His face contracted into the clear indicators of surprise, and I should have used his distraction to end his existence for stepping into my territory, into mywife’sterritory, but I could not. Brenno Fera should have died a long time before now, but I could not do it and that was illogical and confusing, but it was a limitation that I could not overcome.
Adriano’s familiar hands snatched me into his grip and away from my brother, one holding the blood into my body, the other firing shots at them.
The lights were too bright, the sounds were too loud, the touch too harsh against my body. He dragged me backward, and I clenched my hands together, trying to steady myself with the chaos already caused.
“Don’t kill them, Adrian,” I said breathlessly, but he could not hear me over Brenno’s shouts. “Adriano!”
“I willhauntyou, Milano!” Brenno roared, fighting against Cesare’s arms. “I’ll come for her. I will. I’ll be her worst fucking nightmare!”
I was aware that there was a sound emanating from my body, though I could not feel anything over the blinding need to kill my brother for threatening my wife. My body was numb, unfeeling, unrestrained—not from his knife but his words. I could have killed a thousand men, and it would not have satiated the blankness inside of me.
Sicily would remain unharmed.
Sicilyhadto remain unharmed.
My lips were moving, chanting my mother’s words, trying to fill the hole inside of me withsomething.My focus was distracted and hazy and it was all overwhelming. I felt too little but too much, like I was losing blood, but I was not.
I was simply experiencing emotion for the first time in years, and it was flooding into me as if it wanted to tear me apart.
“Shhh, Milan.” That voice was soft and calm and certainly not Adriano.
Sicily gripped my wrists, stopping them from moving, and it was then that I noticed the dark, cold air outside, the car door clicking open, the leather seats,her.She was speaking to me, touching me, not ignoring me, and things became clear again through the haze of my emotional turbulence.
I inhaled until my lungs were full and I was alive again, in her life again.
I should have looked out of the window to see where we were going when the car began to move, to analyze our surroundings, to ensure optimal safety for us all, but as my fingers flexed, I felt Sicily’s waist.
She was…on top of me, her long sparkly dress hanging from her as she straddled me. My head pressed back into the headrest, and I held her there with my fingers at her waist, while her own covered the blood on my chest as though she could heal it with her touch.
Maybe she could. I could not feel the pain when she touched me.
My head leaned back against the seats, subconsciously trying to see more of her. My lips twitched as she frowned, but for the first time in ten years, they did not stop at the twitch.
Ismiled.
“Why are you smiling like that, you creep?” she hissed, a tear rolling down her cheek as she attempted to further patch my wounds with her bare fingers. “Are you bleeding out, or what?”
Anyone with basic knowledge of human anatomy would know that her attempts to fix my body were useless, but Adriano had said that a lot of times, people’s attempts demonstrated emotion, and their emotion further impliedcareor worse,love.
I was incapable of experiencing the emotions Sicily was demonstrating, and I knew that she did not love me just as I could not her, but I wanted to feel, just once, justher.
I gripped her wrists at my torn shirt, squeezing hard enough that her knuckles curved and her nails dug the wounds open again.
With the scent of blood came a realization that she was trying to get away and that indicated she did not like to hurt me. That meant she must not have been upset with me any longer. My chest felt alight with this, warm and flickering with a flame that did not lose control and burn me.
With the sharpness of her nails came the sound of her small cries, and that doused the flame and made everything within feel wet and cold, like if I did not fix how she portrayed these emotions, I would never be warm again.
With the stain of blood on her porcelain skin came the spark deep inside that reignited it all, even the cold, and forced it into a freezing, scorching, destroying need to hunt my brother and soak my hands in his blood for marring hers with mine.
I wasfeelingwith the ferocity of a thousand humans, and it was because ofher.
My cock strained against her on my lap, and I surpassed all of my brain’s logic. I understood that I would sell my soul to study her eyes as I buried myself so deep inside of her that she forgot her anger with me.
Sex was control. It was on my terms; it was not emotional but purely physical. It was releasing, and that was all. It served a necessary purpose to optimize my focus and physical body. I had notdesireduntil I had met her, and it was unbearably chaotic.
“Kiss me,” I whispered—practically panting.
I was thirty years old and had engaged in a lot of sexual intercourse with prostitutes and women that Adriano and I had shared, but never had I kissed anyone romantically, not once. It was unsanitary and time-wasting, but as I looked at her, I understood that with Sicily, it would be a way to worship her without the words I could not say.
