She pauses and our meet eyes, and then her smile spreads heavenly across her cheeks.
She bursts into sweet laughter, and I can’t help but chuckle along with her, even as the monster inside of me chastises me and tells me I’m not built for laughter.
“I think I know what you mean,” I say once the laughter has passed. “But you’re wrong. Your voice is amazing.”
She beams.
She’s going to make an amazing mother.
“Thank you, Arturo. See, I knew you could be nice when you put your mind to it.”
“Nah,” I smirk. “It’s just because you’re wearing that fuck-me-hard dress. It puts me in a good mood.”
She glows an even deeper shade of red, making me think of her needy and well-worked pussy, a pussy I could play with for a generation and still never get tired of.
“But enough compliments,” I say, growing stern. “You wanted to tell me something. So tell me.”
“I wanted to …”
She pauses, she hesitates.
“I wanted to ask you why you were moaning in your sleep this morning,” she blurts.
I lean in close, letting my eyes move over her, into her.
“You’re lying,” I say. “That’s not what you wanted to say at all.”
She flinches. “How can you read me so well, Arturo?”
“Because I own you,” I snap. “Now tell me.”
Most people would flinch at the thunder in my voice, but not the future mother of my children. She sits up – giving me an even better look at those made-for-tit-fucking breasts of hers – and shoots me a brave look. Her eyes flare.
“We’ll make a deal,” she snaps, just as fiercely as me. “You tell me why you were moaning in your sleep, and I’ll tell you what I was going to say.”
I laugh darkly. “You’re my prisoner. You’re hardly in a position to wager.”
She folds her arms and glares at me. “Is that really all I am? Your prisoner?”
“Sassy in the bedroom and sassy at the dinner table,” I smirk. “You’re the whole package, aren’t you?”
“Don’t do that, Arturo. I’m not a joke.”
“I know that,” I snarl. “You’re …”
Everything to me.
“Fine,” I grumble after a pause. “If I was moaning in my sleep, it probably has something to do with the fact that I was in the car with my parents and Franco’s parents – your grandparents – when they died, alright? I was in the backseat and I survived and they didn’t, and every time I go to sleep, I think of it, I think of that night. Are you happy now? Fuck.”
I bolt to my feet and pace over to the balcony railing, gripping it firmly and staring at the blood-red sun, my chest quivering with the suddenness of the confession.
I’ve never talked to anyone about that before, not even Franco back when we were still friends.
But somehow, I feel like I can be honest with this woman, even if that makes no damn sense.
If I have a soul, it belongs to her.
“Arturo,” she whispers, walking up behind me, her heels click-clicking.
I keep facing forward, my mind flooded with blood and pain and screams.
But when she wraps her arms around my body, clasping her hands against my abs and pressing the maternal softness of her body against mine, I feel all of that drifting away, as though the wind is blowing through the smoke of my memory, dissipating it. I feel myself relax against her.
The tension, miraculously, leaves me.
“We had a deal,” I murmur, reaching down and pressing my hands against hers, feeling the heat of her through my shirt. “Now. Tell me.”
“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she whispers.
“Let me be the judge of that,” I tell her.
“Okay, but you can’t look at me.”
I chuckle grimly, shaking my head.
“I’m serious,” she snaps, her voice unexpectedly ferocious. “I can’t watch you as I say it, as I tell you. I can’t see the laughter in your eyes, Arturo. Because you will laugh at me, even if you fight it. And you’ll hate me. And resent me. And—”
“Stop telling me what I’ll do,” I growl. “And just tell me.”
She shivers against me, resting her cheek against my back. Every part of her is hot and full of life, as though our children are already inside her, running hotly through her body, roaring at me that they’re here, they’re ready to come into the world.
“That first time I saw you,” she murmurs, “in the cellar, and afterward… when you came to me in the bedroom. Those first moments, I started having these really weird, crazy thoughts. I can’t explain them. But I started to imagine that we were going to have a family together. I saw myself as the mother of your children. I imagined us laughing, loving, really being together. I thought it would go away. But it didn’t. It hasn’t. I know it makes no sense. But …”