20
Something unfortunate and superfluous, a barrier that had been there all the time and kept them at a distance from each other, had been overcome, left behind happily and almost instantly. Giulia must have found some answer to the painful paradoxes that had troubled her—from that moment on, nothing existed for the two of them but the heady aroma of the soil, the scent of poppies and the heated radiance of the sky high above. Amid that primordial chaos, one step from death, something unknown, mysterious and powerful had been born. It was living, longing, frightening and beckoning.
Sprawled on the ground, Ivan stroked her warm narrow back again and again, while the girl kept pressing herself to his chest and rubbing her hot velvety cheek against his scarred shoulder. Her lips were incess
