The last stanza of three stared up at her from the stark white pages, the corner dog-eared like Alessio had intended to come back to it, and the edge of the paper smudged like someone touched it often.
And this thing,
misunderstood
and overlooked,
vivid
but understated,
and which shatters
and grows
and is,
will always be,
at the heart,
most human.
For we love,
we always love.
He had known it by heart.
How long had it been since he had this book?
And he remembered that?
“One of my favorites in there,” he said.
His fingers drifted along the edge of the book in her hands. When his fingertips brushed the side of her palm as he was pulling away, Ginevra froze. Not because he’d touched her at all, but because of the way it felt and what it did. How it warmed her and shocked her all at the same time. An energy she couldn’t explain, a shift that felt visceral.
So fucking real.
And not at all what she asked for.
She glanced up only to find he wasn’t looking at the book at all, but rather, at her. Gone was that angry, dark glint in his eyes from earlier, now replaced with only that curiosity she had seen.
How did the saying go?
Curiosity killed the cat.
“I don’t think I wonder why he found something in you,” Alessio murmured, “I wonder what it is.”
Ginevra swallowed hard, confused by this man. “I didn’t ask for—”
“That doesn’t change that it is—it’s a thing now.”
Yeah.
He wasn’t wrong.
Alessio tipped his head to the side, his grin deepening to something more sinful. It was enough to take her breath away, but that only left her perplexed. “Would you like to read the next one?”
Needing to break his stare, she peered down, and flipped the page without thinking. The black words printed on the white paper stared up at her, and as her gaze took the poem in, she felt her cheeks heat.
Damn.
She’d forgotten what the next one was.
He sounds
rough,
when he needs you.
There is
fire,
as he loves you.
He discovers
life,
as he fucks you.
Ginevra’s voice grew faint, but hot, as she spoke the last word. It was all of one stanza, and twenty-one words. But it felt purposeful, as though he’d known what the next poem in the book would be, and he wanted her to read it.
“Another favorite,” he murmured.
She desperately wanted to look at anything but him, and yet, her gaze lifted to see what he looked like right then. So, she might know if there was something to see there that he wasn’t saying.
Instead, she found him staring at her lips.
“Did you like that,” he asked, his tone roughening, “watching us from the end of the hallway that night? Did you know we shared women? Us together, I mean. It was fun—fair game. And then there was you, and he broke the fucking rules.”
“I—”
“Yes or no suffices, Ginevra. You either liked seeing us like that—together—and you want to see more, or you didn’t. Yes or no.”
Fine.
If that’s the game he wanted to play.
“Yes.”
Alessio chuckled, his thumb edging along the page in the book before raising, so he could slide the pad of the digit against the seam of her mouth. She hadn’t expected the touch until it was right there, but she couldn’t find it in herself to back away.
Not when he was looking at her like that.
Yeah ...
Entirely overwhelming.
That’s what this man was.
“If you liked that,” he told her, “then you should see us when we fuck.”
She sucked in a sharp breath.
Alessio winked before leaning in and pulling his thumb away to drop a featherlight kiss to her lips. There was something wicked about the kiss. How his lips moved against hers, and then his tongue swept the seam of her mouth to coax it open for him. She didn’t need to be kissing the man whose lover she had been in bed with that morning, but she answered his kiss back.
It felt natural.
And sinful.
Then, as fast as it had happened, it was over, and he stepped back. Not that it mattered.
She felt it.
Everywhere.
The same way she could still taste him—a minty heat—lingering on her tongue and lips. Ginevra took a step back, too, needing the distance, and holding the open book closer to herself like that might stop him from doing it again. And why did she want that?
Because she liked the kiss.
As quick as it had been.
She still liked it.
“Why would you do that?” she asked, airless.
To hurt Corrado?
Or confuse her?
To make this worse?
Alessio lifted one shoulder, the hint of a smile creeping in. “I wanted to know if your lips were as soft as they looked, that’s all.”
She still couldn’t breathe.
“That was why?”
“Does there have to be another reason?”
Ginevra wished her throat wasn’t so tight, or that her heart would calm. “I think there is when the circumstances here are not—”
“If I wanted to cause Corrado pain, because I know that’s what you think, I wouldn’t use you to do it. I know the best place to hit that man to make it hurt, and I promise it isn’t you. Not yet, anyway. We’ll see if that changes.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means, I kissed you because I wanted to. Nothing else, so don’t make it into something when it’s nothing.”
It didn’t feel like nothing.
She was sure, to him, it couldn’t be nothing.
“But you shouldn’t—”
“I shouldn’t do a lot of things I do, and here I still am, doing it.”
Ginevra ran the tip of her tongue along the edge of her lips, finding more of his flavor there. “You’re a complex man.”
Perplexing.
And difficult, likely.
She had that feeling.
Alessio hummed low and waved a finger at her. “You’re not wrong.”
Well, at least he knew what he was.
That was a start.
“You should go back to the spot where I had to stop reading, and start from there,” he said, turning and dropping into a nearby chair like his body was water, and it all moved at once. Hooking his combat boots one over the other at the ankles along the arm of the chair, he nodded at her. “Go on, it’s been a while since someone read me poetry.”
“You want me to read to you?”
“Why not?”
Yes.
That was a good question.
Why not?
Ginevra didn’t have an answer.
So, she found the page he’d left dog-eared toward the middle of the book, the last marking he had made, and read. Alessio watched her the whole time, and she felt that, too.
His gaze?
Yeah.
She felt that right down to her bones. Like he was trying to figure her out, or learn what made her tick by staring at her. But what did he think he would find?
That was the better question.
3.
Corrado
What the fuck are you nervous for? It’s Les. Les.