by Reilly, Cora
“No, thank you,” I said with a smile.
Nino nodded his agreement. Then the woman dashed off. He lowered his hand from my back. The saleswoman returned with three dresses thrown over her arm. I slipped into the changing room, and she handed me the first dress. It was like a second skin and went to my knees, accentuating every curve with a high collar and no sleeves. People would be staring if I wore this, especially men.
Nerves fluttered in my stomach as I stepped out. Nino leaned against the wall, arms crossed, looking every bit like a runway model. He straightened the moment he saw me, his gray eyes sliding over my body.
“It’s too sexy, don’t you think?” I whispered.
Nino moved closer. “It’s perfect.” He tilted his head. “Don’t you want people to see how beautiful you are?”
I shifted. “I’m not used to it.”
“You will grow used to it. Don’t worry.”
I tried on a long dress with a high slit and another one with a low neckline and even lower back, and they, too, would definitely not help me go unnoticed, but the way Nino regarded me in them gave me a strange shiver of delight. In the end, we bought all three dresses and even a red jumpsuit. When we were back in the car, I couldn’t help but laugh. “You are really into red.”
Nino didn’t look away from the street, but the corners of his mouth tipped up in the ghost of a smile. “I don’t favor one color over the other, in general, but red is your color, and I like its symbolic value as well.”
“Red like blood,” I said.
“Yes. It’s always good to unsettle people.”
I didn’t say that he didn’t need me at his side wearing a blood red dress to unsettle people. Nino was unsettling on his own, and he knew it.
Two hours later, I was dressed in the knee-length skin tight dress and matching blood red heels. I wore my hair down because it made me feel less exposed, and I preferred to have my neck covered.
Nino was waiting for me downstairs, leaning against my piano, dressed in all black, as usual. The fitted dress shirt and tight pants fit him like a glove. He wore his hair down for once, but it was slicked back. His eyes followed me as I descended the stairs. I took his outstretched hand, and his thumb found my wrist as he leaned close.
For a heartbeat, I was sure he’d kiss me, and my lips parted in a mix of anticipation and nerves, but he leaned toward my ear and whispered, “Tonight people will start talking about another Falcone. The lady in red.”
I shivered, my eyelashes fluttering at the feel of his warm breath on my ear and his scent filling my nose. Then he pulled back but didn’t release my wrist.
“Ready?” he asked in a low voice, and for some reason he made it sound as if he wasn’t referring to going to dinner.
I gave a mute nod, trying to gather my wits about me. Nino led me into the main part of the mansion. Remo was sitting on the sofa, his laptop in front of him. His eyes moved up when we entered, and they locked on me. I didn’t move.
Nino’s grip on my wrist tightened, and his thumb brushed my skin lightly. “We’ll be going for dinner now.”
Remo nodded, his lips pulling wide. “Blood red. Good choice.” They exchanged a look. “You look good enough to devour,” he said to me, and my heart rate quadrupled.
“Thanks,” I barely got out.
Nino pulled me outside toward his car. “Remo is no danger for you, Kiara. Trust me on that. His words are meant to unsettle. It’s how he is. But you are mine and that makes you off-limits. Remo would never lay a hand on you. Never.”
“You trust him?” I asked as I settled into the passenger seat.
“I trust him absolutely. With my life. With yours.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to share his confidence that Remo would protect me. He had protected me from Durant on my wedding day, but with Remo there really was no telling what he’d do.
Every table in the restaurant was occupied when we arrived, but the manager greeted us personally. He shook Nino’s hand and bowed his head slightly before turning to me. I held my hand out with a smile. He hesitated briefly, but after Nino inclined his head, he took it and kissed the back of my hand. “Your wife is stunning, Mr. Falcone.”
“She is,” Nino drawled.
People at the surrounding tables were throwing veiled glances at us, and as the manager led us to our table with a stunning view over the Strip, they began whispering.
