3. Alessia

Chapter 3

Alessia

He doesn’t say anything more to me as we drive to the house. Memories flood my mind, reminding me of the place I grew up in. Sadness threatens to choke me when I see familiar streets and buildings. There’s an energy between us hanging heavily in the confines of the car that makes hummingbirds awaken in my belly.

When we reach the ornate steel gates, I sigh. It’s been so long, but I haven’t forgotten what lies behind them. I haven’t forgotten how I was punished for what I felt, what I did. There was something in my heart that caught fire, and I couldn’t extinguish the flames. Even now, it burns as bright as the moment I admitted it.

“It looks the same,” I say as he pulls up to the entrance. The large fountain with a mermaid holding a water pitcher sits center, right in front of the double doors. Even though it’s dark, I can still see the garden. Where the trees and shrubs are now fully grown, where large jasmine bushes trail along the driveway.

“It is. More or less. It’s rather empty now, with both of them gone. It’s only me and Julien, along with two maids and the butler. But I never stayed to run the house. I had to make a mark where he left off.”

He sounds so sure of himself, and I wonder if he knows he made a mark on me. He did. I was sent away, and I had to deal with all those emotions on my own. We had no contact for three long years, and it broke me. Emotionally, and perhaps mentally. Although, I’d already succumbed to the madness running through my veins.

I look around, taking in every familiar inch of the home I once lived in. He’s right; it’s not changed. The walls are still a soft shade of lilac, there are paintings just above the sweeping staircase, and when I venture farther inside, I find the gold-trimmed table in the entry way I recall my mother falling in love with on a trip to Rome.

Adrien walks toward the back of the house, and I follow close behind, taking in the man he’s become. His immaculate suit fits him as if it was tailored for his tall, broad frame. And I know it has been. He may have gotten older, and even though I haven’t seen him in years, he still has the same effect on me. Those butterflies that woke inside me the moment he touched my hand are still alive and well. They may have been tamped down somewhat, but they’re there.

“Does he live here too?” My question stills him as we stand side by side inside the immaculate house. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked, but I need to know.

“He does, sometimes. He comes home on occasion,” he tells me, and I nod.

The living room is cold when we enter, the furniture sitting in the room like ghosts from the past, dusty and forgotten. I watch him move toward the bar in the far corner, grabbing a bottle from behind the counter. My eyes don’t stray from his movements. His strong hands use a corkscrew, opening the wine and pouring two large glasses. It’s the most alcohol I’ve had in my life, but I don’t tell him not to give it to me.

Instead, my nerves take precedent, and I accept the crystal glass with a smile. Gulping a mouthful of the bitter liquid, I swallow it down then meet those steel-blue eyes that used to offer me solace. Even now, when I’m trembling like a leaf in the cool autumn breeze, they still calm me somewhat.

“Will he come here?” Once more, I know I shouldn’t ask. They shouldn’t be near me, but there’s no one to tell us no . There are no eyes to watch our movements anymore. It’s only us and the strange emotions that have plagued me for so long.

Growing up with the two older boys wasn’t the issue, it was when I started to feel differently toward them. My stepbrothers had become something of an addiction to me. I wanted to be in their company all the time.

“He will if I ask him to,” Adrien says, his thick accent sending a small current of need through me. Growing up in Italy has allowed us to learn as many languages as we’d like. My schooling was done in a convent, hidden away from the press, but now that I’m out, I feel like a child again. Living in a church for three years of my life, I find myself seeking out things that are new to me. We never had the luxuries I did when I lived at home. No phones, no television. I was only allowed to work on a computer if there wasn’t connection to the outside world. My parents believed sin lived inside me, that I was a devil’s child for what happened.

I nod. Turning away, I move toward the large window overlooking the park. In the darkness, there’s a large blot of nothingness surrounded by the city lights.

“I’ve wondered about you,” he tells me. I feel him move behind me, and anticipate his touch, but he doesn’t reach for me. Instead, he moves to the piano sitting in the corner near the terrace doors and seats himself at the instrument. His wine glass on the dark mahogany top, and then his fingers dance over the ivory and ebony keys.

With each note, he makes my body shiver. With the melody surrounding us, it’s as if he’s undressing me with the music. I close my eyes and recall the moment our world fell apart. Tears prick my eyes then, and I have to swallow back the lump in my throat. Once more, I lift the glass to my lips and swallow another gulp of alcohol, and my head feels light and dizzy.

“You still think far too much,” he says, not looking at me. He doesn’t need to see me; he can feel me. It’s been the connection we’ve had all our lives. And with every moment we spent together, it only got worse.

We were never meant to feel what we did. For most of it, we believed it was real, but we swallowed the lies we were fed. But now, now there weren’t any rules to tell us it’s wrong. I recall the moment I felt it, when my heart leaped wildly at the confessions from our lips. When each touch tingled, every kiss made me soar to new heights, but nobody could’ve warned us against the emotion that would spur from what we did.

