Chapter 8 - The Anointing
Two weeks later, the physical scars of the brief, violent war had been largely erased from the Bellandi estate.
The shattered marble in the grand ballroom had been replaced with imported black granite from Verona. The front entry had been rebuilt with triple-reinforced steel core doors, and the rose gardens, trampled by boots and tires, had been cleared and re-seeded for the coming spring.
In the master bedroom on the second floor—a room that had belonged to the heads of the Bellandi family for three generations—Norah stood before a full-length gilded mirror.
She wore nothing but an unbuttoned robe of black velvet lined with crimson silk.
The evening light spilled through the terrace windows, bathing her body in rich, golden amber. In the glass, she saw the reality of herself: the soft, generous swell of her stomach, the broad, powerful curve of her hips, the heavy fullness of her breasts, and the thick, silvered roadmap of the Addison fire stretching from her throat across her left shoulder down to her shoulder blade.
For thirty-two years, she had looked at this reflection with shame, seeing only a body that took up too much space, skin that was too damaged, a presence that needed to be hidden behind aprons and silence.
A pair of hands, large, warm, and marked by fading powder burns, settled over her hips from behind.
Roman stood behind her, wearing only dark trousers, his bare chest displaying its own collection of violence: two circular scars from hollow-point rounds, a long knife track across his ribs, and the dark ink of the Bellandi crest over his heart.
He looked at her reflection in the glass, his chin resting against the crook of her uninjured neck.
“What do you see?” Roman asked softly.
Norah swallowed. Her hands rested over his, feeling the heavy calluses of his palms against her velvet robe. “I see a woman who doesn't belong in a room like this.”
Roman leaned down, pressing his lips to the sensitive skin behind her ear. His hands moved slowly, untying the crimson sash at her waist. He peeled the black velvet back, letting it pool onto the hardwood floor around her feet.
Norah flinched slightly, her shoulders tensing as cold air hit the silvered scar tissue.
Roman did not look away. He turned her slowly in his arms until she was facing him. Then, with a slowness that felt sacred, he dropped to his knees before her.
Norah gasped, her fingers tangling in his dark, thick hair. “Roman, what are you doing? Get up—”
“Be still, Norah,” he commanded softly.
He did not look at her with lust; he looked at her with an intensity that bordered on worship. Slowly, he leaned forward and pressed his lips directly against the pale, raised center of the scar beneath her collarbone.
A shiver ran through Norah’s entire frame, her breath catching in a ragged sob.
Roman’s mouth moved across the damaged skin, his lips trailing down the silvered ridge to her shoulder, then to the fullness of her breast, his hands gently holding the lush, soft curves of her hips. He kissed every inch of the tissue that had burned for his sister, his hands treating her flesh not as an imperfection to be tolerated, but as holy ground.
“You are the most beautiful thing that has ever entered this house,” Roman whispered against her skin, his voice thick with raw emotion. “Every inch of you. Every curve. Every mark.”
Tears spilled freely down Norah’s cheeks, washing away thirteen years of self-loathing, thirteen years of feeling invisible, thirteen years of being the woman who stood in the corner while the world celebrated the thin, the cruel, and the superficial.
May you like
She pulled him up to his feet, her mouth crashing against his with an urgency that matched his own.
When Roman lifted her, her weight settled effortlessly into his arms.
