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“I wasn’t finished. You do all that, and you have all this, and everyone thinks you’re this god, untouchable, all-knowing, holding power over life and death…and it’s true, but you’re up there in your tower and you’re all alone.”
As soon as the words left me, a warning sounded through the thick fog in my head.Wait, what did I say?I tried to recall as Renato stared at me.
“Well, heavy is the head that wears the crown, after all.”
“Machiavelli?” I wondered.
He was so close to me, and the air had grown thick as we’d spoken. He hadn’t pulled back when I’d leveled my drunken psychoanalysis at him. In fact, he seemed closer than ever.
“Shakespeare,” Renato corrected gently. “Henry IV.”
Right. A timely reminder that this man was way out of my league in terms of experience and worldliness.
“You know a lot. I bet you’ve read all the books in your library, haven’t you? You’re much smarter than me. I’ve never been out of the state, did you know that? Never been on an airplane. I can’t really speak any other languages fluently, but I bet you know that. You know everything about me,” I murmured.
Renato watched me with a kind of fascination I couldn’t deal with in my hazy state. It was too intense. This man was intense about everything, and yet I hadn’t seen him stare at anyone the way he stared at me.
“No one looks at me the way you do,” I heard myself say. My already-flimsy filter was MIA at the moment.
“No one talks to me the wayyoudo,” he responded, reaching out and cupping my cheek. It felt affectionate and intimate. My heart beat strangely.
“Because you’d kill them?”
Renato smirked and reached toward the omelet pan to turn off the heat. Then he straightened up and rounded the island toward me.
The chessboard sat beside me in the funny configuration I’d set up, with the king encircled by a few squares of space on all sides.
I spun around on the stool to keep him in sight. He wasn’t the kind of man you turned your back on. It would be like putting your back to a panther and trusting it not to pounce.
He stopped before me, stepping so close I had to open my legs for him to fit. He reached past me toward the chessboard. He picked up biggest piece from the opponent’s side of the board and set her down beside the lonely king.
The queen.
Thewhitequeen.
The black-and-white couple sat at the top of the board, isolated, but not alone. Not anymore.
Renato turned to me and cupped my face, stroking both thumbs over my cheeks, looking at me like I was something precious.
Something holy.
I opened my mouth to speak, desperate to fill a silence too intimate to bear, but there were no words waiting for me. I had no way to distract myself from the expression in his eyes and the undeniable knowledge that something was happening between us. Something huge and real.
His lips met mine, and it was a kiss unlike any he’d given me so far. It was as gentle as a man like him was capable of being. He brushed his lips against mine, and it was a request. I parted my lips in a gasp. The heat of his hands on my face, the closeness of his body…it was intoxicating. His tongue slid into my mouth and tangled languidly with mine.
He kissed me like he was tasting every inch of me. Savoring.
I dug my hands into his shirt, tugging him closer, holding him in place.
He smiled against my lips. “Don’t worry,mia moglie. I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured.
“What doesmia mogliemean?”
“My wife,” he supplied, pressing kisses along my jaw toward my ear.
“What aboutbambina?”
“Baby girl.”
