I threw myself at him them, hurtling across the covers so that I was entwined over his torso and lap like some choking vine. My fingers sank into his hair and twisted so that we were pressed as close as two human bodies could be. Only then did I move back enough to tip my forehead to his and look at the emotion glazed over his beautiful eyes.
“Il mio cuore è tuo,” I murmured in my mother tongue, because there was no other language better able to express the wealth of feeling I had for this man.
My heart is yours.
Xan wrapped his arms around me tight as a promise, and whispered against my mouth, “I’ll never want it back.”
“Good, it’s not returnable,” I said, my giddy joy making me giggle.
His eyes smiled in return, then sobered slightly. “I know before, Pearl Hall was your prison, but do you suppose one day, when Noel is long gone, that you could ever make it your home? It was only ever that, a home, when you were there with me.”
That dream I’d only ever dreamed of returning to Pearl Hall from The Hunt resurfaced in my mind, that girlhood dream of a prince and a castle being her very own.
I’d never had the luxury to dream that as a girl and never had permission to dream it as a slave, but now, as the true wife of my earl, he was giving me licence to live it.
I nodded as I looked down between our faces at my left hand curled over his heart and caught my breath at the stunningly huge and clear yellow diamond on my finger.
“Your eyes,” he explained. “Though I couldn’t find a diamond as warm as your golden eyes.”
“Stop it,” I ordered as more tears sluiced down my face. “You’re making me cry.”
Alexander grinned wickedly as his hands tightened and he sent me careening onto my back on the bed. Before his mouth sealed over my own, he growled, “Don’t you know, I love to see you cry.”
Cosima
There was a little deli on the edge of The Bronx that Mason and I had discovered one day while walking aimlessly around the city. Ottavio’s was smaller than the bathroom in my mid-sized apartment, lined in cracked linoleum tinged yellow from cigarette smoke and stained pink in places from spilled marinara. The hum of the refrigerator filled with Italian imported sodas underscored the loud, tinny music from a portable radio Ottavio kept perched on one of the two glass display cases. Umberto Tozzi crackled through the air as I pushed through the glass door, and it reminded me of so many years ago when Seamus had driven me in our old Fiat up the Aventine hills of Roma into Alexander’s arms.
If pressed, I couldn’t exactly express why I enjoyed the dingy Italian deli so much. The air was stale, the prosciutto tough as shoe leather, and the ambiance entirely sad, but I loved the community of it, the way Ottavio knew everyone by name and that people came from all over town to get the one delicious thing produced in his kitchen, homemade tiramisu. It reminded me in good ways of Napoli, the run-down, nasty stretch of it filled with enough good people to make the urine shine and the stench of it a pleasant enough place to call home.
I didn’t know why Mason liked it as much as I did, probably because he was Italian on his mother’s side and he liked to play at being more than white, rich, and American.
I called out a loud, happy greeting to Ottavio as I swung through the door and headed straight for the fridge to grab my San Pellegrino and Mason’s favourite Chinotto Neri. After ordering a huge slab of tiramisu, I claimed one of the two tiny round tables to the left of the door and settled in to wait for Mason. It annoyed me that he was late, but only because I wanted to get back to the apartment to Skype with Alexander before he left for a day of meetings in London. He had been gone for less than forty-eight hours, and I missed him so acutely it felt like a knife wound in my chest.
The door jingled open as the soft croon of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” spilled like fuzzy yarn through the radio. His wide forehead was dotted with beads of sweat so thick they looked white as pearls, and his mouth was an open, wet puncture in his creased face. There were large sweat marks bracketing his underarms through his blazer that he didn’t try to hide as he powered through the door like a lost man seeking salvation in the warm shop.
“Mason?” I asked more than called out because I was confused by his uncharacteristic disheveled appearance. “I ordered the cake already, come sit.”