Page 19 of My Dark Fairy Tale
“No, I mean,yes. I am tired, but if you wanted to stay ... it’s kind of boring laying around without anything to do. I’m not allowed screen time, and I’m not allowed to read, so ...” She shrugged limply.
I had work to do. Two men to find and, hopefully, kill.
What I did not have time for was caving to the whims of a girl with wide brown eyes and hair like silk.
So why was I crossing the room to the bookshelf near the fireplace and picking up the book I knew I’d find on the second shelf?
I lifted the cover to show her as I crossed back to her bedside and pulled up a chair to get comfortable.
“The Divine Comedy,” I said with a raised brow. “Should we refresh your memory about Dante’s fallen angels?”
I knew I was royally fucked the moment she twisted slightly to pull a pillow behind her back and then faced me with a beaming smile that brought out dimples in both cheeks.
‘“Have pity on me,’ unto him I cried, ‘Whiche’er thou art, or shade or real man!’” I began, skipping straight to this line because it occurred to me that it eerily echoed our own meeting.
And how Guinevere made me feel.
Not like the shade of my father I had postured as for half a decade, but like the man I’d once been. It was a dangerous allusion, but one I found myself reluctant to cull even if it was for my own good.
And her own safety.
Chapter Five
Guinevere
Eight days after the incident, I finally woke up feeling good again.
In fact, I woke up and still felt as if I was dreaming.
Light filtered through the sheer curtains and pooled on the white linen bedcovers like liquid gold. Raffa had left the doors open slightly so the faint sounds of city life streamed in, the staccato of Italian conversations and the toy car honk of a Vespa. It was so idyllic I had to pinch myself to make sure I was truly awake.
Stretching the vestiges of sleep from my body, I noted I was still sore and stiff, but not nearly as crippled by the accident as I had been even two days ago. My throat was tender like a healing wound, but I didn’t feel pain when swallowing anymore, and my thoughts were unmuddied.
It was time to get organized and out of Raffa’s space.
There was accepting kindness from a stranger and then exploiting that kindness, and I felt dangerously on the verge of the latter. Raffa had fed me and given me shelter, but he’d also carried me to the bathroom when I was too sick and in pain to walk, read to me from Dante’sInfernobecause I couldn’t entertain myself with a concussion, and even braided my hair.
God.
The feeling of his big hands moving gently over my scalp and hair had been the single most romantic and erotic experience in my life.
Which was depressing, really, but it was one of the many reasons I was on this adventure. To learn about myself in every way, including my sexuality. It embarrassed me a little to be a twenty-three-year-old virgin, but I’d never had time for boys. I was either too sick or working too hard.
Now I was free to fall for anyone I wanted, but of course I had to set my sights on the gorgeous Italian man eleven years my senior and wildly out of my league.
I sighed as I slipped out of bed and wiggled my toes in the plush Aubusson carpet. A full-length ornate gold mirror in the corner of the room showed my skinny legs beneath the tails of Raffa’s borrowed linen shirt. I raised the cuff to my nose to inhale the delicious scent of air-dried laundry and wondered what the material might smell like after a day spent pressed to his skin.
“Concentrate,” I scolded myself as I headed to the bathroom to take care of my morning business.
When I was finished, I tiptoed down the hall to the staircase spiraling up and down to other floors, straining to hear if anyone was awake and inside. A faint clatter of dishware from the first floor had me moving down the stairs, taking in the interior of the palace properly for the first time.
It was magnificent. Like something from a Disney movie. There was even an intricate fresco painted on the ceiling of the main floor that extended from a formal living room through a huge dining room and music room. Artwork I recognized from history books and museums lined the walls, along with some marble statues that had to be authentic antiques. Finally, I found the kitchen and, through two sets of open doors, a huge terrace where Raffa sat at a ceramic-inlaid table, drinking an espresso while he read the local paper.
I took a moment to study him in the rich morning sunlight because it was my first opportunity to really look my fill. And look I did because he was simply too lovely not to admire.
Even though I’d mostly seen him in dismantled businessman finery, he was obviously fit, with the kind of quilted muscles that left seams in his skin I wanted to trail with my fingertips. The sun turned his dark-brown hair to bronze and caught the pale maple of his eyes so they glowed like a predator’s, narrow and intent on something written in the newsprint. Those same big, tanned hands that had braided my hair made my throat dry as I watched them flex, the tendons in his forearms popping as he folded the paper impatiently and dropped it to the table with a dark glare.
For one insane moment, I thought getting chased through a wheat field and hit by a car was worth it to see such a man sitting there, as beautiful as any piece of art I’d ever admired before him.
