Chapter Text
III.
The Alpha disappears after dinner, much to Nonno’s disappointment. Claims to have a headache, cramps, I think I overdid it today, I’ll pace myself better tomorrow, pulling out the acting chops she’d seen him flex in the museum the night they met; faux pain utterly believable, eyes at half-mast, hand clutching his shoulder. He doesn’t even look at her as he leaves the dining room; his spiking scent, the only indication of his desire, bright orange in the air. It would have been a dead giveaway of their plans had they not been surrounded by betas.
Alina, too wired and intent on drawing out the wait, joins her family for a nightcap. They walk to the living room in a single line and settle in front of the television. Brandy, cigarettes, a war movie; heavy artillery and despair mixing with distant sounds of Sofia’s washing two rooms away.
They’re all in their own couches. Ana on the emerald green, legs stretched out in front of her; Nonno on the red, sitting with his back straight on the edge, puffing on his Davidoff Golds.
“I think he’s won me over,” Alina tells them, skin flush with hidden exhilaration, voice even and clear. Alpha is taking me tonight. “I watched him work today. It’s incredible, he’s so quick — created the outline in the morning and painted over it in the afternoon. I think if we left him alone and didn’t keep shoving food down his throat, he'd finish a painting in a single session. An eighteen by twenty-four, Ana, can you believe it?”
Nonno smirks, victorious, taking a sip of his brandy without a word.
“Feet?” Ana, impressed, hand holding the snifter falling slowly to her lap as her mouth drops open. “He finished an eighteen-foot painting in a day—”
“Almost finished it—”
Ana moves closer. “Jesus Christ. And no studies?”
Alina nods, too vigorously, too excitedly, giving up the game. “None. Not a single one.”
“Che due coglioni. Who does he think he is, Pollock?”
Alina ignores her, “He does everything by eye, watches the shadow of shapes so closely that I think by four or five, he didn't even really need me anymore.” She lets a smile bloom on her face. He just wanted me there. “Was probably just too shy to dismiss me. Isn’t that charming?”
“You sound thoroughly dazzled, piccino,” Nonno says in an incredibly unsubtle tone of suggestion.
“I am,” she admits because she has to, because he’s my Alpha, he’ll be part of the family soon. “It was like watching a master at work. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
Her grandfather hums, a smile playing in his smoke-covered mouth.
Ana continues to drill her with questions about the Alpha’s progress, and Alina answers it all with a large grin on her face, eager to be proud.
There’s a shorter route to Torre del Sole. A secret route: old passageways up in the library, hidden between shelves, darkened by the dim midnight moon. She takes it, weaving her way through narrow corridors with nothing but her phone flashlight, muscle memory, and the beckoning, lighthouse scent of a waiting Alpha. Each step she takes, the cut of rot on summer-sweet bright — this quiet promise of brutality — becomes clearer and clearer.
The smile already playing on her face only widens.
The hidden path ends on the second floor of the tower. Only there does she turn her phone flashlight off, tucking her phone under her arm as though a purse. It slips and slides against the lace and silk of the old sage green nightgown she’d put on after her shower, leaving behind the paint-soiled maxi on the faded blue tiles of the bathroom floor in favor of something easier to tear.
It is deathly quiet in the stairwell leading up to the third floor. So quiet, she can hear her own blood rushing through her body. Each step she takes, the louder the charge; static noise that wipes her brain clean. Air dances on her thighs, the barest hint of moonlight on her burning skin, staining citrus air with frankincense smoke.
He’s here. Alpha is waiting. Earth and blessed fruit. One and one, the beginning and the end.
By the time she lands on the rusted gate, Alina is in the fantasy. She takes a deep, steadying breath made of Alpha; box of fear, box of desire, box of gratitude, all open, ready to collect havoc.
The Omega notices it immediately.
Though surrounded by so many apple trees, her tower is not usually so filled with such an overwhelming aroma of fruit. It’s thick in the air, overpowering the dust-film haziness of wear sitting on the old limestone walls — citrus and fire, zest of orange. It’s in each breath she takes, in every inch of the darkness she traverses. The hallway that leads to her bedroom is made of shadow, made even more ominous by the faded frescoes on the crumbling walls. Clouds and lyres and vanquished serpents, angels without faces, demons on the hunt; saints, figures of suffering, of ecstasy, of the places in between — really, she can barely see them, they’re barely even visible in the midnight black but she knows — she knows they’re there: figures that watch her each step —
The Omega feels watched.
