Page 78 of The Savage

I laugh, really laugh, and for a few minutes, I forget everything else.

When the plates are cleared, he rises slowly and deliberately and comes to stand behind my chair. His hands rest lightly on the backrest, his breath brushing my wimple. Then my shoulder.

‘Hush, ragazza. I promised civility,’ he says softly. ‘I didn’t promise restraint.’

I turn, startled, and he’s there.

Too close. Close enough that the world contracts to his scent and his shadow.

He bends, just a little, and kisses me.

It’s not like the first time. That had been a storm. This is the moment after: wet earth, thunder still humming in the bones. He coaxes rather than commands, one hand cupping my jaw, thumb grazing my throat.

The kiss starts slow, then deepens, unfurls. His tongue strokes mine once, barely, and I gasp into his mouth. He swallows the sound like it’s his favourite sin.

When he pulls back, I’m trembling. My lips ache and my pulse doesn’t know what to do with itself.

He studies me like he’s cataloguing the damage. ‘You’re shaking,’ he murmurs.

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Tell me to stop.’

I can’t.

He smiles faintly. ‘Exactly.’

He presses one last chaste, almost reverent, kiss to my forehead and steps back. ‘You should rest, angel.’

I nod, unable to form words.

As he limps away, I touch my lips and realise my fingers are trembling. The taste of him lingers, trailing wine, danger and something electric over my senses.

I turn towards the sea. The horizon blurs and I don’t know if I’m crying or if the wind just feels like it.

‘Why,’ I whisper to the dark, ‘is the devil tempting me so much?’

No answer.

Only the sound of the waves and the ghost of his mouth on mine.

11

RENZO

It’s just past midnight.

I’m pacing while the palazzo drowses like an old cat.

Somewhere on the far side of the island, a bar is closing with laughter and revelry and a fraction of the horn blaring that makes me miss the carnage of New York.

I miss the charged and primal purpose of enforcing Salvatore will on someone deserving. It takes a fraction of time to realise this is the longest I’ve gone without shrugging into capo-mode or race-driver suit. Also the longest I’ve been separated from my twin since we left the womb.

It takes another stunned moment to realise that while it makes me itch to be separated from the life I’ve known, I don’t miss either roles as frantically as I thought.

Fuck.

Sure, I fully intend to get back to the race track and to cracking skulls as soon as I’m able, but right here, with the only sounds my bare feet on marble and the sea’s patient whisper under the terrace, I’m mildly… unbothered by outside life.