He smiles, slow and helpless this time. “Liar.”
I open the door and push him out before either of us can make good on any more threats disguised as flirting. He lingers just beyond the threshold anyway, one hand braced on the frame, eyes on my face like he’s trying to memorize whatever version of me exists in this moment before the world starts asking for harder shapes again.
“I’ll call,” he says.
“You’d better,” I reply.
“I’ll come back.”
My throat tightens anyway, even knowing now he means it. “I know.”
He hesitates for one last second, then turns and walks away down the corridor with that same perfect Vieri control sliding back over him piece by piece. Suit. Spine. King. But I know what’s under it now because he handed it back to me all over again this morning, and that changes the sight completely.
I wait until he disappears around the corner before I shut the door.
Then I lean against it and close my eyes because my heart is beating far too hard for a man who has already said I love youand meant it. The room is quieter without him. Colder, but still full of the shape of him anyway.
After a long moment, I let out a breath and rest my forehead briefly against the wood.
All right, now we survive the wait.
Then, because I’m still me, I start thinking about the island.
twenty-three
Vincenzo
BythetimeIget home, the day has gone from exhilarating to surreal.
I should be thinking about consequences, timing, and the fact that I just left a hotel room where I let the man I have loved for more than eight years put his hands all over me until I forgot my own name. I should be thinking about the thousand ways this can still go wrong.
Instead, I’m thinking about the way he looked at me when he said he loved me. The way he cupped my face and begged me not to cry while looking like he might break open himself if I did.
I’m thinking about the island idea, ridiculous and impossible, and already half-real in his head before I could even make a joke out of it.
I’m thinking about his hand at the small of my back when he walked me to the door, how reluctant he looked to let me go, how alive I felt because of it.
The villa is dark when I arrive, quiet in that expensive way only heavily guarded homes ever are. The fountain in the courtyardstill runs, lit from beneath. The front doors open before I reach them because someone in this house is always watching.
The staff says nothing; they never do. They take my coat, note the hour, and file away the signs of where I’ve been and who I’ve been with and make the smart choice to mind their own business.
I head upstairs without bothering to speak to anyone.
Our room should be empty, since Arabella has elected to sleep in her own suite rather than the room attached to my personal one. We haven’t shared a bed in any meaningful way for longer than either of us likes to say out loud.
We share appearances, functions, a surname, a household, and a table when necessary. But the actual bed itself has become one more expensive piece of furniture between us, useful for photographs and very little else.
So, when something pulls me toward that bedroom, and I push open the door to find two tangled bodies under my sheets, I don’t stop because I’m shocked.
I stop because, for half a second, I genuinely have to recalibrate what I’m looking at.
Arabella is asleep on her side, facing toward the door, silk hair spilled over one pillow, bare shoulder out from under the duvet. Behind her, one arm slung over her waist, is Lucien.
Lucien.
My second-in-command and oldest surviving friend, if that word can still be used for men like us. The man who has stood at my shoulder through coups, funerals, votes, wars, and every other version of blood we politely call business.
He is very naked, very asleep, and very much in my bed with my wife.
