Page 42 of My Dark Ever After

Not thinking about the fact that I had killed someone—and watched him splatter open across the cobblestones beneath me like a much too macabre Humpty Dumpty—was utterly exhausting, and I’d only been awake for half an hour.

When I left the room, I noticed the splintered doorframe, thumbing a sliver of wood as I passed by. It hurt to think of Raffa’s panic when he’d listened to the entire bell tower encounter through the phone, knowing he couldn’t reach me. He must have been driven crazy with helplessness and rage, but when he’d handled me in the shower, he had only been tender and so patient it set my throat to aching.

Every touch of his hands seemed to reanimate me, breathing life into my two-dimensional spirit. The ghost I had become after turning that random Italian assailant into one himself was banished by the immensity of Raffa’s worship. For a man like that to cherish me? It felt nothing short of holy, some ancient pagan ritual involving sacrifice and blood as offerings to a god that was just as merciful as it was full of spite.

I could not deny that it made me feel powerful, especially after I’d felt so helpless on the bell tower, to know that this behemoth of a man knelt only for me. Knowing, as I did now, that he was truly dangerous had been an extra thrill, the spark that tipped the edge of my pleasure into a cleansing, vibrant climax.

I could be honest with myself about that, at least.

Ask myself the first of the hard questions Raffa had alluded to the night before.

Did Raffa’s criminality affect how I felt about him physically?

Quite the opposite.

All those dark fantasies I’d harbored about being tied up, fucked hard, left wanting for hours, and then being made to come until it hurt only raged hotter now that I knew he could be cruel and shocking. I wondered just how far down he could take me, just how thoroughly he could take every inch of me apart with his teeth and cock and bare, man-killing hands.

“Cazzo,” I murmured as I left my bedroom behind. “Who are you, Guinevere?”

The answer to that question was much more difficult to answer.

I hurried downstairs, eager for the distraction of the harvest and, if I was being honest, eager to see Raffa again.

Even though he was the cause of all this chaos, he was also the only one who made me feel slightly sane, even remotely safe. Not just from external forces but also from myself. This new version that was emerging from the darkest depths of my soul and swallowing whole parts of my previous identity whole.

That he could still look at me like he saw every inch of who I was, even the new bits I wanted to hide away from, made it impossibly harder not to love him.

“Buongiorno, Vera.”

I closed my eyes for a moment to savor the richness of that voice because Raffa was turned away from me, pouring coffee from a hand-painted Dolce & Gabbana Moka pot into a matching cup.

He was wearing casual khakis that hugged his thickly muscled thighs and sculpted ass and an oversized white linen shirt. When he turned with the coffee cup in one hand, I noticed his shirt was open indecently low to reveal most of his carved, tanned chest and the crisp black hair that made my mouth water.

Merda, why did he have to be so gorgeous?

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, concern so obvious in his usually stoic expression that I hesitated mid-step, thrown off by the tendernessthere. “I kept the door open to my room, but I did not hear you cry out in the night.”

He’d been listening for nightmares.

My traitorous heart skipped a beat.

I accepted the coffee he extended to me, breathing in the delicious aroma to take a moment to compose myself. “I don’t remember any dreams. I was out like a log.”

“Bene,” he said with a firm nod, turning away to the oven, from which he pulled out a full plate of food. “The family left two hours ago to begin work, but Mamma made you a plate.”

I never thought I would see a powerful, arrogant man like Raffaele Romanofussover someone, but there he was, making me coffee, grabbing utensils and a full plate of food to give to me, even laying my napkin in my lap.

I gaped at him, and when he noticed, he laughed. It was that full-bodied chuckle that he only ever used with his close loved ones. My eyes fell closed for too long a beat while I absorbed the beauty of it.

“I’m fine, Raffa,” I reminded him. “It wasn’t me who was ... hurt.”

“We will agree to disagree, hmm?” he decided, nodding at my hand where it was loosely clasped around a fork, hovering over a mound of eggs. “Eat your food.”

“Are you being so sweet out of guilt?” I asked, even as I obeyed and dug into the perfectly seasoned scrambled eggs and vibrant slices of prosciutto.

“I am being sweet because I am a sweet man,” he qualified, and then shot me a wicked grin over his shoulder as he poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. “When I want to be.”

I didn’t respond, because, of course, I knew this. Raffa was the man who had taken an unlucky American girl into his home for safe harbor when she had no money or clothes to her name, who had provided for her and indulged her whims.