He’d left a dandelion. He’d probably plucked it from the ground beside the grave. I felt sad to look at it, to think of him here, realizing he’d come empty-handed to visit his mother after all this time. I thought of him alone. Sitting in the spot where I stood now. And all I felt was lonely. It was almost too much.
The sound of a branch breaking startled me, making me spin around, my hand to my heart.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
For the briefest of moments, I thought it was Raphael. But then Damon smiled, and I hoped he didn’t see my disappointment.
I forced a smile. “No, you didn’t. I’m just jumpy.” Embarrassed, I gestured around me. “Dusk in a cemetery. Probably not my smartest move.”
Damon walked toward me. “I got here early. I like to come to the chapel when I’m here.” He looked at the grave. “He won’t let anyone maintain it.”
I followed his gaze to the dandelion.
“Why not?”
Damon shook his head and looked at me, and the similarity in their features struck me.
“If I know my brother, he feels guilty over her death. He’s like that. As hard as he is on the outside, he takes it all on on the inside. Always did.”
A sudden gust of wind made me shiver.
Damon took off the sweater he was wearing and draped it over my shoulders. The gesture was kind, and maybe it was the fact that he was almost a priest that I didn’t take it any way other than that. I noticed that he wore a black T-shirt beneath it, noticed he was built like his brother, and I quickly blinked away.
“Come on, let’s go inside. It won’t be much warmer, but you’ll be out of the wind.”
I climbed the stairs with Damon behind me. He pushed the door open, and I entered.
“How did you manage to get here on your own, anyway?”
“You mean Eric?”
He nodded.
“He was having dinner.”
“Raphael won’t like that.”
“Too bad. I don’t see why he needs to have me watched anyway.”
“It’s for your protection. And Maria’s and the staff. Our father had enemies.”
“I know. It’s still odd.” We sat down in a pew. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I know it sounds strange, but the priest thing…” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business really, but I just want to understand.”
“It’s fine. I think it’s a normal question to have, but I don’t really have an answer. Not one that makes sense. It’s just…a feeling.”
I nodded, although I wasn’t sure I understood what he meant.
He continued. “I like it here. It always soothes me somehow. Even though I live in a seminary and attend mass daily, this little chapel makes me feel something different.”
“It’s a special place.”
“Maybe I like the ceremony of the Catholic church. The discipline. It too soothes me, I suppose. But maybe I’m just trying to escape the past. Who I am. The blood in my veins.” We both looked at the altar as he spoke.
“You hold onto guilt too.”
“No, it’s different.”
“Have you ever been in love?” I asked before I could stop myself.
He smiled at me and shrugged a shoulder. “I went through a period of falling in love nightly with a different woman on each night.”
I felt myself blush.
“How is my brother treating you?” he asked.
“He’s…different than I thought he would be.”
“He’s not a monster, Sofia. When I met you, I thought you might be able to help him see that. But you have to see it first.”
“I do. That’s the thing. I just don’t understand him, I guess. I expected him to be cruel. Or crueler. It would make more sense if he was.” We sat quietly for a minute, our eyes on the altar. When a small mouse scurried over the top of it, I startled.
“I think he lives here,” Damon said with a smile. “He seems to be here every time I am.”
“I guess it’s good the chapel is used by some…thing, even if it’s just a mouse.” I turned to him. “Damon, I’m sure this is very personal but… I don’t know how to ask it actually.”
“Just ask it.”
He was so frank and so easy to talk to. “Raphael has marks on his back.”
Damon’s face darkened, and he shifted his gaze away from mine.
“And I was in the cellar the other night. I found him there. He said he’d been to your mother’s grave, and I know he was drinking, and he—he wasn’t himself.” I hesitated, but decided to tell him what I thought. “I saw the pillar.”
He nodded and returned his attention to the altar. “Our father was not a gentle man, Sofia,” he said gravely before looking at me again. “And Raphael was a good brother. A protective brother to me and Zachariah.”
“What—”
“The rest is for him to tell.”
The door slamming against the wall startled us both. I jumped, gasping, and we both turned to look behind us. Raphael stood at the entrance of the chapel, one hand flat against the door he’d just smashed into the wall, the other fisted at his side, his face hard.
Damon stood. “Brother.”
“Cozy in here,” Raphael said, his gaze shifting from his brother to me, the accusation in his eyes chilling. “I was looking for you.”
“You weren’t home,” I said, feeling guilty but not sure why.
“You shouldn’t come out here on your own. It’ll be dark soon.”
“You just disappear and expect me to sit around and wait for you?”
Raphael ignored my comment but didn’t deny it. He turned his attention to Damon and cocked his head to the side. “What were you telling her?”
“He wasn’t telling me anything,” I folded my arms across my chest. “You disappeared,” I repeated.
Again, he didn’t look at me. This was between the brothers.
