Page 14 of The Last Vendetta

Goddammit! I dropped to the carpet, rolling toward the bed to hide as the scared girl who’d been sleeping out of my sight in the room woke up fully and drew in a breath to scream.

5

GIULIA

Giulia

Renzo!

I turned, grabbing my robe that was resting on the foot of my bed.

What is he doing here?

I’d have to wait to ask. He was quick to drop and hide at the sound of Beatrice waking up. Facing her now, I hurried to comfort her.

After I left my parents down the hall, I came to my room and found my youngest sister curled up on the chaise where she liked to read. Just to be near me, she always said. With the fright from earlier, I wasn’t surprised that she came into my room wanting some sense of security. It was the middle of the night, though, and she hadn’t lasted long with her e-reader. It lay on her lap as she sat up, happening to wake right when freaking Renzo entered my room.

“Shh.” I rushed to calm her, reaching out to her and hugging her.

I didn’t need her screaming in fright, scared by the sight of a man in my room.

“I saw?—”

I held her close, urging her to stand. “A dream,” I cooed. “It was just a dream.”

She nodded, furrowing her brow as I led her away from the chaise. Making sure to block any view of Renzo on the floor, I held my robe out and hustled her to the door. “You’ll feel better in your own bed, not that little chaise.”

“I know,” she admitted before she yawned, blinking with her eyes still half sleepy. “I just wanted to wait up for you to come in your room. I don’t like it when they fight.”

Neither do I. I walked her to the door and kissed her brow as I opened it.

For all I knew, Renzo could be gone again by the time I returned from seeing Beatrice back in her own bed. I kissed her brow, eager to go back and see why the hell that man had snuck into our house, let alone into my room.

His brother had only been dead for mere hours. So, as I walked back to my room, opened the door, then closed it behind me, I wondered why. Was he here to seek comfort? Was he eager to finish what we started and couldn’t finish, resorting to intimacy to avoid reacting to his brother’s death?

“Renzo?” I whispered as I crept over the carpet, my bare feet silent.

Was it all my imagination? No. Beatrice saw him too. I felt every?—

He stepped out from around my dresser, stalking toward me. At once, I revisited that instant connection and flare of heat that his heated stare incited in me. Feeling his gaze rove over me lit me up inside, fraying my nerves into a mess. I hadn’t dreamed this up. This was twice now that I was suffering from the tension and awareness of his smoldering stare.

“Renzo,” I repeated, scolding him the best I could in these conditions. Like being nearly naked. And us alone. In my room. That he was even here.

“What are you doing here?” I wrapped my robe over myself, vainly trying to cover up and at least look like I was attempting to be modest. Alarm registered in my mind, dulling the immediate arousal he’d stoked by looking at me like that.

“Fuck, Giulia,” he rasped, reaching me and trying to grab my waist.

I sidestepped his hands, glaring at him the best I could while resisting my desire to lunge at him and pick up where we’d left off.

He wasn’t some new, shiny thing. We’d known each other since we were children, always near but never friends. The longstanding antagonism between our Families prevented us from ever becoming more than mutually loathed acquaintances, but we’d always been aware of the other lurking in the background.

Only now, since he’d found me wanting a moment of peace while I hid at that party, did I feel this sweeping, all-consuming need to be near him.

To feel him.

And kiss him until he growled and clutched at me tighter.

He was just as conflicted as I was. His gaze turned hotter, and his face went taut with more grooves on his brow. Scowling and narrowing his eyes, he silently warned me not to shy away or fight back again.

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