“Why is he burning?”
“Because he burned for me,” Nino said quietly.
I searched his face but could tell he wasn’t going to tell me more. My fingertips followed the flames down to his wrist. I frowned when I felt something rigid under my fingertips. I turned his arm slightly so I could see his forearm. Under his Camorra tattoo, which was surrounded my flames as well, a long thin scar ran along his vein. I looked up at him, and he stared right back. I didn’t dare ask because for once his eyes didn’t appear emotionless at all.
I stroked the scar lightly. “Does it bother you if I touch you like this?” I asked in the barest of whispers.
“Your touch doesn’t bother me, Kiara.”
I wished he could touch me like that without my body wrenching me back into the past, without my fears taking control. “I wish … I wish I could be touched without fear.”
“Eventually you will. You will kill the part of your uncle I couldn’t kill for you.”
He sounded absolutely sure as if it wasn’t a matter of if but when. And because this was Nino Falcone, and maybe because I was drunk, I believed him.
CHAPTER 15
KIARA
Nino stirred beside me, and my eyes peeled open. Just like I had the last few mornings since our dinner, I was snuggled up to him at night and wedged myself under his arm, my head in the crook of his neck, my knees pressed up against his side. His warmth and comforting scent wrapped around me and managed to banish the nightmares.
“Sorry,” I murmured like I did every morning because I was fairly sure that the position couldn’t be comfortable for Nino, but he never pushed me away. I sat up, freeing his arm.
“Your subconscious seeks protection at night, and I can provide it,” he said with a shrug as he stood. The tight briefs did nothing to hide the outline of him.
I forced my eyes away from it, my heart thudding faster. He grabbed his swim trunks and went into the bathroom to change, but he didn’t close the door. It was only for my benefit that he didn’t undress in the bedroom. I had considered telling him that I could deal with his nakedness, but every time I was on the verge of saying those words, my courage left me.
Getting up as well, I grabbed my satin dressing gown. It wasn’t because it was cold but because I felt uncomfortable walking around the house in only my nightgown.
Nino returned and opened the door for me. Grabbing my book from the nightstand, I followed him in silence down the stairs and out through the French doors. It was already warm outside. I settled on the lounge chair close to the pool and opened my book, but my eyes weren’t drawn to the letters on the page. Instead, I watched as Nino stepped up to the edge of the pool and dove in, his muscles flexing as he did.
He swam his laps in the pool, and I observed him over my book from my spot on the chair. Eventually, I had to remove my robe because the sun relentlessly beat down on me despite the early hour.
Sometimes I felt ridiculous for even bringing a book with me. I hardly ever read a word. My gaze was drawn to the man in the water. The book was like my safety shield because I was too cowardly to admit that I enjoyed seeing Nino—and definitely too terrified of him finding out that I did.
After thirty minutes, he swam over to the ladder and climbed out. Water dripped off him and down his sculpted body. My eyes trailed from his muscled shoulders, down to his eight-pack and his narrow hips to his muscled thighs. His tight swim trunks hardly hid his body, and I could see the outline of him beneath the wet fabric again. The horrid tattoos, with their flames, agonizing faces, and words of pain and blood that ran from his forearms up over his shoulders down to his pecs and around to his shoulder blades didn’t scare me any more like they had done in the beginning. Nino was a piece of art.
His movements were unhurried and exact as he rubbed himself dry. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His cool, gray eyes met mine, and I sucked in a sharp breath and quickly looked back down on my book. When his shadow fell over me, I had no choice but to stop pretending I was reading. I hadn’t paid attention to my book in a while.
“You pretend to read but you watch me every morning,” he said. There was no judgment in his voice.
I wasn’t sure what to say. Embarrassment crawled up my neck. “I—I didn’t…” I began to protest but upon raising my head, his expression silenced me. He knew I’d been watching him. Of course he’d noticed. This was a man who had been raised to watch his surroundings. Denying it would have been ridiculous.