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“Raphael—” I reached over to touch him but drew my hand back.
“I needed to see it again. That’s all that night was. I was drunk.”
“Please slow down. You’re scaring me.” Just then we hit a pothole. I let out a small scream, my seat belt tightening as I shot my hands out to the dashboard.
He laughed, but the sound was strange, not a laugh at all, but he slowed the truck down.
“Are you scared of me or my driving?” he asked.
“Both,” I answered honestly. “He didn’t tell me anything about your scars. He told me you were a good brother. A protective one. That was all.”
He looked at me, studying my eyes in the dim light of the dash.
“I asked him, and he said it was your story to tell. That’s all, Raphael.”
That seemed to calm him a little, and we drove in silence for ten minutes before he took a turn off to a winding road leading up toward what looked to be an abandoned, crumbling village.
“And it wasn’t nothing,” I said, collecting my courage. I studied his profile. “What happened the other night, you weren’t just drunk. It was something.”
He didn’t reply. We both sat silent as we drove. He finally parked the car along the outer walls of the village. He switched off the engine and sat looking at it. I kept my eyes on him.
“What did Damon mean when he said you were a protective brother?” I had to ask it. But I knew the answer, didn’t I? I could guess.
Raphael turned to me, the pain in his eyes the same pain I’d seen the night before. He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he climbed out of the truck. I undid my seat belt and followed.
“This is Civitella in Val di Chiana.”
“It looks abandoned.” It was so dark.
“It’s not. Not completely. There are a few festivals during the summer, then again in September at the harvest, but apart from that, it’s quiet.”
I followed him up through the crumbling stone gate, looking around, reading the signs of the shops—a baker, a butcher, several little cafés. When I stumbled, he caught me and held my hand the rest of the way until we were at the top of the village in an open area, which must have once been part of the house that now lay in ruins. Grass had long covered the ground, and at the very center of the now small field, he stopped and looked up. I followed his gaze and stared in awe at the black sky dotted with diamond stars.
“No light pollution,” he said and sat down.
I sat beside him.
“It’s amazing.”
“My mom used to bring me out here.” He lay back. “On the bad nights.”
I followed, and we both watched the sky.
“Take care when fighting monsters you don’t become one,” he said.
I turned my head, but he wasn’t watching me.
“Nietzsche,” he added.
“You’re not a monster.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You keep telling me that.” He turned on his side to face me.
“You know what I want to do right now, Sofia?”
His gaze slid down to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and his hand came to my belly. Watching me, he slowly began to bunch up my dress, the fine cotton tickling my thighs as it rose higher and higher.
I put my hand over his. “Stop.”
“Why?”
He took both my wrists and dragged them over my head before rolling on top of me.
I held my breath, gasping when I realized what I felt pressing at my stomach.
Raphael’s mouth came to mine in a brief but lustful kiss.
“I want to make it hurt, Sofia.”
His voice was so quiet, and desire burned in his eyes as he brought his mouth back to mine, his lips not soft, but not quite hard. He transferred both of my wrists into his one hand, and his other one slid to my thigh as he opened my legs with his knees, watching my face as he did so, watching my eyes with a darkness that both terrified me and made me want.
“Stop,” I tried again, sounding unconvincing to my own ears.
“Maybe it’s because of how I grew up.”
His grip on my wrists tightened when I began to struggle as the fingers of his other hand roamed my inner thigh, rising higher, just brushing against the edge of my panties.
“Raphael—”
“There’s been a change.”
“What change?”
He shook his head, as if setting that thought aside. “It won’t make a difference if I take you tonight or tomorrow night or the next night. You’re mine. That’s all that matters.”
He swallowed hard and licked his lips, and I could hardly breathe for the look in his now dark eyes.
“Does it scare you that I want it to hurt you? That I want you to feel me take you. Feel me tear you.”
I bit my lip.
“That I want to hear you cry out.”
