Page 41 of Sandro

I shrugged. “Okay. I was just curious.” I sat back down next to Sandro. “All right. What else do you have to tell me about my family and all that fun stuff. Anything else?” I asked.

Sandro smiled while shaking his head at me. “I believe we were interrupted,” he said as he reached for me again.

Oh yeah, I could certainly go for some more kissing. In fact, I could go for more anything with Sandro. I seriously couldn’t get enough of him, but that’s how it was supposed to be, wasn’t it?

Chapter 17

Sandro

There was a sharp pain in my side, and I slowly cried out as the knife slid into it. I stared up into the dead black eyes of one of the men who were holding me.

“Sandro!” I heard someone calling out. His voice was like a soothing melody. Then I felt his touch. Only this touch didn’t cause pain. “Sandro,” he called out again. I felt myself being shaken, which amplified the pain, and I tried to reach out to push him away. Only I felt someone sit on me and then push on my shoulders hard. “Sandro! Wake up!”

I flinched at the sound of Leo shouting in my mind. I opened my eyes to find darkness, except for my beloved sitting on top of me.

“Leo?”

I heard him gasp, and then he was lying on top of me. Leo slid his arms around me tightly, and it took me entirely too long to realize he was crying. When I did, I quickly wrapped my arms around him, expecting the pain in my side to stab at me, only there was no pain—only the warmth of Leo lying on me.

“Leo? Shh. I have you. I’m here,” I whispered to him. “I’m here, mio amato.” I held him as close as I could. I was safe. I wasn’t in that warehouse. I was here in my bedroom at the villa with Leo. We were in bed, and it was apparent that I’d had another nightmare. “I’m here,” I told him again, hoping he picked up on the fact that I meant I was mentally here with him. “I’m sorry, Leo. I’m here with you now,” I said again.

Leo lifted up just enough to look down at me. It was dark in the room, something that I discovered Leo preferred. I didn’t mind. I could sleep in the middle of the day, or in pure darkness, but my beloved liked to sleep in a cool, dark room.

“You were there again,” Leo said quietly. “You were back in that room. You called out like you were in pain. It woke me up, and then I saw your memory that you were reliving, and I tried to wake you up.”

I rubbed up and down his back. “I’m sorry, Leo. I want nothing more than to be completely whole for you and our baby. I want to be the mate and father you both deserve. I hate that you see those memories and have to live them with me.”

“I just want you, Sandro. Bad memories and all.” Leo laid his head down on my shoulder, and it was only then that I felt him start to relax a little more. He stretched out his legs, but when he started to move off me, I moved my arms from his back to his waist and held him on top of me.

“Don’t go. I like you here. You feel amazing, and I’m not saying that in a sexual way. Although you do feel that way as well when the moment isn’t one that is filled with pain and memories that hopefully one day will be forgotten.” I wanted Leo with me always. He did more for me than he would ever realize. I’d told him before: he gave me a new purpose to go on—to live.

“I don’t want to hurt or squish you.”

“You could never squish me, as you say.” I glared up at my beloved, but I wasn’t sure how much he could see, so I reached over, and with a bit of a stretch, I was able to turn on the bedside lamp. Leo was above me, staring down at me, and although I knew he was crying, it impacted me so much more now that I could see it. “Don’t cry for me,” I told him.

Leo pushed himself up and sat up on top of me. “What am I supposed to do, Sandro? I’m pregnant, and it’s not only upsetting that you had these horrible experiences, but you’re still reliving them in your dreams, and you might always. You tell me not to cry for you, but I can’t help it because not only am I pregnant with your baby, but I also love you, and you don’t love me back and might never feel that way about me.” Leo covered his face with his hands, and it took me only until he lifted his leg to crawl off me to grab hold of my beloved and flip us to where he was now on his back and I was leaning just over him. Leo looked up at me with a startled expression, and I felt like the worst person in the world.

“You love me?” I asked. There were a million other more appropriate things to say in the moment, and of course, I asked something completely dumb. “Why haven’t you said so? Why would you feel as if you can’t share your feelings?” How had I not seen this through our bond? Was he hiding his thoughts and feelings in our bond now? I truly was failing my beloved. “Leo,” I said, trying to get him to look at me. “Please look at me.” He wouldn’t, not that I blamed him. “Leo, please look at me,” I pleaded. There must have been something in either my voice or the hurt I was feeling through our bond that he finally did.

“Why? So you can see how pathetic I look?”

I smiled down at my beloved. “No, silly. So I can look you in the eyes when I tell you that I love you too. I have failed you immensely if you believe that I might not ever love you back.” Leo sniffed and swiped at his cheeks before he blinked up at me. “I love you,” I said again. “And I’m so very sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. I wanted to be more than I am now, still do, because you and our baby deserve so much more than an old, broken vampire.”

Leo swiped at his eyes again, and then he did something completely unexpected. He pushed on my shoulder and glared. “You’re an asshole, Sandro. How could you do this to me? I’m overly emotional, and I’m crying and I love you, and you love me and you didn’t say because of something so stupid.”

He wasn’t wrong. It was completely unfair of me to withhold my love from him. “You are correct. I am. I will hopefully earn your forgiveness sooner rather than later for my oversight. I adore everything about you. You are the reason I smile, the reason I want to be better. You so selflessly give everything to me, and it was incredibly easy to fall in love with you. I apologize for not telling you as soon as I realized what I felt for you.” I leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Please don’t be upset with me for too terribly long,” I whispered next to his ear.

Leo’s arms went around me, and he pulled me down and held me close. I didn’t want to hurt him, so I rolled us again, once more with him on top of me so I could hold him close and run my hands up and down his back.

“You really love me and aren’t just saying that because I blurted it out?”

“I really love you. With every bit of my broken self.”

Leo shook his head. “You’re not broken, Sandro. You went through something incredibly horrifying. You were tortured and were left for dead. That doesn’t make you broken. You’re strong. You fought and survived. And don’t come and say that I give you a purpose to live. I’m happy I do, but you were already living when I met you. That’s how I was able to meet you.”

“I was surviving, and poorly at that,” I argued back. “And you do give me a reason to continue on with life every single day.”

Leo sighed. “I’m not going to argue because it’s going to become a cycle.” Leo smiled at me, then leaned down and kissed my shoulder. There was a scar there that would never heal, and he liked to kiss them, and although that had been uncomfortable at first, I knew that he did it because I’d survived and he got the chance to meet me and turn the ugliness into something beautiful.