“They’re all gonna know now,” he rasped, his voice sounding as though he’d swallowed yards of razor wire. “Your friends, my brothers, will all know we’re together after this, after tonight… and they ain’t gonna understand why. When all this shit clears with Molly, they’re gonna try and make you leave me. They’re gonna want to tear us apart.”
Tilting my head to the side, I could see the hurt and the apprehension… and was there… fear, in his voice? The realization warmed my soul…he didn’t want to lose me. My heart became so full of love I could barely breathe… he didn’t want to lose me…
Edging to his mouth slowly, I brushed my lips along his, hearing him sigh at that same feeling which always jolted through our bodies whenever we touched.
“Rayo…” I whispered against his warm mouth, unable to stop my smile.
“What?” he asked as his hand caressed my spine.
I smiled wider, the action causing him to inhale a quick breath. “Lightning,” I explained. “Together, we make… lightning… it’s the only way I can explain what feeling goes through me when I see you, talk to you… touch you... make love to you…”
Axel was silent at my words, until his hand wrapped tightly around my waist. “Fulmine,” he translated into Italian. My legs quaked at his perfect pronunciation, such a beautiful language slipping from his lips. “Si…” he said on a deep sigh, “La mia fulmine… la mia luce…”
“Kiss me,” I replied. Axel pressed us closer together, our bodies once again fused.
Our lips wandered along cheeks and necks until at last they met in a sensuous kiss… the most perfect of soft kisses. More was said in this single kiss than our endless nights of lovemaking.
As our lips parted, our breaths coming strong, I assured Axel, “No one can make me leave you. I don’t care what they say. You’re mine, all mine. Your troubles are my troubles. Your sins are now my sins.”
Axel shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what I’d just promised. He lifted my hand, turning my arm to kiss the inside of my wrists. “You’re my sacrament. The holy water my mamma used to bless me with, a pleading benediction slipping from her lips, now runs in your veins.” He dropped my arm only to use his thumbs to smudge the tears from my eyes and suck the collected tears into his mouth. As his lips released the pad of his thumb, he finished, “it falls with every tear you shed for me.”
“Axel,” I quietly sobbed. He pressed a kiss to both of my cheeks before wrapping me in his arms. It was a simple embrace. An embrace that most couples innocently share almost absentmindedly, but Axel had never let me in before this moment to share such a loving act.
It meant something… no, it meant everything… it meant he had let me in... finally.
As I wrapped my arms around his waist and melted against his chest, he told me, “You’re my reawakening.” Almost choking on his final sentence, he crushed me even tighter. I frowned at what had him so upset, when he opened up to me… about the topic he couldn’t ever bring himself to mention before now. “You’re the wish my… mamma… had for my darkening soul… the thing she would say to me every night before I left to push snow… io prego perché tu possa trovare la tua luce, mio figlio smarrito… I pray you find your light, my lost son…”
Pain crashed into my chest at the cutting, forlorn timbre to his voice. I cried. With words so touching how could I not?
Axel kissed my head and added, “And I have found it, carina. La mia fulmine… la mia luce… la mia vita… the only person who sees my clear reflection in the fogged mirror that is my life.”
Chapter Seventeen
Axel
Not wanting to leave this storeroom to face the world outside, I reluctantly dropped my arms from around Ally, and instantly felt cold.
“We’d better go see how Molly’s doing,” I suggested, my finger stroking across her chin.
Ally moved back and silently nodded. Lowering her hand she retook mine. Her eyelashes fluttered up and she asked, “Is… is this still okay?”
Bringing our joined hands to my lips, I kissed the back of her hand as I studied her hopeful face… her hopeful face. I studied each line and curve, an image stirring in mind. An impression, a spark… like it always started.
I thought about how Ally had always looked at me like this. I thought back to the time I saw my mamma’s sculpture sitting alone in that empty gallery looking so lonely that it made me crumble. And then, from behind the marble, there she was like a damn bright light, her beautiful face, the most beautiful face I’d ever seen, staring at me in silence… making me no longer alone. I should have known then, maybe I did in some way, that this would be the woman to change my life.