My cheeks felt hot when I sank down into the chair the manager held out for me. Nino seemed completely unfazed by the force of attention. He regarded me over the menu. “You look flustered.”
I laughed. “I am. Everyone’s talking about us.”
Nino shrugged. “Let them talk. I’d be more worried if they didn’t.”
“Do you never wish to blend in, to walk the streets unnoticed?”
Nino lowered the menu, a hard look on his face. “My brothers and I were in hiding for a while when our family was hunting us down. We fought to get back what was ours. We killed and we bled for our birthright. We tore Las Vegas from the bleeding hands of unworthy men. We fought for the spotlight. We are done hiding.”
The waiter brought us our wine at that moment. A blood red Shiraz. Nino raised his glass with a strange smile. It was so very difficult to read him. “To a place in the spotlight. No hiding ever again, Kiara.”
I clanged my glass against his and took a deep gulp. “No hiding ever again.”
The waiter arrived with the appetizers a second later. Everything was delicious, spicy, and extravagant. Nino was easy to talk to. I could have listened to him answering my questions about Las Vegas history all night.
He knew everything. Eventually, more personal questions crossed my mind. “Why did your father send you to boarding school in England? Most Made Men keep their sons close because they want to teach them everything they need to know to become Made Men themselves.”
The mentioning of Benedetto Falcone brought an immediate change to Nino’s body language. When before he had been relaxed, his shoulders now tensed considerably and his expression turned colder. “Our father didn’t want Remo and me under his roof, and he knew he didn’t have to prepare us for becoming Camorrista anymore.”
“But you were twelve and fourteen at the time, and your brothers were even younger.”
Nino smiled, and I took another deeper gulp of wine because his expression gave me the chills. “Our father knew Remo and I would have killed him if we stayed. Remo killed his first man three years before at eleven, and shortly before our father sent us away, I had killed my first man together with Remo. Our father knew he had no way of controlling us, so he sent us away. He knew we wouldn’t leave without our brothers, so he sent Adamo and Savio away as well.”
“That’s horrible,” I whispered.
Nino took a swig of his own wine. “It made us stronger, brought us closer. Regret over the past is wasted time.”
I could feel the effects of the wine by now. Red wine was definitely stronger than the occasional glass of champagne or white wine I’d had in the past.
Nino tilted his head. “I think you’ve had enough wine.”
I smiled. “You think?” For some reason, I took another gulp of the red liquid, and Nino shook his head, his mouth twitching.
“You will regret this tomorrow morning.”
“I thought regret is wasted time,” I said.
His mouth twitched again. “It is, but right now you still have the chance to prevent yourself from regretting anything.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” I said. I felt hot and fuzzy. I’d probably have the headache of my lifetime in the morning.
Nino waved over the waiter and paid for our dinner. I got up and immediately realized that I was a bit tipsier than I thought, but I straightened my spine, not wanting to appear drunk in public. Nino wrapped an arm around my waist, and I was too grateful for its steadying effect to tense up at the contact. He led me out of the restaurant.
“Thank you for the lovely evening,
” I whispered before I plopped down in the car seat with less grace than intended.
“It was surprisingly pleasant,” Nino agreed, and I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. The wine had loosened my control.
Nino raised his eyebrows and closed the door. I leaned against the window, closing my eyes.
I woke with my head against something hot and hard. My body stiffened when I realized I was in someone’s arms, being carried.
“Shh, Kiara. You are safe.”
I peered up at Nino’s calm face and forced my body to relax in his hold. “Where are we?” I asked groggily. My brain felt foggy.
“At home.”
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what he meant. Then I recognized our bedroom. He set me down in the center of the room. “Why don’t you get ready for bed?”
I nodded and immediately regretted the motion. Nino gripped my hip to steady me. “Can you do this?”
“Yes,” I said quickly because I didn’t want Nino to undress me.
