sun. His eyes were like two dark amber jewels. Cautionary tales if you could see past their hypnotic purposes.
He was wearing a thin t-shirt, khaki pants, and boots. The long-sleeved shirt he wore to keep the sun off his back was slung over his shoulder. And when his bare skin touched mine, I started to blink. More aware of it ever since Anna brought it to my attention.
I stopped blinking suddenly, like pressing the brake on a car too fast, and he grinned at me before he went to take the box. I held on and he pulled. When he realized I was doing to him what he had done to me with the glove, he smiled and my breath caught in my throat.
“What is your name?” I asked in Sicilian. My voice was low, breathy, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Why? You gonna collect the payment on my head once I tell you?”
“Depends,” I said, switching to English. “On how much your head is worth.”
“Less than yours, angel eyes.”
The words—angel eyes—sent a thrill through my blood, like hot lava flowing through my veins. I unintentionally let the box go from the burn. He took it from me, setting it on the counter, and then moved in closer.
Staring into my eyes, he lifted a piece of hair that had fallen from my scarf onto my neck, and then let it fall again. He traced the strand with his finger, over my pulse, and then down the gold chain and the cross at the end of it. The cross rested against my pounding heart, where his calloused fingers lingered.
His touch was fire against my heated skin. My blood started to boil, but a shiver felt bone-deep made me tremble all over.
My mouth parted at the same time his hand came around my neck and pulled us together, my body moving with his like fire in the wind, our lips crashing, our tongues tangling.
A moan, soft and trembling, left my mouth, and he drank the sound down.
Walls slammed against my back as we moved from spot to spot, something uncontrolled and wild forcing us together, refusing to let us part.
A frustrated noise left my mouth when he pulled away from me. It was sudden, a rip, a tear, in something with no name that demanded more of the stitching—the creating of something life-changing.
My sister cleared her throat. When I met her eyes, it seemed like she had been clearing her throat. She stood at the open door, men behind her, with her hands on her hips, blocking their entrance.
The leftover fire from that kiss seared my cheeks, and I pushed past her and the men, engulfed. She was blinking furiously when I did, trying to hide a smug grin.
“Attraction, Alcina,” my mamma once told me, “is desire in waiting.”
What my mamma didn’t tell me was that, once I gave in to it and it was set free, there was no going back to that room with four walls and no windows.
Lo scorpione had dragged me someplace, but it did not feel like the hell I had imagined. His hell felt more heavenly than anything I had ever touched in my life.
I lifted my head from the steering wheel of the van when I heard someone open the doors and place a box in the back.
Lo scorpione.
I groaned, but not loud enough for him to hear. I needed some time to breathe. To recover. To make sense of the senseless.
He climbed in beside me after he set the box I had forgotten with the rest.
“What are you doing?” I said in Sicilian.
He stared at me for a minute, those eyes unnerving me with their intensity. I felt like I could not take in air properly when he looked at me like that … when he was close … when I thought of him. I could not escape him even in dreams.
“My name is Corrado Alessandro Capitani,” he said in perfect Sicilian. “I am a wanted man—by enemies and by the law.”
“I know that name,” I whispered, and my hand was on the door before he could put his on my arm to stop me. We stayed that way for a while, his touch blistering my skin. I looked out the window, refusing to look at him. “How much is the price on my head worth?”
“To me…” He paused. “Invaluable in worth.”
“Will you hurt me?”
“No.”
“Will you kill me?”
“No.”
“Will you—bring me back?”
“That’s the deal I made.”
“You will have to hurt me or