Page 20 of Tino: Mine

I laughed and then cupped her face. “You silly girl.”

She dropped the gun and her whimpers followed. “I don’t want another woman to raise my boy.”

“No one will. Nicco will have the mother he loves, no one else.”

“No?”

“And his father will have the woman he loves, no one else.”

“Loves?”

“Si, Angel. Tonight more than ever. You had no idea how exhausting it was to protect your soul. Now, we’re both free. We speak the same language we both understand. Ti amo, Angel. The kind of love that is intense and dark and obsessed but not an obsession itself. I might have been obsessed with the idea of your innocence, but I’ve always been in love with you. The real you. The darkness that heard and spoke to me from day one.”

“You love me?”

“I love you.” I took her lips in mine and my hands roamed over her body, the smell of blood covering us both. “But no more lies, Angel. Not to me. Not to yourself.”

“Yes. No more. Does that mean you forgive me?”

“I’ll always forgive you, Angel. It’s one of the many promises I’ve made you, and I always keep my promises. We still have to find a way to trust each other again, though.”

“I trust you with my life even when you tried to take it. I’m ready to do anything to prove to you I will never betray you again.”

“Atta girl.”

We consummated our new union with passion that never died, writhing in the color of sin, burning in the darkness of our souls, knowing the only salvation we were getting was in the darkest of our desires, but in the aftermath longing for the forgiveness only we could give each other.

*****