight on one side, shadow on the other. And the thing behind those dark eyes, the unchained thing that snapped a man's neck, is watching me with something that looks nothing like violence.
