He would just hold her, he told himself. But he couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t do it.
“Angelo?” The word was a breath, and he shut his eyes, warring with relief and despair. He was embarrassed. He was desperate. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her, and he was afraid he’d say too much. So he kept his eyes closed and his lips silent.
“Angelo?” Her voice was stronger and the question more pronounced. He tried to pray but found he didn’t want God to help him. He didn’t want divine intervention. With that thought he gave in, opened his eyes, and looked down into her face. Her eyes were so dark that he could see himself reflected in them, twin points, his face pale, swimming in the inky depths.
“You were sleeping so deeply it scared me. You must have been dreaming. Where did you go?” he whispered.
“To find you,” she whispered back.
“And here I am.”
She lifted a hand and laid it against the side of his face, as if testing the veracity of his claim. Her touch—so reverent, so tender—broke him. How could something so gentle cause him to crumble? But shatter he did, and God knows a broken man is a vulnerable man. She didn’t pull him to her with the hand that rested on his cheek, or lift her head from where it lay cradled in the crook of his arm. It was all Angelo. He could not make excuses for the action he was about to take.
He bent his head and found her mouth with his own.
He would have liked to think he didn’t consciously choose to cross the distance between their mouths, but that would have been a lie. He chose. It wasn’t like the kisses in the fisherman’s shack or even the kiss in the alcove on the day of the first raid, the kiss that had been without thought or premeditation, the kiss he could blame on circumstance, on a desperate moment. This was a kiss filled with intention.
They were his lips that parted against hers as they found purchase. It was his breath that hitched as the contact, both purposeful and timid, stunned him and scorched him simultaneously. It was all Angelo. No one made him do it.
But once he arrived, Eva welcomed him there. Her hand slid from his cheek to the back of his head, her fingers molding to the shape of his skull as the other rose to his neck, anchoring him where he hovered over her. She tasted him as he tasted her, each of them pressing into the swell of pillowed lips and seeking beyond them to the hot silk of mating mouths and dancing tongues.
For a man who had so little experience with the art of sensuality, there were no tentative brushstrokes or shy imitations. Neither thought about the craft at all. Neither thought about technique or tempo. If there were thoughts, they were reduced to whirling patterns behind closed lids, to curling colors in the bottom of their bellies, to the wash of sensation that built until Eva was pressed against Angelo’s chest, her legs straddling his hips. Her arms circled his neck as his arms braced her back, and their hearts created a drumbeat so intoxicating and so demanding, neither of them could do anything but move to its rhythm. Then Angelo stood, one arm anchoring Eva’s hips to keep her against him, one arm bracing their fall as they tumbled across the moonlit bed. Eva moaned against his lips and he stilled, instantly contrite, holding himself above her as if he’d broken her in truth, completely different from the way she’d broken him.
He pulled away slightly and looked down into her face. The room was dark, but streetlight and moonlight filtered through the sheer drapes, casting them both in soft black, pearly white, and varying shades of gray.
For a moment they stared at each other in stunned, ardor-filled hesitation, Angelo waiting for permission to proceed, Eva holding her breath, wondering if he would. She didn’t urge him, didn’t plead, didn’t say, “Again, Angelo,” the way she’d done in the fisherman’s shack a lifetime ago. She waited for him to decide. She wanted him to choose. He could see it all over her face.
Slowly, his eyes holding hers, he raised a hand and touched her cheek, marveling at the silk of her skin, before he pulled the pad of his thumb across her lips, parting them gently. Then he leaned down, his mouth hovering above hers, and whispered, “Again, Eva. Again.”
Then he was kissing her once more, drinking from her mouth like a man dying of thirst. It eased the ache in his chest yet intensified it at the same time. He couldn’t tear his lips away, but he needed to touch her, to slide his palms against her skin and memorize the valleys and the swells, to make her a part of him and himself a part of her. Finally.
He was so lost in surrender and so desperate to know every part of her that he was unable to slow down, to breathe, to pace himself. He was like a child in a candy store, rushing from one display to the next. If being with Eva meant his life was measured in minutes and hours instead of months and years, so be it.
“I love you, Eva,” he whispered, needing to explain his sudden fervor. “I love you so much. And I’ve wasted so much time.” He suddenly felt close to tears, as if the admission had unlocked something inside of him, letting it free. The ache was suddenly gone, and in its place was a swollen heart.
“And when the war is over, will you still love me?” she whispered in his ear, her voice thick with passion, heavy with need.
He knew what she was asking, and his mind tripped and went down, unable to move beyond the moment, this second, where he had her in his arms, the only thing in the whole world that he really wanted.
He closed his eyes, trying to find an answer, trying to make sense of it all, trying to hear God’s voice. Instead, he felt Eva’s fingers tracing his lips, his closed lids, the line of his cheekbone, the point of his chin. Instead of God’s voice, he heard Eva’s.
When the war is over, will you still love me?
In that moment, the realization crystallized, and his focus narrowed to the one truth that had come so plainly to his mind. She was the only thing in the world he really wanted. And not in the way most men want women. He didn’t want to assuage a need. He didn’t want to lose himself temporarily in her body. He wanted to live for her. Beyond the moment, beyond the war. Always.
He’d entered a place, or maybe he’d been walking toward it, or around it, all his life, but the dragons he’d once sought to slay were not the same. The dragons of lust and vanity and greed. The dragons of selfishness and ambition. The dragons of mortality and the need for power. Those dragons were gone, and in their place was unconditional love and a desire to sacrifice and submit, to lay down every need and ambition, for someone else. For Eva. The gospel of love and peace he’d suffered to impart and the God he’d struggled to serve were still the same. The difference was in Angelo.
He didn’t have to be immortal. He didn’t need to be a hero. He didn’t even want to be a saint. He simply wanted to be a good man worthy of Eva Rosselli. He just wanted Eva. He wanted her kisses and her eyes, her smiles and her laughter. He wanted his children in her womb and his mouth on her breasts. He wanted her legs wrapped around his hips and her arms cradling his head as he made love to her. He wanted her promises, her affection and her trust, her years and her secrets. He wanted her prayers and her pride, her tears and her troubles. He wanted Eva. And that was all.
He opened his eyes, and for a moment he could only breathe, sucking in the certainty that no longer eluded him.
Some things didn’t have to be hard.
“When this war is over, I will be yours, first, last, and always. And you will be mine.”
“Eva Bianco?” She smiled with trembling lips.
“Eva Bianco. In truth.”