It’s skin-prickling discomfort, this attention. Heated. She fiddles with the loose edge of her phone case, fighting the urge to fight the dark with screen-bright light. She doesn’t need it; she knows she doesn’t need it. This is my home. There’s no need to panic. At the end of the hall, she reaches out a hand, fingers landing on cold brass. She knows exactly how to open the door, how to hold the knob, how to lift until the old hinges are smarting, each inch of movement triggering a squeak of complaint.
Swinging the door shut is easier.
The heavy Cirmolo slams against the doorframe with a loud bang, and she smiles at the inconsiderate recklessness of it.
Smile. It's the last thing she does before she is grabbed — seized.
A strong grip around her shoulder; a furious blurring in her vision; a gasp she can’t control; a single blink and she’s in a chokehold.
In an Alpha’s arms — stinking so heavily of power and earth and fruit punch decay that it wipes whatever fledgling confusion she might have felt and replaces it with fear: a scorching panic that reeks. It was his eyes on her in the hallway, his scent in her tower.
His grip, the trap — one arm around her shoulders, holding her still, and one arm over her throat, cutting off her air — she can’t — breathe —
“Don’t scream.” A low voice, warm in her ear. Static on her skin, gooseflesh. “Don’t scream or I’ll snap your fucking neck in two.”
The Omega closes her eyes and believes it — believes that she will die if she uses the throat the Alpha is crushing. Without a sound, she tries to struggle in his hold. Her heart is beating out of her chest. She can’t breathe, head floating, light on her compressed neck — Medusa, she thinks, is your safeword — she slams her fists on his forearms, she tries to kick her legs, using his chest to catapult herself to safety. Nothing. It does nothing. She doesn’t get an inch, the Alpha doesn’t so much as stumble.
He watches her be obedient — be silent — despite her tussling. Radiates so much approval it makes her flush; red warmth that stains her skin from cheek to stomach, where it sinks and drops and becomes molten honey in her cunt. Gravelly growls vibrate off his chest, smelling it, no doubt, her arousal — “You done, Omega?”
Unwelcome, shameful shivers rack through her body at his Voice, pitched in hell, ringing in the air. Making no command but making itself known: the threat wrapped in a question, three words and she’s trembling. “Fuck you,” is a protest that sounds feeble, broken and tight, even to her own ears, sounding more like a challenge — a whimper of a thing.
She tries her legs again, her hands, her arms — careful not to slam her head back into his face — and all of it is useless. The fight is futile. It’s done. It’s been over since she walked into the room.
His grin is so large it’s audible. That he doesn’t tighten his hold scares the living fuck out of her — this steadiness, his confidence — it has whatever spirit she may have had hurtling down to a stunning crash.
The Omega knows then that despite how hard she tries to get away, she will not.
The Alpha will never let her go — not until he gets what he wants.
It's a realization that stabs a knife of surrender so sharply in her heart that she begins to cry. She would cry out, if she could breathe.
Aleksander, she thinks, clearly, I really actually can’t breathe. Let up.
The arm around her throat loosens — she inhales, sharp; breaths greedy and bright as she falls, weak, back onto his chest, head slotting into his neck, ass brushing against — oh, God — “That’s the best you got?” he says, low, amused. “That’s all your fight?” When she doesn’t move or speak or even protest, his laugh warms her ear. “Pathetic little whore.”
She has no time to think, to feel —
The floor is cold when she is thrown down to it, knees banging painfully on the oak slabs. She’d have fallen completely down if not for his hands in her hair; he’s using it as a leash — she cries out at the pull — turning her around as though she were an animal; tugging her face to the open flap of his trousers, where his cock waits behind cotton. The smell of oranges is thicker here, between his legs.
Her mouth waters.
“Pull it out,” he commands, thrusting against her cheek. She doesn’t, nearly can’t — "Take my cock out." —unable to comprehend the filth she has found herself in, how confusing it all is. Instead, she opens her tear-stained eyes and looks up at him, towering over her. She’s a picture of fear, hands clawing at his legs, a girl crumpling under the force of a man’s power.
Every emotion in his eyes — amusement, insistence, excitement — melts. Pupils blowing, mouth opening. His breath comes out of him in a huff, as though he’d been punched in the stomach.
The burn of pleasure in that. A whisper of scorching sin on already heated skin. It’s how she misses it. One of his hands, slipping out of her hair, becoming a palm that slaps her across the face. The sound of impact rings, and she absorbs it, face thrown to the side — that she is held so steadily working against her. Pain, hot on her cheek — pain, as his fingers dig into her jaw. She cries out — an action without consequence. She's a mess of wet, tears and slick flowing.