I wasn’t sure how long it took me to get out of my dress and go through my evening routine, but it felt like forever before I finally lay down in bed.
Nino joined me shortly after. “Tell me if you’re going to be sick.” He touched my forehead with his palm, and I leaned in to the touch, but then he dropped his arm. He stretched out on his back beside me, and I scooted closer, reaching for his arm. My fingertips curiously traced the tattoo of a shadowy figure amidst surging flames. When my eyes managed to focus, I realized a name was written in the flames. It was small and you had to take a closer look to distinguish it from the fire. Remo.
“You have Remo’s name tattooed on your arm.”
Nino regarded me without a flicker of emotion. “I have Savio’s and Adamo’s name tattooed on my other arm.”
“Why is he burning?”
“Because he burned for me,” Nino said quietly.
I searched his face but could tell he wasn’t going to tell me more. My fingertips followed the flames down to his wrist. I frowned when I felt something rigid under my fingertips. I turned his arm slightly so I could see his forearm. Under his Camorra tattoo, which was surrounded my flames as well, a long thin scar ran along his vein. I looked up at him, and he stared right back. I didn’t dare ask because for once his eyes didn’t appear emotionless at all.
I stroked the scar lightly. “Does it bother you if I touch you like this?” I asked in the barest of whispers.
“Your touch doesn’t bother me, Kiara.”
I wished he could touch me like that without my body wrenching me back into the past, without my fears taking control. “I wish ... I wish I could be touched without fear.”
“Eventually you will. You will kill the part of your uncle I couldn’t kill for you.”
He sounded absolutely sure as if it wasn’t a matter of if but when. And because this was Nino Falcone, and maybe because I was drunk, I believed him.
CHAPTER 15
KIARA
Nino stirred beside me, and my eyes peeled open. Just like I had the last few mornings since our dinner, I was snuggled up to him at night and wedged myself under his arm, my head in the crook of his neck, my knees pressed up against his side. His warmth and comforting scent wrapped around me and managed to banish the nightmares.
“Sorry,” I murmured like I did every morning because I was fairly sure that the position couldn’t be comfortable for Nino, but he never pushed me away. I sat up, freeing his arm.
“Your subconscious seeks protection at night, and I can provide it,” he said with a shrug as he stood. The tight briefs did nothing to hide the outline of him.
I forced my eyes away from it, my heart thudding faster. He grabbed his swim trunks and went into the bathroom to change, but he didn’t close the door. It was only for my benefit that he didn’t undress in the bedroom. I had considered telling him that I could deal with his nakedness, but every time I was on the verge of saying those words, my courage left me.
Getting up as well, I grabbed my satin dressing gown. It wasn’t because it was cold but because I felt uncomfortable walking around the house in only my nightgown.
Nino returned and opened the door for me. Grabbing my book from the nightstand, I followed him in silence down the stairs and out through the French doors. It was already warm outside. I settled on the lounge chair close to the pool and opened my book, but my eyes weren’t drawn to the letters on the page. Instead, I watched as Nino stepped up to the edge of the pool and dove in, his muscles flexing as he did.
He swam his laps in the pool, and I observed him over my book from my spot on the chair. Eventually, I had to remove my robe because the sun relentlessly beat down on me despite the early hour.
Sometimes I felt ridiculous for even bringing a book with me. I hardly ever read a word. My gaze was drawn to the man in the water. The book was like my safety shield because I was too cowardly to admit that I enjoyed seeing Nino—and definitely too terrified of him finding out that I did.
After thirty minutes, he swam over to the ladder and climbed out. Water dripped off him and down his sculpted body. My eyes trailed from his muscled shoulders, down to his eight-pack and his narrow hips to his muscled thighs. His tight swim trunks hardly hid his body, and I could see the outline of him beneath the wet fabric again. The horrid tattoos, with their flames, agonizing faces, and words of pain and blood that ran from his forearms up over his shoulders down to his pecs and around to his shoulder blades didn’t scare me any more like they had done in the beginning. Nino was a piece of art.
