Merciless Vows by Faith Summers

35

Aria

That’s the guy from the concert last night.

The drop-dead gorgeous guy with the hint of a Russian accent.

The drop-dead gorgeous guy with the tattoos on his fingers. I’m sure they were prison tattoos I’ve seen in books and films.

Dad would kill me if he ever saw me talking to a guy like that. I don’t think Mom would freak too much, though, but she’d give me her standard warning away from the bad boy.

This is no boy, however. This guy is a man.

I stop in my tracks and shamelessly gawk at him sitting in the booth at the back of the coffeehouse.

He’s reading a newspaper, and I’ve decided now he’s not a student.

Not one in the music program anyway, and if he is a student, he’s probably at the grad school. Most people know well before then that the campus coffee tastes like shit.

Since I’m fussy, I realized straight away and decided to always go off campus to get my coffee.

This is the only place my father’s guards will allow me to venture to by myself.

Most times, Larry, the head guard, allows me to come here even when he can’t see me. He knows me by now, and I’m the bookworm, or rather music geek, who won’t get up to shit.

The most trouble I’ve ever gotten into was setting the frogs free in the science lab in tenth grade.

That’s me and the extent of my days of trouble.

It’s nights like these that I’m grateful for. When I end my day at my favorite coffee shop, and the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life is inside it.

As he lifts his head and our eyes lock the same way they did last night, the night gets even better.

Last night I saw him in the crowd. He’s the kind of guy anyone would pick out.

His face alone is enough to charm a girl out of her panties, but that hair and those muscles is a whole other story of sexiness.

I’m always too nervous to talk to guys, but that’s understandable given what happened to me in the past.

I’ll never be over it, but time helped me move on to some extent. It’s just that I wonder if people will look at me and see I’m damaged goods.

It’s a thought I shouldn’t be having now when he’s looking right at me.

Last night he said all of three words to me. Three words that made me melt.

He waited until after the concert, and as I was leaving, he said, ‘you were amazing.’

That was it, and in that sexy as fuck accented voice. I said thanks, and he winked at me before walking away.

Now he’s here like he just materialized from my wildest fantasy.

I should go over to him. I can’t not go. I’d regret it if I didn’t at least say hi.

I draw in a breath and try to channel my inner diva the way Sienna taught me.

My inner Aphrodite, a goddess who knew how to work her charm and beauty.

Then I walk over to him, and those stormy gray eyes take me in with wild fascination.

“Hi,” I say first.

“Hello, Printsessa,” he replies in that deep voice, and Jesus, I pray I don’t wither away from how truly sexy this man is.

“Printsessa?”

“Princess in Russian.” He inclines his head to the side, and a lock of his wild brown hair drifts over his eye.

“Is that where you’re from?”

“Yeah, I’ve just lived here forever, so the accent isn’t as heavy.”

“Oh, wow. My family is from Italy.”

“That’s cool, and one more thing I know about you. Do you want to join me and tell me more about yourself?”

My eyes widen, and for a moment, I’m not sure if I heard right.

“I’d love to.” I smile and sit.

“So, Printsessa, is your name as pretty as your face?”

Smooth. I can do this. “You tell me. It’s Aria De Marchi.”

“It is. I’m Lucca.”

As he speaks, something about him seems familiar to me. There’s something in his eyes.

Where would I know him from, though?

I’m sure I’d remember a guy like this.

“Have we ever met before?” I have to ask because the feeling of knowing him comes strongly to my mind.

His gaze drops for a fraction of a second then he shakes his head. “No. We haven’t.”

The second he says that, he fades before my eyes, and nothingness surrounds me, but then I hear it—the music.

Piano music.

I hear it and feel his hands on mine, guiding me to play the notes. I hear him telling me to play like the music is coming from inside me.

His voice fades, but the music stays there, whispering to my heart.

My eyes open, one at a time in the dark, but the music doesn’t go away.

I’m awake, and that was another dream—another memory of missing pieces.

The faint music I hear, however, is real, which means he’s back.

Lucca is home and playing that piece that always speaks to me.

Clair de lune.

Now I know why I had such a strong reaction to hearing it.

It was the piece he played when he taught me. I remembered.

I don’t know when sleep came to take me, but I thought about all he told me until I couldn’t think anymore. I feel different.

I know there are parts he left out. There was a massive chunk he didn’t talk about because he still didn’t go into specifics about what my father did to him.

The truth of everything rests on that, and I don’t suspect I’ll know until he’s ready to tell me.

The question is, what do I do in the meantime with so many things floating around in my mind.

What I know so far is a lot for me to digest.

Lucca is Peter. The boy I used to know.

Terrible things happened to him, and he grew up to be an assassin for the Bratva.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that, but I know how I still feel about him. I don’t think I’d ever be able to fight that force that seems to have always drawn me to him.

Terrible things happened to me too, and he saved me from something that would have killed me a million times over, given what happened to me as a child.

A sex slave.

That’s what I could have been.

And it would have been because of my father again.

I feel like vomiting. I’m so enraged I could scream, but what calms me is the music.

I push to my feet and make my way down to the sitting room, where I find Lucca playing our song.

When our eyes connect, there’s a spark in his that ignites all that I feel for him.

His eyes are the same. Silver and no longer stormy, even though trouble lurks in the depths.

When I look at him, though, what I see is the boy who gave me my first kiss and a rose from his mother’s garden.

The rose I still have.

Now I know what happened to him. While I still can’t remember, I can imagine how hurt I must have been when I didn’t see him anymore.

That’s why he became a dream to me.

But he’s right here.

“Come here to me,” he mutters as he plays, and I walk to him.

He stops playing and shuffles on the stool to face me.

He reaches out his hand. When I take it, and he doesn’t fade away, I could cry.

“Thank you for saving me,” I say.

“You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“I do, Peter Pan.”

He smiles at that. “Then kiss me, Wendy.”