Chapter 5: Soft Skin, Sharp Tongue
Elio's POV
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By the third day, I'd stopped asking when I was going home.
Not because I planned to stay, but because I didn't like hearing Luca say "You are home" with that quiet finality.
I wandered the mansion like a ghost who hadn't realized he was dead. Every hallway held a secret, every room a warning. Men with guns came and went like shadows, speaking in low voices and coded Italian. No one ever looked me in the eyes.
Except Luca.
He looked at me like he'd already undressed every part of my soul. And he was just waiting for me to admit it.
We moved around each other like magnets caught in opposing currents. Close, but never colliding.
Until that afternoon.
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I was in the library, again. Pretending to read a book I'd never finish. The chair under me was too soft, the silence too loud. I needed something to cut it. Or maybe I needed to be cut.
Luca entered without warning, as usual, dressed in black slacks and a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There was blood on the cuff.
I raised an eyebrow. "Someone annoy you again?"
"Nothing I couldn't handle." He walked straight past me to the bar in the corner. "Whiskey?"
I hesitated. "It's four in the afternoon."
"And you're a guest in my house."
"That's one way to say prisoner."
He turned slowly, glass in hand, and looked at me like I'd just said something amusing.
"You know," I said, tilting my head, "for someone so obsessed with control, you're not very good at pretending you don't care what I think."
He took a sip of the whiskey, then crossed the room and placed the second glass in front of me. "Drink."
"You don't say please?"
"No."
I smirked. "Figures."
The drink burned down my throat. Just enough to make my head buzz and my tongue looser than it should've been.
"You always were a little tyrant," I said, swirling the amber liquid. "Even when we were kids."
Luca leaned against the table, arms crossed. "And you were always a little brat. Still are."
"Yet here I am."
"Here you chose to be."
I raised a brow. "Did I?"
He didn't respond.
Instead, he reached out and tugged the book from my lap, tossing it onto the table behind him.
"Hey—"
"Stop pretending you're here to read," he said flatly. "You want a reaction."
"And what if I do?" I challenged, standing.
His eyes dropped to my mouth, then slowly returned to my gaze.
"Then provoke me properly," he said.
My breath caught.
The tension snapped taut between us.
"You're not my keeper," I said, quieter now.
"No. I'm your consequence."
And then—he moved.
One step. Two.
I didn't back away.
He pressed me gently, slowly, back into the chair I'd just stood from, caging me in without touching a single part of me.
His voice dropped to a whisper. "You push because you want to be caught."
"You assume a lot."
"I know you," he said, brushing my cheek with the back of his fingers. "You have soft skin. And a sharp tongue. I could ruin both."
"Maybe I want to be ruined."
His eyes darkened. "Say that again."
I didn't.
Instead, I tilted my head, daring him.
"I've seen your world, Luca. Guns and blood and men with dead eyes. I grew up with monsters. You don't scare me."
He laughed once—low and dangerous.
"I don't want to scare you, Elio. I want to break you. Slowly. With care."
I swallowed.
He knelt, then, one knee on the floor in front of my chair, eyes level with mine.
"I could make you forget what pain feels like," he whispered. "Or I could remind you how it shaped you."
"You think I want that?"
"I think you don't know what you want."
His hand slid up my thigh.
I gasped—half from shock, half from how much my body betrayed me.
"But your body does," he murmured.
His fingers hovered. Not touching. Just there.
I should've told him to stop.
I didn't.
Because it felt like the first real thing in days.
My voice cracked. "Why me?"
"Because no one else makes me forget what I am," he said. "And no one else ever looked at me like I wasn't already lost."
That—hit.
Hard.
And then his lips brushed mine.
Once.
Soft.
Not claiming. Not crushing.
Just... asking.
When he pulled back, I chased it without realizing.
He smiled against my mouth.
"I told you," he murmured. "You push. But you want to fall."
---
He didn't take me to bed that day.
He left the room like nothing had happened, but I sat in that chair for nearly an hour, pulse echoing in my ears, lips still tingling.
And maybe that was the scariest part.
Not that I was starting to want him.
But that a part of me already did.
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