Alessandro |18+|

07

ARIA

"Kind of but-"

"Bellissima. Are you hungry? Yes, or no?" he deadpanned, giving me a look that said he needed a proper answer.

I thought he just wanted to check if I was okay.

I took a second to respond. "Yes."

He grinned, satisfied with my answer. "See how easy that was. That's all you had to say. Is pizza fine or do you feel for something else?"

"Pizza is fine," I mumbled, annoyed that he made it so easy for me to soften up towards him. Sandro was generous – a bit too generous but it worked and I caught myself chuckling when he chuckled too. He murmured something to himself, in his own language and I narrowed my eyes at him but decided to let it go.

'They're dangerous but they're also really...' I thought about what Tammy said. But what? Hot? Yes. Appealing? Yes. Bothersome? Yes.

I took a deep breath in, pursing my lips as Sandro pulled his phone out from his back pocket. What do I do? Ask him to sit down with me? Just as I opened my mouth to speak, he was making himself comfortable on the couch. He sat down, slumping into the seat while keeping his focus on the screen.

I almost laughed to myself – of course he would go ahead and make himself at home.

I sat alongside him, keeping myself busy by folding the blanket I had messed up. There was silence between us, and it stretched long enough for it to become an unexpected cosiness. Again, it was interrupted by him leaning forward and setting his phone on the glass table.

"Sorry about that." He turned to me, and his t-shirt strained against his muscles when he moved. I had to physically restrain myself from looking somewhere that I shouldn't. "It'll be about fifteen minutes."

Don't look at his tattoos. Don't look.

"That's fast. Usually I wait 45 minutes," I said, ignoring the urge to glance over the ink on his skin. I was always a curious person, and when something that interesting stood right before me, it was hard to ignore the curiosity.

God, I really wanna fucking look.

He raised his arm, resting it on the backrest of the couch. Holy shit.

I blamed the way I felt on my period.

Yes, definitely my period.

As if reading my mind, Sandro spoke. "Do you still have pain? Or is it getting any better?"

"Pain?" I repeated, surprised by how casually he asked that.

"Yes. You said you were on your period. Do you still have pain?" He said that so easily, without flinching. The men I had encountered grimaced at the thought of someone bleeding out of their vagina, but Sandro didn't seem bothered by it. He had the same reaction the first time I told him, and I realised that he truly didn't give a fuck.

"Right. No, I don't. I'm on my last day, I think," I said, shifting my body to face him. I was getting more comfortable by the second.

"Oh, that's good." Good? What exactly did he mean by that?

He smiled, but it was mischievous. "Don't look at me like that."

"I wasn't looking at you in any way," I argued but he saw right through me. He nodded his head, but still appeared unconvinced.

"Sandro," I drawled, furrowing my brows at him. I had taken it upon myself to call him by the shortened version of his name, and the second it fell off my lips, I saw the shift in his eyes. He was quick to conceal it, but I wasn't blind and I caught it immediately.