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“Francis,” Vitari croaked, climbing to his feet. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “My mouth is yours to fuck anytime you like, just like the rest of me.” He slammed a salty kiss on Francis’s lips, then slumped against him with a thick, satisfied chuckle.
Francis tried to right Vitari’s hair by stroking the locks sticking out at odd angles, put there by his fist, then winced when they refused to obey. “I ruined your hair.”
“My hair?” Vitari snickered and nuzzled his neck. “It’s my throat you ruined. I never want this to end, but I’m also dead on my feet. Come to bed. Sleep with me. Just be with me?”
An unexpected knot clogged Francis’s throat, put there by everything, but mostly a surge of needing to love and care and comfort this brutally brilliant yet also vulnerable man who held Francis’s whole heart in his hands.
They fell into bed, tangled together, warm skin on skin, and Vitari planted delicate butterfly kisses all over him—on his face, his neck, his chest—and told him of all the ways he loved him in Italian. Francis knew the words now and knew what it cost Vitari to say them.
Because Francis felt the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Vitari
Francis snored against his shoulder, so damned adorable it was criminal. Vitari wanted to stay spooned around him forever. But the real world seeped back in, souring his thoughts. This was a long way from over. He’d started a war—a war his father should have begun long ago. A war of vengeance. But so much still didn’t add up, and the more he lay and stared at Francis’s blissful face, the more his heart ached, full of fear for the future.
He didn’t want to think about his father. He’d spent the moments since his brutal murder not thinking about what had happened, or what his father had done, or his confession. Or how Neo had been right…
Vitari wouldn’t have killed him. Did that make him a coward?
Staring at the ceiling wasn’t helping clear his head. The questions chased each other around his head.
He shifted out from under Francis’s arms and sat on the edge of the bed. His watch read just gone 3 a.m. The plane to Monte Carlo would leave early afternoon. They had a few hours yet, and Vitari needed to think of every possible scenario in which to keep them alive.
“Ughm… don’t go,” Francis mumbled.
“Go back to sleep, amore.”
Francis blinked sleepy, glassy eyes. “Every time we do this, you leave and something horrible happens. Stay.” He reached out, grabbed Vitari’s tattooed wrist, and pulled.
Vitari surrendered, flopping back down beside him. Admittedly, he hadn’t put up much of a fight.
Francis’s leg locked around his thigh, pinning him down. “Hm,” he purred and shuffled up against Vitari, tucking all of him in close. “Venezuela,” Francis muttered. “Panama… I just want one night together and to wake up with you beside me. And nobody shooting at us.”
It was hard to argue with that. Hard to argue with him. Vitari sighed, and with his arm trapped under Francis, he stroked up and down his back. He had to admit, this—being in the moment—was good.
They stayed like that a while, calm, quiet, fingers teasing. But Francis wasn’t sleeping now either. He blinked soft brown lashes and occasionally glanced at Vitari’s face to see if he was still awake.
“You know, while training as a priest, we had classes on counseling, and I suspect I—we—might be using sex as a trauma response,” Francis said.
Vitari snorted. “I’m okay with that if you are.”
Francis smiled, and draping his arm over Vitari’s chest, he danced his fingers around Vitari’s left nipple, making him shiver. Sex with Francis was a trauma response, but it was also where they were both the most free. Free of the church, free of the Mafia. Was it any wonder they snatched at sex as though it might save them every damn time?
“Vitari?”
Vitari dipped his chin and met Francis’s gaze. His expression had gotten serious.
“Are you all right?” Francis asked. “I mean… Everything has changed for you.”
He knew what he meant. His father had been shot dead a few rooms away, a father he’d hated, but also loved. The most fucking awful father anyone could have, but Vitari had begun to accept he’d gotten some shit about Giancarlo wrong. “I don’t know… If he’d just told me the truth, none of this would have happened.” Vitari would still have gone after Sasha, but all of the lies and stupid threats, trying to get Francis to back off Stanmore? “He didn’t have to hurt you.” Vitari found Francis’s burned hand and clasped it in his own. “He hated me, or I thought he did, but at the end… before Neo killed him, he brought you here, and he must have known I was waiting. Maybe he planned to use you as a shield, but… that doesn’t feel right. I think he was trying to tell me something, in the end. Trying to tell me that you and me, maybe we’re okay? So, I don’t know what to think.”
“Delle pene d’amore, si tribola e non si muore,” Francis said. Then winced and added, “Did I say it right?”
Vitari raised his eyebrows. Francis had mangled some of the pronunciation, but he knew the meaning of the phrases, which boiled down to: love hurts but time heals. “I’m going to have to be more careful what I say around you, huh.”
“Your father was a complicated man.”
