them. At the thought, he closed his eyes, moving even faster, rougher. I whispered his name this time, having a hard time finding my breath. He spilled himself inside of me at the same time I came around him again.
His breath fanned over my skin as his head rested against mine, and I wrapped my arms around him to keep him close.
Why was enough never enough with him? Close never close enough? Why did I see him and still miss him? Why did it feel like he took the most vital part of me with him whenever he left?
I did not only want to feel him moving like madness in my blood, but rooted in the pit of my heart, the vines of his love keeping me prisoner for the rest of my life.
We were both quiet after, the night suddenly so loud in our silence.
He rested next to me, picking leaves out of my hair, and I took comfort in the fact that he didn’t push too far away from me after I’d sat up.
“You smelled like another man,” he said, his voice raspy.
It took me a minute to hear him, to understand what he had meant. Then I caught his meaning, and my cheeks flushed. “I made a candle earlier,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I wanted to capture your scent. I put a little of the oils on my skin…” Cedarwood and sandalwood and amber. I had done it before I went outside and he had found me the way he had. The scent had turned me on more than my own touch had.
We became quiet again after, and I pulled my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, staring up at the moon. I sometimes found myself sitting in front of the moon when it was like this, reliving the night that had changed my entire life: when I'd run from the bull after he'd been turned into something lesser than what he thought he was. A man.
Sometimes I relished the life it led me to. It gave me time to live it somewhat freely.
Sometimes I resented it for the life I had, even though it was not to blame.
Corrado’s fingertips touched the very end of my hair and I shivered, wanting to face him, but not. He had stormed my body, making me restless and comfortable at once. Like the storms I always enjoyed outside of my window at night.
It was hard not to look into the future and think of nights to come without him in them. Filling my heart and dreams but not my arms or my bed. That would be someone else—for the both of us.
With the man papà chose next to me, would I return to this place, this moment, and relish the memory of us, or resent it?
Would he do the same with the woman Uncle Tito chose? When he touched her when the moon was full, would he think of me, of us, in this moment?
The thought burned inside of me like a dark candle, hateful and vengeful, and I took a deep breath, sighing it out, trying to put out the flame.
“Alcina.”
He called my name, and it was instinctual. I could not ignore him, or I would be ignoring my roots, my true home.
I turned my face toward his, but not my body.
“You didn’t tell me.”
I stared at him for a minute, trying to place his words. When I did, after he touched my stained thigh, I nodded. “You are my choice. I made the decision. Who. When.” I would never regret it. It all led me to this moment. “I gave you a part of me no one else can steal now.”
His eyes narrowed, and I turned my face away from his.
“What is your favorite color?” I asked.
“Color,” he repeated.
“Sì.” It suddenly felt so important to know everything there was to know about him. He was a man who was always in control of his emotions, his steps, and I wanted more. I wanted everything. Something another woman would never get—a small taste of his intimacy.
“You,” he said.
I turned to face him for a second and then looked away. “What color am I then?”
“The color of a flame. The moon. Of all that’s bright in the world.”
Not meaning to, I smiled a little at that. Charm on him was a weapon. “Do you sing? Dance?”
“Neither.”
His body moved closer to mine and he leaned on his elbow. I could feel his eyes on me.
I