AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And she said his name the way he’d told her to. She sang it, over and over, until he could not tell the difference between the melody and the name itself.
Between his name and her and this magic they made between the two of them.
And when it all broke apart, sending them both shattering, he was the one who cried out. He was the one who called her name like a summoning, a reckoning.
Like a new song.
And he didn’t know how long they stayed like that, there on that antique table where his grandfather had entertained Europe’s finest, in his time.
He didn’t care, either. Minutes, hours, years. As long as she was with him, curled around him, a part of him—
But he didn’t allow himself to finish that thought.
He pulled himself away from her with more reluctance than was healthy or wise. He tucked himself into his trousers, and then, without thinking it through, lifted her up into his arms.
She dropped her head to his shoulder, and he felt a surge of feeling he couldn’t begin to identify wash over him. Something he might have called tender, if he was that kind of man. If there was anything soft inside him.
If there was, it was only hers.
A thought that should have disturbed him, but he shoved it aside.
And he carried her from the grand dining room, through the villa, until he found the master bedroom. Once there, he settled her in his bed.
He did not question himself. He did not analyze what he was doing. He simply did it.
Cristiano busied himself removing his own clothes. He was crawling back into the bed beside her when she opened her eyes again, fixed them on him and smiled.
Light. Heat.
Joy, even.
And he didn’t know what to do with the things in him that rose to meet that smile. Something like wonder, God help him. And a strange tenderness that would likely appall him, come morning.
But it was still night. And more than anything else, there was still that driving greed that made him reach for her all over again.
“Am I allowed to talk yet?” she asked softly, her smile firming into a solemn line, though her eyes still laughed at him, toffee-colored and sweet.
“Of course,” he said, rolling her into him. “You have one word, as always. Use it well.”
Cristiano did not need words. He didn’t know the right ones—or worse, he did, but could not bring himself to say them. Because he had always known who he was. He had always known that he did not have the same capacities in him that others did, or his own father would not have despised him. And he, in turn, would not have let him leave that bar in Monaco while so impaired.
Love was for other people. Tenderness was a dream.
He had always prided himself on his directness instead.
So he used his mouth on her in other ways, his hands and the hardest part of him too, while she sang that song of hers.
That beautiful song that was in him now. The song he knew he would never escape, as long as he lived.
He used what he had and he told her all those things he could never say out loud, never in words. He told her over and over again, until dawn.
When the sun rose over the Tuscan hills and Cristiano was still himself.
Always and ever himself, and destined therefore to remain alone.
CHAPTER NINE
CRISTIANOWASNOTin the bed when she woke.
