Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 25827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
It’s not just familiar.
But it feels so, so familiar in the best kind of way, and when I hear him say my name—
“Juniper.”
It’s different from how it was eighteen years ago.
The accent that I realize now he’s done his best to hide...
It’s there in every syllable.
New. Raw. Real.
And the sound of it just brings me closer...
So, so much closer—
“Juniper mia...”
I never thought I’d be the kind of woman to surrender everything just because of an accent. Or maybe, just like with everything else, it’s because the accent is his, and that’s the only reason I feel so, so close?
The solid heat of him is everywhere now. His chest against mine. His body holding me up because mine has stopped being able to. His mouth against my throat, my collarbone, the place where my shirt won't let him go any lower without permission he knows I won't give him in words. So he stops there. He doesn't cross. He doesn't have to.
Because his hand is enough.
Because his mouth is enough.
Because the tightening in my body is happening on its own, my legs around his waist, my hands fisted in his hair, my face pressed against the side of his neck so I don't have to look at him when I fall apart, and I don't know how long I can take this. I just know it's too much, this scorching ache, this need that's almost like an obsession, a craving that's unlike any other—
And when his teeth graze the spot where my pulse lives—
I cry out as something explodes inside of me, my body shuddering as my world turns upside-down.
I'm not sure how long it lasts.
All I know is that when I open my eyes in a daze, I'm still pressed against his neck. My legs are still around his waist. My hands are still in his hair. And worst of all, I'm still trembling against him in a way I haven't trembled in eighteen years.
No no no no no no no no.
Reality starts setting in, and I can’t...I can’t believe that just happened.
That I let it happen even after...
No no no no no no.
I wish I could strike this out like all the other things that don’t have to go on record.
I wish I could make this unhappen.
But I can’t.
Fingers are cupping my chin...
Because he won’t let me.
Forcing my gaze to collide with his...
"You. Are. Mine."
And at that moment, I can no longer pretend Nate Simons ever existed.
"Don't make me punish others to prove my point."
I have to accept that this is the real him.
Nicolo Sestini.
A stranger.
A mistake.
A threat.
Chapter Four
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
The AUSA across the table has been sliding photographs at me for the last two hours, and I've named what I can name.
A signet ring on a finger that's no longer attached to anything. A wristwatch I gave one of my father's lieutenants for his fortieth birthday last March, the one with the engraving on the back that I told the jeweler to make in his wife's handwriting. A tattoo I've seen across someone's shoulder blade in the steam room at the club. By the fourth box of photographs the AUSA has stopped asking me to identify by person and started asking me to identify by thing.
It's an improvement, in a way.
Things at least don't have widows and grandchildren and Sunday dinners I'm now going to have to attend without them.
But it's over finally.
I sign the document and shake the AUSA's hand. I walk out into the afternoon, and as the warehouse door swings shut behind me, my body realizes something my brain hasn't gotten around to admitting yet.
I'm not human anymore.
Not by choice.
But that's just how this fucked-up world works, and so I just get rid of the thought and focus on what's in front of me.
A car with federal plates.
A Crown Victoria, actually, which is the kind of car a man like me wouldn't even let one of my drivers be seen in.
Is this some kind of joke?
A Crown Victoria?
It's a thought that invites incredulity and humorless smiles, but it's also a safe thought so I keep thinking it while I get behind the wheel and start driving.
Anything to keep my brain thinking about something other than the photographs.
And I only stop driving when I find what I didn't realize I was looking for.
A cemetery, just past the edge of the city, off some county road I don't remember turning onto. Italian-coded, by the look of it. Having 'Buon riposo, Madre amata, Riposa in pace' on the gates also gives it away. It's the kind of place a person could come to read a book or eat a sandwich on a bench if a person could forget what the stones underneath are.
The grass is freshly cut, and someone's left a candle in a red-glass holder on a grave near the gate, the wick burned all the way down to the wax. Whoever lit it lit it days ago and hasn't been back. A few rows over, someone else has left wilted carnations. Then nothing.