That night, I was trying to read in my new bed when Renato appeared in the doorway. Trying, because the words kept moving. An entire pitcher of margaritas was a little past my tolerance level, it turned out.
Despite feeling like I was on a merry-go-round, it felt good to be done sharing a room with my sister. Her sullen mood was contagious, and I couldn’t live like that. I had to carry on with things. After all, I’d agreed to all of this. And with the police breathing down my neck, it was hard enough to keep my own mood stable.
“What are you reading?” Renato’s sudden voice from the doorway made me jump.
I dropped the book on the bed and glared at him. He lounged in the doorway, staring at me.
“How long have you been there?” I accused, unsettled by his warm expression.
“A while,” he murmured and came into the room, taking off his suit jacket and revealing a black dress shirt. It was unbuttoned at the throat, and a hint of his tattoos peeked through.
My gaze lingered on the long, muscled curves of his torso. The man was insanely hot. I couldn’t deny it. My gaze found his face, and his knowing smirk had me picking up my book again, embarrassed.
“It’s okay, bambina. I like when you watch me. I like watching you, too,” he pointed out. He undid more buttons on his shirt, leaving it open, and I studiously avoided looking at his inked torso.
He wandered toward the bed in the open shirt and his black dress pants, perched low on his hips. He stopped beside me and slid a finger under the satin strap of one of the new pajama sets that he’d bought me.
“This suits you,” he mused.
I fought the urge to squirm under his touch. “If you want to waste your money, I’m not going to stop you,” I quipped.
The bed dipped when Renato sat on the edge beside me and closed my book. I gave a pained sigh, looking everywhere but at him.
“Spending money on my wife isn’t a waste. You deserve to have nice things. Tell me whoever made you feel differently, and I’ll teach them that fact, slowly.”
I shrugged. “Life taught me that, so just calm down. There’s no one to shoot for it, thanks for asking.”
Renato’s mouth pulled up in a half-grin that was sexy as hell. He glanced at my lap. “What are you reading?” He turned the book and raised an eyebrow. “The Prince. Machiavelli. Light bedtime reading, then?”
“Your library isn’t exactly stuffed with rom-coms, or books in English for that matter,” I blustered. Truthfully, I’d been drawn to the book because it was one of the most dog-eared. Like a book could help me understand the man sitting beside me. Yeah, right. Still, something was better than nothing.
Renato lifted the book and set it on the bedside table, then spoke quietly.
“…since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
He listed his eyes to mine. “I’ve studied the thoughts in that book for years, but I’ve only just come to understand the meaning of that particular quote.”
His tone was cryptic, and with him so close, it was hard to concentrate on anything. The margaritas from earlier still swam through my veins, making me relaxed and fearless in front of this man who owned me. Does that mean I own him, too?
“Are we really going to be sleeping here together every night?” I asked, my mind latching onto the next stray thought that came along.
“Yes. We’re married, this is our room.”
“You just don’t seem like the kind of man who…sleeps with one person.” Crap, I had no idea who was controlling my mouth, but they were doing a terrible job.
Renato raised an eyebrow. “What gave you that impression? I believe the only woman you’ve seen me with besides yourself is Giada.”
I waved a hand over him. “It’s all of this. This whole thing,” I elaborated, like that would help.
A faint grin touched Renato’s mouth. “Are you complimenting me, mia moglie?”
I snorted. “Why would I? Like you need anything else to make you cockier?” The last word seemed to stick on my lips, making me laugh. “Cocky, get it?” I laughed a little more. I probably shouldn’t have drunk so much when unpacking. I hadn’t realized I was so wasted until this moment.
Renato raised an eyebrow at me.
I swayed into him. “Cocky, because you have a big you know,” I explained in a loud whisper.
He caught me when I nearly toppled over. “Who is responsible for this?”
“Giada helped me unpack.”
“Enough said. Did you eat dinner?”
“I forgot.” I sighed. “I was trying to read your book, but the words kept moving around.”
I closed my eyes for a second, and the world lurched. Yikes. Okay, that was definitely too much tequila for a lightweight like me.
