When we break apart to catch our breaths, her eyes are dark, unfocused.
“Alessia.” Just that. Her name.
“Nico…I”—her eyes fill with emotion—“can’t.”
I can. I want. So fucking much.
I rest my forehead against hers.
“We’ll take this slow,” I promise her.
“I wasn’t flirting with Renzo.”
I chuckle. “I know. I’ve never been possessive,cara, but I am about you. It’s a new emotion, one I don’t know how to handle.”
I’ve never been this honest withanyonebefore. I’ve never laid myself bare—left myself without any armor or protection.
She cups my cheek and looks into my eyes. She goes on tiptoe and kisses me, just a touch of lip to lip. “I also don’t know how to handle how I feel.”
She gives so easily. Doesn’t hold back. Guilt fills me up. I have hurt this woman, and I can’t fathom why I did that.
“I’m so sorry, Alessia,” I say.
She puts her fingers on my lips. I kiss them. “Let’s leave the past in the past.”
She means it, too. I know that in my heart. She’s not like the other women I know who say they’ll let something go, only to bring it up again and again. No, Alessia is not like that. She’s honest. She’s giving. She’s tender and gentle. And she’s my wife.
“Grazie.”
“Want to taste some wine from last year?” she asks, excitement in her eyes. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll even let you try the hundred percent Cab Franc.”
I continue to hold her, enjoying the feel of my hands on warm curves.
She’s strong, not thin.
She’s resilient, not flat.
She’s substance, not ether.
She’s stunning, not classically beautiful.
I nod happily. “I’d like that very much.”
The bed is warm, the sheets faintly rumpled.
Alessia’s side is empty, already cooling, and for a disorienting second, I wonder if I imagined last evening and night.
We tasted wine, had dinner, leftovers from the tasting room, and we slept together. This time, I kissed her long and deep when I said good night, held her as we fell asleep.
The memory of her—soft where I expected restraint, responsive in ways that I don’t deserve—rises, makes me happy, especially the way she looked at me as if I were something she’d chosen, not something imposed.
And then, just as quickly, something else surfaces.
Fear.
This is where I usually run.
Not physically—though I’ve done that, too—but emotionally.
