Page 77 of Sinner's Vows

“I was in a really bad space after this,” he says as he lifts his hands, his fingers still massaging his pinkie. “And even though everybody picked up on it, Luca was the only one looking to do something that would actually help me.”

“How old were you?” I ask, weary to ask questions about things I haven’tearned.

“I’d just turned twenty.”

“What? So young?”

“What do you mean? Luca was eighteen and knew more about sex than a whole brothel at that point.” He looks at me and start to chuckle at something he must read in my face. “Don’t make saints of any of us, sweetheart, least of all of my younger brothers. Steph, I’ll admit, is a solid one-girl guy. Matteo lost his cool just a few months ago…and fuck knows, that man needed to find Tasha. Benedict… Benedict keeps his cards close. But Luca? Luca is a loose fucking cannon.” He shakes his head as he fiddles with the pasta maker again. “We all had a very early introduction into that world, complimentary of the Don, and let’s just say, some folks live twenty years in eighty. We Scalera boys all lived eighty years by the time we turned twenty.”

It’s quiet as I digest his words. Dominic is busy with the pasta, rolling the one sheet through a thinner setting and then the next one. He repeats the process while I watch, his hands guiding the pasta with care, until the machine cuts it into thinstrips. He piles them onto the counter in small hillocks of fettuccine.

“But what do you actually do?” I ask, because he hasn’t answered my question.

“Touch,” he says softly as he shoots me a glance. “It’s just touch.”

“Okay.” I still don’t understand, except that he shouldn’t be allowed to touch me, even if I want him to. Not if he’s my brother. There’re some sins I’m not coming back from. “Touching isn’t on the cards.” Not until that DNA test comes through. And then Dominic’s whole agenda is going to change. Do a whole one-eighty on me.

He smirks. “Except that you’ve been touching me, sweetheart. With your eyes.” His gaze brushes down my body in the slowest torment of tingles I’ve ever felt, and then he lifts a finger to my chin and runs it along my jaw. “Everywhere where you want to go…with your hands.”

I blink up at him, stunned.

He rolls his finger over, only to gather a few strands of hair from my temple to my ear, spreading goosebumps down my chest and right to my core. “That’s how it starts, didn’t you know?”

41

DOMINIC

Her skin is so soft, so delicate, I don’t want to stop touching her, but I must. I drop my hand and cut away from her gaze. She’s staring at me with sparks of lust in her eyes, chewing her plump bottom lip and basically driving me fucking crazy.

I reach for the wine to top off her glass and distract us both. I’m not even sure she’s aware of what she’s doing to me. First, she asks that poignant question, and then?—

Fuck.

What I really want to do is show her. Lift her onto this counter and ghost over every inch of skin she’s got exposed with my lips. Warm breath flowing on cooler flesh, spreading goosebumps like wildfire over her body. Strip her slowly until she’s only in a pair of panties that’s probably already so wet there’ll be no resistance sliding a finger into her tight pussy.

I want to feel where she’s at. Smell her need. Taste her. I want to wrap her legs around my hips, carry her to the bedroom, tie her up, and slowly explore her body, tearing down her every last defense so gently, she’ll offer herself to me. And then I’ll make her come. Again and again. But softly, with care, and on her terms. Terms she hasn’t even discovered yet.

Bar her experience with Franco Fiore, this woman is all innocence, stymied due to what happened one night long ago. She’s never been a prostitute, otherwise she wouldn’t have any of these questions. I’m starting to suspect the tattoo on her lower belly is a fake, and I don’t like the segue this thought leads me to, so I brush it off.

The question is really when did she step into character, and when did she slip out of it, subconsciously? And what role is she playing?

“I’ll start the sauce,” she murmurs as she turns away to the stove, leaving her wine untouched.

“Yes. The pasta is ready.”

It’s quiet between us as she pan-fries the pancetta. I wrap up the pasta and do a preliminary job of wiping down the counter. The space fills with pancetta’s smokey flavor, and I pad over to watch what she’s doing.

I place the mountain of finely grated Pecorino next to her. As the water is boiling, I lower the pasta bundles into it and shake the pot. “This is going to be quick.”

“I’m ready for you,” she says as she stirs the pancetta.

Are you, sweetheart?I want to taste the slope where her neck glides into her shoulder, squeeze her ass, but I need to distance myself from this woman. From this tug-of-war tension between us. This maddening desire I already have building for her, which she’s only blazed into fire with her questions.

I force my focus on the food. I feel weirdly at home and awkward at the same time. I’ve never cooked like this with or for a woman before. As if it’s a date. As if she’s my girlfriend. Or my wife. If she were any of these things, my hands would’ve been all over her by now.

My life is so compartmentalized that everything is in a box, stacked in such a way I know exactly where what is, contained, ordered, untouchable—safe—until I decide to pull it closer.Women have their own container, and they are never allowed to come out like this.

The pasta hardly takes two minutes to cookal dente, and knowing it will soften more in the sauce, I turn off the heat and drain the water. Ariana steps to the side as I reach over with the dripping colander and slide the pasta into the pancetta mix. She’s prepped the egg yolks and now stirs them in with the cheese.

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