Page 82 of Poison and Wine
After I’d stripped down to my briefs, I pulled the covers back and got inside the bed. With her eyes locked on mine, Caterina slid through the sheets until her body reached mine. I held my arm up to let her burrow against my side. When she laid her head on my chest, the tension coiling through my body evaporated.
After lying for a few moments in silence, Caterina propped her chin on my chest to peer up at me. “When did you get your first tattoo?”
“I was fifteen.”
“That’s awfully young.”
“It’s when I killed my first man.”
Caterina tensed. “You were just a baby.”
A chuckle reverberated through my chest. “I’d hardly consider myself a baby. I was a man since I’d already fucked for the first time by then.”
“Sex doesn’t make you a man or woman,” she huffed.
“It does in my world.”
“Do you even remember the woman?” Caterina asked softly.
“Of course, I do.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“Aye, with her tits and arse.”
Caterina rolled her eyes before pinching my side. “I was being serious.”
“So was I,” I countered with a grin.
Wrinkling her nose at me, she pronounced, “You’re disgusting.”
“I know, love.”
“Have you ever cared about a woman beyond the physical side of her?”
Although I hated myself for it, I echoed my father’s words when I replied, “Loving a woman is a weakness.”
Caterina stared at me in horror. “You don’t honestly believe that, do you?” she challenged me.
I lifted one of my shoulders in a shrug. “I haven’t been proven otherwise yet.”
“But you love your mother and your sister.”
“Aye. But that’s not the same as loving a woman.”
“You’ve really never been in love?”
“No, Kitten. I haven’t.”
Her brows furrowed as her fingertip traced one of the tattoos on my chest. “But why does love have to be a weakness?”
“Because love fucks with your head. In my line of work, a fucked up head means people die. A person could even sign his own death warrant from being distracted.”
Her finger paused its tracing as she shot me a pointed look. “If you’ve never been in love, how do you know it messes with your head?”
“Because I’ve seen it happen to other people.”
“Maybe you’ve just seen it in the wrong people,” she murmured.