His movements were unhurried and exact as he rubbed himself dry. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His cool, gray eyes met mine, and I sucked in a sharp breath and quickly looked back down on my book. When his shadow fell over me, I had no choice but to stop pretending I was reading. I hadn’t paid attention to my book in a while.
“You pretend to read but you watch me every morning,” he said. There was no judgment in his voice.
I wasn’t sure what to say. Embarrassment crawled up my neck. “I—I didn’t...” I began to protest but upon raising my head, his expression silenced me. He knew I’d been watching him. Of course he’d noticed. This was a man who had been raised to watch his surroundings. Denying it would have been ridiculous.
“You can watch. You are my wife,” he said. He tilted his head down, his eyes searching my face, and it felt like he could read my every thought. A few distracting droplets of water trailed down his beautiful face. What millions of male models probably had to practice for years, that cool, otherworldly expression, came naturally to him. “But I wonder why you do it. I thought my body scared you.”
It still did. Nino oozed strength. But fear had become a very small part of what I felt when I watched him. There was also that flicker of curiosity in the pit of my stomach and the burst of warmth deep inside of me when he moved in a way that accentuated his muscles.
I put down my book on the small side table, not sure how to say what I wanted to say and not sure I should even consider saying it. Some doors should stay closed. But what was holding me back—and would perhaps always hold me back if I let it—was something forced upon me in the past, something I wanted to be freed of.
“Sometimes I wonder how it would be to be more like husband and wife,” I admitted despite the heat in my cheeks, despite the spike of fear and worry about Nino’s reaction. Falcone or not, he had never given me reason to be truly fearful of him.
“You mean in a physical sense?” Nino asked in a low voice. There was the hint of something in his tone that I couldn’t place, but as usual, his face didn’t reveal anything.
I nodded, releasing a tense breath. I hadn’t thought I’d dare admit it, but Nino was always in control. I didn’t have to fear an emotional outburst from him. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t have to fear him at all.
He put down the towel, allowing me to view the length of him. I followed the invitation and slowly trailed my gaze over every inch of him.
He didn’t move, but his stare was an insistent presence on my skin. “We could explore the physical options of our relationship, if you like. To be honest, I want you.”
He’d told me so before, but it still scared me. I glanced down at my hands, fumbling with the hem of my nightgown. Only one man had ever wanted me, and he’d taken what he wanted without asking. Nino wasn’t like that. He could have had me on our wedding night and every night since. There was certainly nobody who could have stopped him, least of all me.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
I sighed. “I’m scared.”
“Did I give you reason to be scared?”
I looked back up at his attentive face. “No, but I’m scared because you want me, and because I want you, but I don’t know if I can do it.”
“We can set limits, and we can go step by step.” He paused, his expression becoming contemplative. “If my physical strength unsettles you, we could try to have me restrained. I don’t mind.”
My mouth opened in shock. “You mean have you tied up?” Images of Nino with silk ties bound to the headboard entered my mind and almost had me laughing out loud. It seemed impossible that a man like him would suggest something like that.
Nino nodded. “That way you’d be free to explore without having to fear me.”
“But then I would have to lead.”
“Isn’t that what you’d prefer, given your past experiences? I have no trouble being dominant, but I doubt you’d react well to it.”
I wasn’t sure what to do. It seemed like the perfect solution, but it still terrified me, only now for a different reason.
“Have you ever reached climax?” he asked quietly, still staring at me with his quiet scrutiny.
My eyes widened, and I gave a jerky shake of my head. My stomach plunged into an abyss as I remembered how it had felt to have him in me. “All I felt was pain ... and shame.”
He lightly grazed my shoulder, the touch warm and gentle. How could he always be so warm when his face was so beautifully cold? “I didn’t mean when you were raped. I mean later. Did you ever touch yourself and feel good?”