Page 222 of Alessio

“Something good,” Corrado mumbled against his skin.

“Yeah.”

As the shaking started to wane, his mouth trailed higher over Alessio’s back. His teeth found the junction of Alessio’s shoulder and neck, biting just hard enough for him to react. And he did—his semi-hard dick jerking in Corrado’s hand. He tightened his grip just to let the man know he felt that, too.

“Fuck,” Alessio mumbled. “Easy.”

Corrado laughed. “Now, you want easy?”

“And?” Then, quieter, Alessio added, “I know I fucked up earlier … I didn’t think because I didn’t like seeing it—him taunting you when you were already down. So, I reacted.”

Clearing his throat, Corrado pulled himself carefully from Alessio before rolling to his side on the double bed. Using his arms as a pillow, he stared hard at the ceiling for a while, saying nothing. He heard what Alessio told him; he understood it was important. Sometimes, things people said didn’t seem all that deep on the surface, but it was the shit they didn’t say that mattered the most.

He figured with this … the things Alessio said and didn’t say were both equally important, and he needed to keep the fuck up.

Glancing over at his companion in the bed, Corrado replied, “I get it—you can’t do it again, though.”

Alessio, still on his stomach with his hands twisting into the edge of the comforter, curled his upper lip like the idea offended him. “What, protect you?”

Corrado frowned.

Was that what he’d thought he did?

“I don’t think I can do that,” Alessio said after a beat of silence passed between them. “But I’m not really sorry about it.”

Yeah.

“What do you think he said?” Chris asked, his sarcasm heavy. “It’s Cree, you figure it out.”

“So, he basically told you no, but spouted some Yoda bullshit while he was at it.”

“Yeah, and—”

“You didn’t have to be here, though.” Corrado made a noise under his breath, adding, “We told you that, but you decided to stay. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

“It’s not about being here.”

“I think it is.”

“Corrado—”

“I don’t know what else to tell you, Chris. You chose to stay. This is what it means.”

Chris made a disgusted sound. “Fuck all of this.”

Something crashed against the floor—a metal ting ringing out—before a few seconds later, Chris came flying out of the room where he and Corrado had been working for a good portion of the afternoon. Alessio, leaning against the wall because he’d figured it was better not to interrupt the brothers and their work, avoided Chris’s gaze when he came storming out. Not that it made much of a difference, as he still saw the glare Chris threw his way before he passed him by without as much as a hello.

Alessio wasn’t offended.

He didn’t know much—if anything at all—about Corrado’s twin, and not really for a lack of interest. There simply wasn’t a lot of time here to bother with making friends. At least, not during that first year, unless someone was training you with a partner, or to be part of a team. Then, it was pertinent that you became friends with the person who you would be forced to trust with your life at one point or another.

It was strange, in a way, how he could easily pick out the differences between Chris and Corrado, and without much effort at all, too. But everyone else seemed more interested in finding all the things that made them exactly the same.

Alessio liked what made them unique.

He waited until Chris rounded the corner at the end of the corridor before he pushed away from the wall. Coming to stand in the doorway of the room where the two had been working, Alessio quickly found Corrado in the room.

Sitting at a large metal table, surrounded by dismantled pieces of several guns, Corrado stared hard at the wall, lost in his thoughts. His brow, dipped in concentration, knotted further before he shook his head. Still, he kept staring like he wasn’t willing to get back to work.