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Beyond the kitchen is another jaw-dropping room I hadn’t noticed before – a wine cellar. Although, it’s above ground, so is it still a cellar? A wine room? I have no idea. I can tell the difference between different kinds of tea at first whiff, but I have absolutely no palette or real knowledge of wine, even though I do like drinking it.
The wine room is separated from the kitchen by a glass wall so clean it’s almost invisible, and I nearly walk right into it. I recover just in time, finally finding a section of the glass that opens smoothly with a slight push. It’s much cooler in here than in the rest of the house, and goosebumps form along my bare arms. My braless nipples tighten.
Crossing my arms, I head into the cool, large space. It’s darker in here than in the kitchen, too, and everything feels hushed. The bottles of wine all float in curved sections of wood along the shelves, reminding me of ships in a harbour.
Right now, a glass of wine sounds absolutely perfect. I have no idea if I’m allowed to do this, but I decide I don’t care. The whole point of venturing out here was to prove that I’m not crushed under Elio’s thumb and I’m going to go for it. I gaze around the room, having absolutely no idea which bottle to choose, so I take one out at random. It’s a red, and it looks fancy and Italian. Before I lose my nerve, I scuttle back into the kitchen with my prize.
The soldier watching me now has a crease between his brows, like I’m doing something unexpected, or maybe something his boss hasn’t specifically given him instructions to handle. I smirk, picturing Elio telling the guards to let me wander around the house, but not addressing what to do if the prisoner decides to get wine drunk. Not that I’m going to get drunk. I need to keep my wits about me. But a drink to take the edge off might be just the ticket.
I already feel drunk – drunk on this tiny bit of power. I realize I’m humming as I slam open drawers and cupboards, looking for a corkscrew. I eventually find one and open the wine, leaving the corkscrew with the cork still stuck in its twirly jaws on the counter. I haven’t yet discovered where the wineglasses are, but in the cupboard straight ahead of me are little coffee cups for espresso. I grab one and glug the wine into the cup. Guess I’m doing shots, I think as I pick up the tiny cup full of wine. I raise it to my lips and am about to take a sip when a voice slices through the quiet air.
“That how you were taught to drink wine?”
The sound of someone – a very male someone – speaking surprises me so much that I slosh some of the wine down my front. I’m pissed, but then I remember that this isn’t even my shirt, so why do I care if it’s stained? I turn to look at the guard, then jolt into stillness when I see the guard is gone. Elio is watching me, his hip leaning against the island, the black leather on his right hand plastered palm-down against the granite. The rest of his clothing is all black – dress shirt, pants. It matches the coal-black gleam of his thick hair and the intense darkness of his eyes.
His gaze dips to the dark red wetness staining the front of my shirt. Or maybe to my nipples, because I don’t have a bra on and now I’m shivering under his gaze. God, I really need that wine after all. It will warm me. Fortify me. I raise the half-empty ceramic cup to my lips.
“Stop.”
I inhale sharply at the command uttered in that deadly-soft voice, cup freezing in midair. There’s an instinct inside me that wants to obey him, and it’s not entirely due to fear. But that’s the very same instinct I’ve been fighting, and I have to overcome it. Now or fucking never.
I hold his gaze and take a sip.
But you’re so fucking disobedient.
The sudden crash of his words from last night makes my skin heat, or maybe it’s the wine. I take another sip.
Elio doesn’t say anything. He moves towards me, and I want to crowd backwards against the counter and away from him, but I force myself to hold my ground. I brace for him to touch me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he plants his left hand on the counter behind me with a slight grunt then lifts his other arm to open a cupboard above my head. At the sound he makes, my eyes go to his muscled but injured shoulder, and suddenly I’m in my backyard, the new year bearing down on me with hatred and guns. I’m barefoot and terrified and cold, but he has me, he has me, and both our bodies shudder with the impact of the shot.
“Does it hurt?”
I shouldn’t be asking. I shouldn’t care. I should want him to hurt. I’m too tender-hearted for my own good. How many times has Willow told me that? That I need to be harder and sharper, to cut my way through this world like a knife instead of letting myself be led along. Led by people like my father and my teachers and Brian. By the hole that opened up inside me the day tires slid ten years ago.
Elio is a knife. No, he’s an axe. He has both the sharp edge and the bludgeoning strength. What would it be like to have power like that? To see obstacles and carve right through them, without fear and without thought? To bend everything and everyone around you to your will?
Not me, I hiss internally as Elio lowers his arm. I won’t be bent.
I will not be broken.
“Do you care?” Elio asks. There’s no sarcastic sneer, no mocking tone in his voice. It’s smooth and quiet. Simple and serious. Like he actually wants to hear the answer.
Except I don’t even know the answer. The injury – a very serious one at that – that he got protecting me has added yet another layer of complications on top of how I feel about everything that’s happened. How I feel about him.
Instead of giving him a straight answer, I ask another question.
“Why did you do it?”
He has a large stemmed wineglass in his hand. He’s holding it between us, and he’s so fucking close. Still not touching me, but that arm by my hip, that hand on the counter behind me, closes me in. The massive black wall of him looms in front of me, and my head is tipped up, and his tipped down, so we can look at each other.
“No makeup today,” he murmurs. A tingle of tension kisses its way up my spine. If both his hands weren’t occupied, I’m sure his leathery touch would be brushing against my cheek right now the way his gaze does.
“Do you care?” I shoot back at him, echoing his own question. I wonder if he prefers me with the mask of makeup. Polished and pretty and presentable.
“I can see your freckles better this way.”
My face scorches. God, it’s like I’m twelve again. Like when I bought my first foundation to cover my freckles up. Only I had no idea about how to match shades. I didn’t have a mom to help me and I ended up wearing foundation as orange as my hair. At least, that’s what the girls at school told me between bouts of vicious laughter.
I’ve come a long, long way from caring about what people think of how I look. I’ve grown to love my ginger hair, and now freckles are actually in fashion, go freaking figure. Every once in a while, I still catch myself wishing I had blonde hair and skin that tanned instead of burned, but that’s only because I miss my mom and want to see more of her gazing back at me from the mirror, not because I necessarily want to look different.