Not just want, but a craving so fierce and rabid I hungered for it.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I tell him while sipping my wine. I allow the alcohol to buzz through me, reminding me not to have too much, but also making me crave more. Just like I crave Adrien and Julien.

“Perhaps not,” he responds without leaving the keys. I’ve always loved how he could make music from just a few notes. How perfectly each melody was executed. “But you came here nonetheless, so you must be ready to admit what we had wasn’t wrong. That you were sent away because of prejudice,” he says then, stilling my heart in that moment. “And you must be wanting to learn about who we’ve become without you.”

“Perhaps, but as intriguing as it is learning who you and Julien are now, it’s wrong of me to be standing here still pleading silently for a kiss, a touch,” I tell him.

His fingers stop all movement, allowing the space to fall into silence. His back is straight, almost rigid, and I know that’s partly from our formidable training, and from the life we led for so long.

“Alessia.” He says my name in that deep baritone, reminding me I shouldn’t talk about the past, but he was the one who called me here. He sent me the invitation to return to this house and see him. “You didn’t attend the funeral last week. How are you feeling about his death?” The question isn’t a response to my statement, merely a distraction from where I was leading to.

“Difficult.”

“I should’ve been there for you,” he tells me, casting a glance over his shoulder to see me staring at him like I’ve always done. His smooth, tanned skin against the dim light makes him look like a dark angel, fallen from the heavens to tempt me into sin. A strong, rigid jawbone, deep, steel-blue eyes, dark hair, black as night, with brows that only serve to make him more alluring than he already is.

Adrien is over six-feet tall, broad and muscled. I know this because I’ve seen him without his expensive shirts on. His body rippled, chiseled as if from marble, a statue of perfection, just like Julien.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stand by your side as we laid him to rest.” The guilt hangs in his voice. It’s heavy, stifling, threatening to choke me.

Shaking my head, I take two tentative steps toward him. With each movement I get closer, feeling the heat from him, needing it to cocoon me like it used to when I was younger. When I was the one begging him to keep me safe.

“He deserved what came to him,” I tell him then. “We learned truths about him that broke the family. We believed we did something wrong all those years ago, but, we didn’t.”

“What do you mean?” This intrigues me because I was sent away because of our parents.

He shakes his head, then sighs before he says, “There is no DNA link between us—me and Julien. Our father wanted to rule over us, to break us down, and to make us his slaves.”

“Yes, he was a tyrant.” He affirms what we all know. “And the lawyer hasn’t been in touch with you regarding the ownership, the crown ?”

“No, and I don’t think you called me here to talk about it. Did you? I would’ve thought you invited me to come here and tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

He rises, buttoning his suit jacket, stalking toward me with purpose, causing me to step backward until my body is flush against the cool window behind me. He places a hand beside my head. His head dips to mine, and our mouths are close. Far too close.

The heat of him emanates like his spicy cologne. His eyes glower with ferocious hunger. It burns in them like a fire. Pure. Unadulterated. Lust.

“What would you do if I kissed you right now?” His question causes my heart rate to kick up a notch. Desire skitters over my skin, causing goose bumps to rise in their wake.

“I would kick you, on the shins, then I’d?—”

He presses his finger on my lips to quiet me, and I close my eyes, and the feel of his body pressing against mine from chest to thigh is enough to have me whimpering against the lonely digit that holds my lips shut. I can feel him—hard and unrelenting.

His mouth crashes down on mine suddenly. His hands are in my long, raven-black hair, tugging me closer. Impossibly so because it feels as if I’m about to climb inside him.

His body moves against mine, and soon we fit together like puzzle pieces. I turn molten at his insistent tongue dipping between my lips. He doesn’t relent. He fights for my mouth to open, and I offer it to him.

I can no longer deny him.

His taste—sweet, sharp, and intoxicating—makes for a heady flavor as I lick into his warmth. We dance like lovers. But we’re not. We can never be. However, when his hand finds purchase on my ass, lifting me against him, my legs wrap around his waist without question.

His cock, hard and demanding, pulses against my core—it wants entrance into my body. Like he wanted all those years ago. And I want to give it to him, to sacrifice myself to his need, to our lust.

His teeth nip at my bottom lip, tugging it and suckling on it, making me whimper with want. “Please,” I mumble into his mouth. His breath is mine, intermingling like the forbidden way I’m draped over him.

“You still want this,” he tells me, rolling his hips, causing my back to arch. I do. I’m broken. I’m so fucked-up, because even though I spent years without him, I still desire him.

“And you want this,” I tell him, suckling on his neck, biting the flesh hard enough to cause a bruise, and I smile when he hisses at the motion.

Then he finally says the words I’ve been needing to hear since I saw him in the bar. “I do, my dear. I do indeed, dear Gattina .”