POSSESSED BY CIRO

Chapter 16

~~Oriana~~

The walk back was quiet.

Not uncomfortable quiet. Just the kind that settles between two people when too much has already been said and neither of them wants to mess with it by adding more.

The city was doing its early evening thing around us. Shopkeepers pulling down shutters. A group of tourists crowded around a map looking lost.

The smell of food coming from somewhere that made my stomach clench because I had barely eaten since breakfast.

Ciro walked beside me.

At some point the path narrowed and a woman was coming the other way with a pram and his hand came to my back for a second to move me to the side.

Three seconds maybe.

Then it was gone.

I didn’t say anything.

But I was aware of that spot on my back for the rest of the walk home and that was honestly quite annoying.

Rosa was at dinner.

I could have kissed her for it.

Not because I was trying to avoid being alone with Ciro exactly. More because Rosa at a dinner table was like opening a window in a stuffy room. She talked constantly, about everything, about nothing, about something that had happened with one of the guards and a crate of the wrong wine that somehow ended up involving three other people and a boat.

I laughed.

Twice.

The second time I looked up and Ciro was watching me.

Not in a significant way. Just – noticing. Like the sound had caught him off guard and he hadn’t quite put his face back together fast enough.

I looked back at my plate.

Rosa kept talking.

After dinner she disappeared the way she always did, dropping a kiss on Ciro’s head on her way out that he accepted with the expression of a man who had tried to stop this from happening at some point in the past and had accepted defeat. Then the door closed behind her and it was just the two of us and the low candles and the remains of dinner.

“She’s a lot,” I said.

“She has always been a lot,” he said.

“I mean that kindly,” I said.

“I know,” he said. Something almost warm in it.

I picked up my wine.

We sat there a while longer without rushing anywhere and it struck me that this was the most normal evening I had had since I got here.

No tension sitting like a third person at the table. No careful words. Just dinner. Just this.

It felt fragile in the way that good things sometimes did. Like if I looked at it too directly it might not hold.

So I didn’t look at it too directly.

I should have gone upstairs after dinner.

Every sensible part of me knew that.

But Ciro stood from the table and moved toward the study and I just – followed. No decision made about it.

My feet went and the rest of me went with them and he didn’t say anything about it, just left the door open the way he did and settled behind the desk.

I took the armchair in the corner.

My armchair at this point. That was what it had become and I wasn’t going to examine that too closely either.

He worked.

I sat with my wine and looked at nothing in particular and the room was warm and outside the water moved past the window the way it always did and at some point my eyes got heavy and I stopped fighting it.

I came back slowly.

The candle on the desk had burned down. My wine glass was empty. And Ciro was standing beside the armchair looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t fully read.

“I wasn’t asleep,” I said immediately.

“You were asleep,” he said.

“I was resting.”

“For forty five minutes.”

I pressed my lips together. “That’s not–” I stopped. “Fine.”

I almost smiled.

He held out his hand.

I looked at it for a second. Then took it and he pulled me up and the momentum of it brought me closer than I’d planned, one step too many, and suddenly there was very little space between us and neither of us stepped back.

I had to look up to see his face.

He was looking down at me with that look.

The one that did something to the air.

Except right now we were close enough that it wasn’t just the air feeling it.

My heart was embarrassingly loud.

“Ciro–”

“I know,” he said.

“We’re not–”

“I know,” he said again.

But he didn’t move.

And I didn’t move.

And the small distance between us got slightly smaller in that way that happened when two people were both pretending they weren’t moving while moving.

His eyes went to my mouth.

One second.

Then back up.

“Go to bed Oriana,” he said.

Quiet. Strained at the edges in a way he was trying not to show.

I stepped back.

Exhaled.

“Goodnight,” I said. Not entirely steady.

“Goodnight,” he said.

I crossed to the door.

I don’t know why I stopped at the frame. I should have kept going.

Every sensible thing in me said keep going.

“Ciro,” I said. Not turning around.

“Mm.”

“Don’t make me regret starting to trust you,” I said quietly. “That’s all.”

The room was very still behind me.

“I won’t,” he said.

Simple. No decoration around it. Just those two words said like he had thought about them before they came out.

I nodded once.

I walked out.

Upstairs I didn’t even bother pretending I wasn’t thinking about it.

I lay on my back, hand on my chest, feeling my own heartbeat and having a very frank internal conversation with myself about the situation.

The situation being – somewhere between signing that contract and standing in a study doorway saying don’t make me regret this, something had happened to me.

Not something I had planned.

Not something I had given permission to happen.

But something real. The kind of real that lived in your chest and didn’t move when you tried to reason it away.

I stared at the ceiling.

His eyes dropping to my mouth for that one second.

Go to bed Oriana.

I won’t.

The rose was a pale shape on the windowsill in the dark.

I looked at it for a while.

Then I turned onto my side, pulled the cover up, and let sleep come.

It came easier than it had in days.

Which probably said everything.