Nino gently touched the back of my head as his other hand brushed my arm. “What’s that for?”
“I just wanted to kiss you,” I admitted. “Or does it bother you if I do? Outside of sex, I mean.”
Nino tilted his head, his thumb lightly rubbing my neck. “Why would that bother me, Kiara? I enjoy kissing you. Did I ever give you reason to believe otherwise?”
“No, but you never kiss me during the day. We only ever kiss when we’re about to have sex.”
“When would you want me to kiss you?”
I sighed. “I don’t want you to kiss me because I want it. I want you to kiss me because you want to do it, because you feel like it.” I realized how foolish I sounded. Nino would never feel like kissing me. Every act of tenderness was for my benefit.
Nino searched my face and pulled me toward him then kissed me, the brush of his lips soft, his gray eyes almost unsure.
I blinked at him. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
I lowered my head to his bare chest, my cheek pressed up to his warm skin, confused by his actions and words.
CHAPTER 22
KIARA
That night, familiar sounds of distress woke me. I sat up and fumbled for the light switch, blinking against the sudden brightness.
Nino jerked upright beside me, his hand reaching for the bedside table and grabbing his knife.
His wild eyes locked on me, chest heaving, his fingers clutching the handle.
“I’m getting Remo,” I murmured and slowly slid out of bed, worried about startling Nino. His free hand curled around my wrist, stopping me.
I gasped in surprise, my gaze searching his face. The wild despair was gone from his expression, replaced by a mix of confusion and the familiar blankness he had always displayed in the past. “Stay,” he said quietly.
Hesitating, I climbed back into bed, and Nino pulled me toward him. I settled on his chest. He put the knife back down on his nightstand, but the tension remained in his body. Tracing the tattoos on his torso, I tried to count his scars to distract myself, but it was difficult to determine where many of them ended and others began.
“All these tattoos … why did you get them?”
Nino’s fingers trailed up my spine and continued to my neck, then higher up, tangling in my hair. His lips brushed my forehead, and I peered up at him. Was this simulated affection? Simulated tenderness?
“Pain and pleasure,” he said in a low voice. “I can feel those like anybody else, maybe even stronger.”
“But if you feel pain even stronger than others, why would you submit yourself to having a needle pierce your skin over and over again for many hours? Why do you go into the cage? Why do you seek out pain?”
His mouth twisted. “To remind myself that I’m alive.”
My brows drew together.
“To remember who I am, what I am.”
“I don’t understand,” I admitted. “What happened to you and Remo to make you the way you are?”
Nino tilted his head down to me and regarded me. I returned his gaze, even if I didn’t know what he was looking for. “Like you said, it’s not only my story but also Remo’s.”
“I won’t talk to him about it,” I promised at once. I would never think about talking to Remo about something that obviously affected both him and Nino like that. It would be suicidal.
“Our mother was insane,” Nino began in a distant voice. “Maybe she always was or maybe our father made her that way. I only remember her like that. She had better days when our father stuffed her full of pills, but on this particular day, she was heavily pregnant with Adamo. She couldn’t take the pills. Maybe she had wanted to kill herself for a while.”
Something tight coiled in my stomach, and I almost asked him to stop because I knew that day was when Nino’s childhood ended. Nino’s mother wasn’t the first wife of a Capo who ended her life. Being married to someone raised to be cruel could destroy anyone.
“Our father had sent us all to our cabin out in the Rockies because he wanted us gone from Vegas. We were a burden. One night, our mother pulled me out of bed and led me into her bedroom. Savio was already there, but he wasn’t moving. She’d given him her sleeping pills. I didn’t know what was going on, but she gripped my arms and slit both my wrists with a knife. She wanted to kill us too. Maybe to punish our father.”
I sucked in my breath, fingers seizing on Nino’s stomach, but he was stock-still. Those scars on his wrists, they were remnants of that day.
“I was confused and scared.” His brows drew together as if he was trying to remember how being scared felt. “She left after that and came back with Remo a few minutes later. I think she took him last because she knew he’d be her biggest challenge. The house was filling with smoke by then. She’d set fire to the kitchen and living room. Remo rushed over to me, and she locked the door and shoved the key under the gap below the door. Then she moved to cut Remo’s wrists, but he fought her, unlike me. She managed to cut him over and over. That’s where he got the cut on his face. When she realized she couldn’t hold him down, she set the curtains on fire and then slit her own wrists. The room filled with smoke, and I sat in my own blood. Savio wasn’t move on the bed.”