“Come on, little nurse. Let’s get you something to eat.”
I opened my eyes. Renato stood beside me, holding his hand out. My stomach growled at the prospect of food, and he chuckled.
“I don’t need help. I’m not drunk,” I protested as I stood and immediately fell against him.
“Sure, you aren’t.” He ran his gaze down my outfit, and his eyes darkened. “I knew you’d look good in the clothes I bought you.”
“I only have clothes to wear that you bought me.”
“Good.” He pulled me closer, running his hands from my shoulders to my waist.
His touch felt good. I melted against him. “Except for Carmella’s old leggings,” I pointed out.
“I’m having them burned. Come on, let’s find something for you to eat,” he said gruffly, brushing my hair back from my face.
My new husband could cook. In my semi-drunk state, all I could do was watch him with my mouth hanging slightly open. Hopefully, there was no drool.
He rolled his shirtsleeves up to the elbows and just took charge in the kitchen. We were alone, the clock ticking toward midnight. I sat at the island, leaning my head on my hand and trying to stay upright, observing the man who had stolen my life and replaced it with another. He was cooking me an omelet, and it was disturbingly attractive.
The air filled with the smell of ripe cherry tomatoes, chopped basil, and pressed garlic, sizzling gently in olive oil.
“I feel like I should offer to help,” I muttered.
“And that’s your problem right there, anima mia. You don’t always have to help. Sometimes, you can let people do things for you,” Renato said, cracking eggs with one hand and whisking with the other.
His strong, tattooed wrist rotating the whip with ease did something to me. God, I really needed to sober up. I played with the chess pieces from a board lying on the counter. I’d seen Giada and Sonny playing there in the morning sometimes.
“Spare me the armchair psychology BS, or I’ll do you, too,” I warned him.
He laughed. “I’d love for you to do me, bambina.”
Ignoring the innuendo, I wrapped my arms around my knees and pushed against my stomach, hoping the position would muffle the growling. Now that I could smell food, my stomach had woken up and demanded to be fed.
“Fine. You’re the king of the castle,” I proclaimed. “And everyone else is locked outside. You have to control everything around you, every player on the board is yours to move…You can’t look away or relax, because then if you make a mistake, you might lose someone and have to add another tally mark.” I pointed toward his chest.
He’d left the omelet to cook and leaned over the counter toward me. I turned to the chessboard, desperate for anything at all to distract me from the beauty of this man in the low lighting. I chose black for Renato, because of course. I pushed back all the other figures, isolating the king.
“Very astute. Maybe drunk therapy should be a thing,” he started.
I brought my finger to his lips and shushed him, braver in my drunkenness than I normally was.
“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 way you do,” 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.
The white queen.
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 does mia moglie mean?”
“My wife,” he supplied, pressing kisses along my jaw toward my ear.
“What about bambina?”
“Baby girl.”
He reached my ear, and heat flooded me. God, I liked that.
“Anima mia?” I’d memorized all the things he called me, desperate to know their meaning, but scared, too.
He paused and pulled back, pinning me in place with his dark gaze. I wondered if he was going to leave me hanging with that one, but then he spoke.
“It means ‘my soul.’”
I wet my lips, only dimly aware of the rest of the room. This moment felt important somehow, or maybe it was just the alcohol in my veins, making this powerful man seem less scary for a second.
“I thought men like you didn’t have one,” I said quietly, without reproach.
“We don’t, but don’t worry about me, little nurse.” Renato smiled wickedly as he leaned in and spoke right in my ear. “You promised me yours, remember?”
Then, with the most embarrassing timing in the world, my stomach let out a protest so loud, the intimacy of the moment was shattered.
Renato chuckled, leaning back and heading toward the delicious-smelling omelet.
“Enough philosophizing for tonight. Let me feed you.”
“And then?” I wondered, my gaze feasting on the omelet as he put it on a plate and cut it into neat, bite-sized rows.
“And then…” He threw a dishcloth over his shoulder and speared the first bite of eggs, holding it to my lips. “Bedtime.”