“I always come to the chapel, you know that. I just happened to run into Sofia this time,” Damon said.
“What do you expect me to do alone here day after day?” I asked. “When you’re just gone without a word?” I felt annoyed at being ignored, irritated with myself at the emotion, the hurt, in my voice. But hadn’t he felt something the other night? When he’d held me like he had, hadn’t it meant anything?
Raphael and Damon glared at each other.
“Raphael, don’t be stupid,” Damon said as if they were somehow communicating without words.
“I’m being stupid when I can’t find my fiancée anywhere, and when I do finally locate her, she’s sitting cozy with my brother’s sweater wrapped around her shoulders, the two of you whispering?”
“What the hell are you suggesting?” Damon asked, stepping into the aisle toward Raphael.
Raphael dragged his gaze to me. “You don’t belong here, Sofia.”
I let out a short exhale and stepped out of the pew too. “That’s two places I don’t belong. I don’t even know why you want me here.”
“I’ll take you back to the house,” he said, his tone level, empty of emotion.
I walked toward the door, then realized I had Damon’s sweater on and tugged it off to hand back to him. “I can find my own way.” But he stood in the doorway and didn’t budge.
“No, you can’t.” He took my arm.
“Let me go.”
“Raphael,” Damon started, stepping toward us.
“You stay out of this. She belongs to me.”
“I’m a human being! I don’t belong to anyone!”
“Wrong.”
With a quick, cold smile, Raphael marched me out of the church and down the steps. Night was falling fast, and I had to admit, he was probably right that I couldn’t find my own way back.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked when he wouldn’t release me but kept walking at a pace too fast for me to keep up without stumbling. “Let me go. I’m not a child. Or a prisoner for that matter.
What’s wrong with you?”
He stopped.
I tripped behind him.
Once he righted me, he opened the passenger side door of the truck, but I dug my heels into the ground.
“Get in.”
“No. Not until you tell me why you’re being so weird.”
“I was looking for you,” he finally said, his eyes hooded, any emotion shielded.
“You’re the one who left in the middle of the night. Left and never came back.”
“It was morning. That dog of yours was yapping. Get in the truck. Maria’s waiting with dinner. Eric shouldn’t have let you slip away.”
“I don’t like being followed and watched all the time.”
“It’s for your protection.”
I didn’t want to talk about Eric. “I don’t understand you, Raphael. I thought after that night…”
“After that night?”
The way he asked it, so casually, like it had been nothing. Like nothing had happened. It made me feel so fucking stupid, I faltered.
“I don’t want you hanging around with my brother,” he said.
“We weren’t hanging around. I just wanted to see—”
“My mother’s grave? You wanted to see why I’m so fucked up?”
He grabbed me by both arms, his grip too tight.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Get in the damn truck.”
“Why are you so angry?”
“Goddamn it, get in.”
He lifted me up, put me in the truck, and closed the door before I could protest. He walked around to the other side and climbed in. I saw Damon watching us from the chapel door.
“What about your brother?”
Raphael reached over to strap me in, then turned the truck around and drove off too fast.
“He’s a big boy. He can find his own way back.”
“Why are you so angry?”
“I told you the other night, Sofia. I’m fucked up. That’s all. Whatever you imagine happened between us, forget it.”
“What I imagined?” I asked, feeling angry myself now.
He gave me a sideways glance.
“Slow down.”
“You want to know about my back? About the scars?”
He didn’t slow down, his hands fists on the steering wheel as we drove by the house and toward the gate leading off the property.
“Is that what you were asking Damon?”
“Where are we going? Slow down.”
“My father whipped me. It was his special punishment just for me. I’m sure my brother told you all about it.”
I watched his face, feeling truly afraid now as we bumped onto the road, wheels spinning, kicking up dirt.
“Dozens of times. Down there in that cellar. And that’s not the worst of it.”
“Raphael—” I reached over to touch him but drew my hand back.
“I needed to see it again. That’s all that night was. I was drunk.”
“Please slow down. You’re scaring me.” Just then we hit a pothole. I let out a small scream, my seat belt tightening as I shot my hands out to the dashboard.
He laughed, but the sound was strange, not a laugh at all, but he slowed the truck down.
“Are you scared of me or my driving?” he asked.
“Both,” I answered honestly. “He didn’t tell me anything about your scars. He told me you were a good brother. A protective one. That was all.”
He looked at me, studying my eyes in the dim light of the dash.
“I asked him, and he said it was your story to tell. That’s all, Raphael.”
That seemed to calm him a little, and we drove in silence for ten minutes before he took a turn off to a winding road leading up toward what looked to be an abandoned, crumbling village.
“And it wasn’t nothing,” I said, collecting my courage. I studied his profile. “What happened the other night, you weren’t just drunk. It was something.”
He didn’t reply. We both sat silent as we drove. He finally parked the car along the outer walls of the village. He switched off the engine and sat looking at it. I kept my eyes on him.
