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“So, what do you want?”
She searches for words but struggles to find them.
“You won’t like the answer,” she warns me.
“I don’t expect to,” I admit. Contessa probably still wants her freedom, her old life, some prince charming to sweep in and save her from this. I won’t be shocked if what she wants in the bedroom isn’t what she wants in real life.
“I want what Vera had,” she finally admits, like a confession.
A coldness creeps into my stomach.
…she was right. I don’t like that answer.
“It’s what any little girl raised on princesses and love songs wants. Loving someone so much, you’d never want anyone else. You’re not whole without them. I think that’s the kind of love most people want.”
Nobody should want that. Those kids lost their father, and now they barely have a mother because she can’t. . .the words get over it feel too cruel, even for Vera. I walk back the thought, pushing down the bitterness.
I knew when I asked that question, whatever Contessa would say would be beyond what I could give her—I just thought it would be because it didn’t serve my purpose, not because I wasn’t capable of it.
I’m still processing it when she takes my face in her own hands—the opposite of my own commanding touch, so gentle and careful. She looks me over, searching my face intently. Her expression flickers.
Hesitantly, she brings our mouths together. A slow, soft kiss. The first one I’ve ever tasted that isn’t flavored by some carnal instinct, just a steppingstone to fucking. She takes point, leading the kiss. If I move, I will shatter it. I will be too rough, too demanding. For the first time, Contessa is the more experienced of us. I don’t know how to stomach that.
“That’s what I want,” she says, barely letting an inch come between us.
I hate being at a disadvantage, hate inexperience and the uncertainty that comes with it.
But if there’s any territory I’ve never explored, it’s this.
I’m too much of a coward to give it a goddamn label, and that weakness burns me up inside.
“Christ, why can’t you just want the moon?” I nearly beg, feeling her small hand spread against my chest, my heart pounding against her palm. “I’d have better odds.”
She looks up at me, eye to eye, her smile full of delicate optimism.
“I don’t want the moon. And I’d be very disappointed if you were the kind of man who let the odds get in his way.”
She slides out of my hands, leaving them feeling numb.
She picks up my phone, and I watch as she crawls into bed with me, pushing me back down into the sheets and cuddling herself against me. She calls her father.
With her head on my shoulder, she tells him to give her up—that she has no interest in going home to him.
I stare at her, as if I don’t know what to do with her.
Before she has barely ended the call, silencing her father’s bewildered objections, I have her pinned under me again.
18
Contessa
Apparently, I am having an engagement party. I thought an engagement party was meant to bring the two families together, to celebrate an upcoming happy union. For Salvatore and me, too many words in that sentence need asterisks next to them. My engagement party will only be attended by Salvatore’s family, and how happy our union turns out seems to depend on something a little finicky, like the weather or my rising star sign.
But for a few days now, I have been able to blissfully smile and pretend like Salvatore and I are just another couple. It’s easier than it should be, and I think Salvatore is starting to like it, too. He really took my little challenge to heart.
It’s a little adorable—though he might spontaneously combust if I used those exact words with him out loud.
He promises me that the engagement party won’t be the whole family, not like that first formal dinner. The people I’ve gotten to know—Ava, Marcel, Vinny—will all be the main attendees, and those close to Salvatore will also be invited, with a sprinkling of people who are invited out of respect and tradition.