“You Omegas are so fucking useless.” He reaches into his boxers and pulls out his cock, large and frightening. She sobs harder and watches him swallow hard. “Good for nothing sluts—”
He doesn’t tell her to open her mouth again. Doles out hurt instead of commands: an open hand against her face — again, so soon — and she's gasping, tasting her own surprise, when he shoves himself into her mouth, taking her pain and making it pleasure for himself.
“There you go.” He thrusts as deep as he can go, pulling at her hair until her lips are brushing against his knot. “Get me wet for your cunt.”
She wraps her arms around his thighs as she chokes, stomach blanching, eyes rolling into her head, mouth stretched wide open — Alpha, fuck, you taste so good —
“Suck—” his Voice takes away all her choices, “— suck my cock, you fucking whore.”
Uncontrollable, her obedience — her mouth contracts of its own volition, tongue and cheek and spit working. Her head starts to move backward, sucking as hard and as slowly as she can, carrying out the command, before driving him back in. She chokes herself on his cock head, digs it past her tongue and lets it kiss her throat. Like that, Alpha? He makes sounds of such deep, masculine pleasure — groans without praise — and the wordlessness is somehow more degrading — Am I doing it well? Am I being good? —
His hands lock behind her head, fingers digging into her scalp, making sure he never slips out despite how hard she’s struggling for breath — so good, sweetheart, you're doing so fucking good — she can’t see anything but his cock; view blocked by spit and snot and tears — and that’s all before his hips remember movement. His hands tighten in her hair as he starts fucking her mouth, her throat; slamming cock making sounds of abuse, of choke, that has her pushing at his thighs instead of holding on. Little ineffectual shoves that do jack.
Breathing becomes a privilege just beyond her reach. The Alpha makes a point. "That mouth is mine—" he snarls, all menace, fearsome and relentless, "—all your holes are mine to use and fuck and fill. Isn't that right, Omega?"
She doesn't get to answer. Her throat, raw and bruised, answers for her. Gurgles of spit, sloppy and abundant, stream out of her mouth, escaping around the edges of his shaft — they fall like rain over the pretty lace details of her nightgown.
She makes fists out of her hands and slams — thighs, knees, her own chest — Alpha, I’m already so wet for you, can't you fuck my pussy now? —
The Alpha shoves her away and without his hands, she falls on her back to the floor with a yelp, sobbing and pitiful.
He stands over her, panting, his cock dripping with her mess.
“Run,” he tells her, pulling his shirt over his head. He’s a blur of skin and ink in the dark. “Give me a challenge, at least, Jesus — you’re fucking pathetic.”
Weak, she can only cough and roll and feel the hard wood floors under her palms, under her knees. She struggles to lift her body off the floor, throat hurting, attempting to catch a pattern of breathing that will keep her alive. How can she run when she cannot see? The Omega can’t stop crying long enough to grab at her sense of preservation. So, instead, she crawls. Spreading salt on the floor, drooling out his taste on her tongue. Each lift and drag of her knees push silk up her body — exposing the bare warmth of her cunt. Shame, like fire, blazes at the telling squelch of slick coming from between her legs.
Behind her, laughter. Sinister. Footsteps that follow her every move. Is she heading for the door? Or the bed? She can’t see, how can she know?
A foot, too savage, smacks against her ass. A push that has her falling to her elbows. The Alpha just kicked her.
“God, Omega,” he sounds disappointed. Disgusted. “You are so easy to crush.”
On the floor, she trembles.
A heavy weight hits the floor behind her. A crash that reverberates under her palms. It’s his knees, so much stronger, so much larger than hers. The feel of his hands follows. Paws that dig, merciless, into her hips, pulling her back, scraping the skin of her knees — it's a wincing sting. She hears the rip of silk, the snapping of strings, and feels the tattered pieces of her nightgown fall from her body.
She cries out, dread sitting heavily in her stomach.
“Shut the fuck up.” He doesn’t wait, doesn’t tease — an animal, focused.
She feels the still-wet cock he’d buried down her throat burrowing into her opening and — oh, God, wait —
“Stop, please stop — no, no —” her knees lift, and fall, crawling forward, moving away.
The Omega doesn’t get very far. His open palm slams down her ass, hand digging onto the spank to pull her back in place, and she cries out when the other hand, lightning fast, pushes her head down to the floor. “You don’t pull away from me, whore.” Wood against her forehead. Muscles locking. The Voice rattling in her bones.