“What did Damon mean when he said you were a protective brother?” I had to ask it. But I knew the answer, didn’t I? I could guess.
Raphael turned to me, the pain in his eyes the same pain I’d seen the night before. He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he climbed out of the truck. I undid my seat belt and followed.
“This is Civitella in Val di Chiana.”
“It looks abandoned.” It was so dark.
“It’s not. Not completely. There are a few festivals during the summer, then again in September at the harvest, but apart from that, it’s quiet.”
I followed him up through the crumbling stone gate, looking around, reading the signs of the shops—a baker, a butcher, several little cafés. When I stumbled, he caught me and held my hand the rest of the way until we were at the top of the village in an open area, which must have once been part of the house that now lay in ruins. Grass had long covered the ground, and at the very center of the now small field, he stopped and looked up. I followed his gaze and stared in awe at the black sky dotted with diamond stars.
“No light pollution,” he said and sat down.
I sat beside him.
“It’s amazing.”
“My mom used to bring me out here.” He lay back. “On the bad nights.”
I followed, and we both watched the sky.
“Take care when fighting monsters you don’t become one,” he said.
I turned my head, but he wasn’t watching me.
“Nietzsche,” he added.
“You’re not a monster.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You keep telling me that.” He turned on his side to face me.
“You know what I want to do right now, Sofia?”
His gaze slid down to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and his hand came to my belly. Watching me, he slowly began to bunch up my dress, the fine cotton tickling my thighs as it rose higher and higher.
I put my hand over his. “Stop.”
“Why?”
He took both my wrists and dragged them over my head before rolling on top of me.
I held my breath, gasping when I realized what I felt pressing at my stomach.
Raphael’s mouth came to mine in a brief but lustful kiss.
“I want to make it hurt, Sofia.”
His voice was so quiet, and desire burned in his eyes as he brought his mouth back to mine, his lips not soft, but not quite hard. He transferred both of my wrists into his one hand, and his other one slid to my thigh as he opened my legs with his knees, watching my face as he did so, watching my eyes with a darkness that both terrified me and made me want.
“Stop,” I tried again, sounding unconvincing to my own ears.
“Maybe it’s because of how I grew up.”
His grip on my wrists tightened when I began to struggle as the fingers of his other hand roamed my inner thigh, rising higher, just brushing against the edge of my panties.
“Raphael—”
“There’s been a change.”
“What change?”
He shook his head, as if setting that thought aside. “It won’t make a difference if I take you tonight or tomorrow night or the next night. You’re mine. That’s all that matters.”
He swallowed hard and licked his lips, and I could hardly breathe for the look in his now dark eyes.
“Does it scare you that I want it to hurt you? That I want you to feel me take you. Feel me tear you.”
I bit my lip.
“That I want to hear you cry out.”
I gasped when his fingers slid into my panties, tickling the hair there.
“You don’t know how hard I get when I think about your tight little pussy squeezing my cock. Imagining how warm your virgin blood will feel. What I want to know is—”
He kissed my mouth again as he lifted his hips a little,
and his fingers closed over my sex.
“If you’re wet for me.”
He grinned, and I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my head to the side.
“Mmm.”
He breathed against my ear as his fingers began to stroke me, making me suck in short, quick breaths as he tickled my clit.
“Please.”
“Please, what?”
He slid a finger into my opening, and I stiffened. He rolled his weight off me but kept my wrists pinned over my head. We both looked down at how my dress lay wrinkled on my belly, my thighs parted, his fingers working inside my panties.
I should tell him to stop. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him to stop. Because I wanted him. I wanted him as much as he wanted me, and I didn’t care about the rest of it.
“Look at me,” he commanded with a whisper.
I did.
He slowly drew his hand out of my panties and began to drag them down.
“Tell me to stop.”
Down, down, down, off my thighs and past my knees and over my ankles.
“Tell me to stop, and I’ll stop. I’ll stop right now.”
He released my wrists. I didn’t move as he sat up, and his gaze slid to my sex. He brushed his fingers through the dark curls then looked back at me.
“Tell me, Sofia. Tell me you don’t want this. Tell me you don’t want me.”
I couldn’t. God, I couldn’t.
He smiled as if he already knew it. “You can’t.”
I didn’t move, and he grinned.
“Open your legs.”
I shook my head a little. That was all the resistance I could muster. He smiled and then, without breaking eye contact, he pushed one leg to open me up and returned his gaze to my sex. I lay there unable to move or speak as his fingers trailed through my hair again before he lowered his dark head to kiss me there.
My gasp was a muttering of his name. He then licked me, a quick flick of his tongue, then a slow circling around my clit. When he sealed his lips around it, I moaned, and my hands moved to his head, pulling at his hair as he knelt between my spread legs and looked up at me.
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