Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

45 | Santo

"You have serious RBF."

I crack an eye open, frowning as I come face to face with Nina's shit-eating grin. Her hair looks like a birds nest, my t-shirt is falling off one delicate shoulder, and her face holds a warm pink glow.

She looks like she was fucked, thoroughly. Twice on her hands and knees in front of  the ornate body mirror in my room, rough and unforgiving, the carpet reddening her skin; then once on my lap, sitting so pretty as she rode me slowly, languidly.

"I don't know what that is." I almost lose my way halfway through the statement as I get lost in the memories, then all over again as I stare at her. Something fierce and potent makes my blood simmer as I look at her wearing my clothes, wrapped in my sheets, with that glow that I put on her features. 

I tug her closer, humming as her thighs brush mine. The warmth and weight of her is comforting, something I could let soothe me to sleep. And not just any sleep, but the deep and careless slumber of someone who can let themselves be entirely subdued without a care in the world. It's a warm and bright thought; it's stacked right next to all the other ones about how her voice pushes through all the racket in my head, and placing my palm over that birthmark on her hip as I press into her when she wants it slow feels like coming home. 

These soft and comforting things often crystallize into anger. They make me think of  the fact I could very well be wholeheartedly grasping onto something that isn't meant to stay. 

Nina is undeniably good. Beautiful and sweet, a forbidden fruit I've plucked from its tree. I wonder if I'll be able to hold onto the good this time. 

"That. Whatever your face is doing right now," she laughs, her smile practically splitting her face. She's always loose-limbed and giggly after we fuck. It's become my favorite thing. "You always have this annoyed look on your face, like—oh, I know exactly what it's like. It's like you've been walking on the sidewalk, and someone behind you just stepped on your heels for the fifth time."

What the fuck is she talking about?

"I'm sleeping, woman," I grumble, closing my eyes again. Hoping to hide the fact that I can't even focus on what the fuck she's saying because I keep getting lost in her eyes like the main character of a stupid fucking love story. 

She moves to get off, but collapses on my chest in an avalanche of hair in my mouth and laughter that pinches my chest when I yank her back into me. I breathe deeply, contentment unfurling in my chest.

A finger pokes my face. 

"You have a dimple."

The smile that had unknowingly crept across my face drops, and I dig my fingers into her sides, playfully growling, "you're a little fucking menace, aren't you?"

She's laughing brightly, and she's been laughing so much recently that it's been making me wonder. I've spent sleepless nights thinking about it, the possibility that I could really be making her feel that way, that I could make her look and sound so happy and it could be anything but a fluke. 

Her eyes dance in quiet mirth as I pin her beneath me with a knee between her thighs and her wrists held above her head. Pretty little menace. The humor drains from her expression as I lower my nose to her jaw, tracing the edge of it to the tips of her ears. She shivers as I lightly nip her earlobe, tilting her head. It's her sweet spot, my favorite spot on her. It makes her tremble and gasp and fold into me for more. 

"You're beautiful."

I don't even know I've said it until she blushes. More words I haven't granted permission to leave my head tumble out. 

"So precious. So good. I don't think I'll ever be able to believe that you're really mine. I still feel like I'll break you sometimes." 

She frees her hands from my grip, snaking them around the back of my neck. It's my turn to shiver as she trails them to cup the sides of my face. 

"If only you would," she murmurs, and I do a double take at the glint in her eye. That minx. I could fuck her until her skin is red and raw from carpet burn, tears track down her cheeks, and she's too loose limbed to stand on her own, and she still thinks I'm... holding back. 

I'm not sure why she insists on it. Maybe she's right, because something dark and delicious curls in my stomach when I think about it. But regardless, I'm perfectly content with her like this. 

"I'm not so fragile, you know," she tells me, her face suddenly becoming serious. "I don't break so easily. I think you underestimate me, Santo."

I frown, mulling over the idea. Is there a way to get rid of this fierce need to protect her, to shield her from everything outside us and everything inside me? A fond smile quirks her lips, and she spreads a finger in the space between my brows. 

"You see me as something so angelic and pure, but I don't know. I might surprise you one day."

+

I don't know what he's doing to me. It must be bad because I have no idea how long I've been here, what is real and what's not. 

Days, weeks, months—it's all the same to me with this pain as a constant backdrop, these drugs putting me in a perpetual haze, parts of me hurting that I didn't know could hurt. I am a walking wound, a gaping chasm of pain; I have lost all sense of myself and my body.

The pain is the only thing that's constant. Everything else is fleeting. Everything else is sometimes. Sometimes I hear voices, people talking to me. Sometimes I feel things, like scraps of food being fed to me when I'm just sentient enough to chew and swallow. Sometimes I can even speak, sometimes it doesn't hurt so much.

During those times, I scream my throat raw, I scream until it feels like it bleeds and the blood fills my stomach and then I'm sick, heaving and shaking against the chains—without which, I would be on the floor in a crumpled heap of broken bones.

I will not let him kill me silently.

This one memory of Nina keeps resurfacing, a seemingly inconsequential afternoon we had together. The relief that memory brings me is greater than the ache of not being able to go back to it. Anything is better than those broken memories of my childhood, and it's a wonderful grace that I can pretend I'm there with her now.

But it's at a certain point—day or night, I have no idea—that I realize she's slipping into the darkest corners of my brain where I can't reach her anymore. It's becoming harder to recall her voice, her face, the little things like the way she would touch me or the noises she'd make as she falls asleep. She's slipping away from me and I'm completely bereft.

That is what breaks me, far beyond whatever my father does to me. I'm swallowed by grief and loss so total that, in my more lucid moments, I'm astounded by this new level of pain. And in those moments, I lose my mind, I convince myself that she's here, that somehow she's come to save me, that love is enough to conquer the pain men cause.

But she's not. She won't. And it isn't.

Without her, I'm just a body, flailing as I fall deeper and deeper into the Hell I've built for myself, thankful, at least, that there was something good and beautiful I could experience on this earth before I was swallowed whole. And it has finally caught up with me now, and it widens its gaping jaws and promises to claim these tired, tired bones.