“Stop—” she begs; it’s destroying her to be manhandled this way. “Oh, my God, stop—”
He grabs her hair and pulls — more pain — turning her head until her cheek is on the floor, smearing it with sweat and tears. It’s a threat when he says, “Don’t you move.” A useless reminder. She’s already in a spell.
Still, she howls, “Stop, no, please, I — stop!”
His palm digs into her temple and her whole body follows the wordless command: back arching, mouth opening. She feels the folds of her cunt open and spread to welcome him, hips lips tilting up, silk pooling under her chin. She shouts, as loudly as she can, “Someone — please — help me, please, help! No!”
He pushes in, and she’s sobbing, wailing, hands reaching behind her to push against his hips, his stomach, his strength. He groans into her ear as he feeds her cunt more, more, more. “Fuck. Fucking fuck.” The sound a stretch makes, the smell. Where she is scorching, where he is unyielding. Frankincense sings out of her blood.
Her fingers curl inward until they are fists against his skin, fists she uses to push. A pressure he breaks through without effort. The breath she takes catches on her ruined throat — orange bright, pleasure in each note — and his hips are flush against hers.
The Alpha is inside her. Filling every inch of her empty — spectacularly snug, skin to glorious skin; imposing, as though he’s always meant to be there, as though he owns her cunt, her body. He’s a fullness that nudges at her chest. He’s everywhere, cock soaking in her slick, everywhere, in her blood, rushing on a chant. Locked in scent, locked in body.
Her mating gland pulses, thrashing under the sedation. The way it did when they first met.
A rhythm starts, fast and harsh. The skin of her cheek, scraping on the floor. Her insides, lighting up. The slamming of their thighs. His grip on her. Everything designed to erase. "Please, please — oh, God — please, you can't do this—”
In her head, she hears his thoughts, encouraging and pleased: Keep begging, Alina, Jesus. You’re driving me crazy, you amazing, perfect girl—
She covers her face to hide the smile threatening to burst through. She fights it with a sob, forcing herself back into the scene, wanting that thread of approval to wrap around her neck and tell her when to breathe. “No, no, no.” She keeps saying it, no, until she almost believes it again. “I’m — fuck —” Protests swallowed by a gasp as he grinds his hips, pressing her down, holding her there: beneath him, where you belong, hm? Plants himself so deeply inside of her — “Alpha, God.” — it'll be a memory she won't be able to scrub away, how softly she lets herself break under his will. “Please — you have to stop, you’re hurting me —”
“Yeah?” Condescending, rude. “You’re dripping slick all over my knot because it hurts, huh?” He gives her a laugh that has her cunt clenching. He moans out at it, the unbearable pressure of the tight fit. “Oh, fuck.”
It’s a lovely, remorseless thing when his mouth drops to suck kisses of teeth and spit on her neck, on the glands that hold her scent, and down, down, dragging sharp over soft, from her nape to her shoulder blade, to the middle of her back, where another gland — one begging to be pierced — sits, wailing his name. Aleksander, come on. His tongue laps against it, the raised, heated skin and whatever string holding her fight is cut — she slumps. All give. Moaning out an admission of defeat. She doesn’t say it, she doesn’t even think it, body language. Please. Please. Bite. I’m yours to take.
Her tears flow out when he doesn’t, when he straightens instead, hands finding their way to the smallest dip of her waist — indents in her body made for holding — and keeps her still, down and steady, body rooted to his as he ravages her.
It’s fucking that reduces her to a pile of mindless; green mutterings of no mixed with red hot rough that creates shadow and murk. His doles out pain and pleasure in equal measure, grip tight, squeezing, hips and rhythm brutal — grunting at each forward thrust, strength and force and brutish will. The Omega can’t catch her breath, her answering moans pealing out of her lungs, high, whimper-like. Without thinking, she reaches behind her to hold onto his wrists, pulling, needing another anchor.
He growls at it, mind warped, in the thick of his own aggression. “Don’t push me away.” He warns, Voice full of anger. “Stay down and take it.” Her hands fall to the floor, claws, nails digging into wood. Obedient. He loves it; hates it. Rewards her with punishment: rains open palms all over her ass, smacks her thighs, batters her blue. She hears each hit before she feels them, sharp spanks that burn, can’t move her hands to stop it. Yelps and cries, honeyed tongue covered with his citrus taste, "Aleksander — please, it hurts —"
The Alpha doesn't hold back; is so rough, he can’t speak; can’t think past the pleasure, mind filled with the image of her. Her body claps and protests and bruises before him. She sees it all from his eyes: her, held down and drowning, lost in his cock, his scent, and his filth. That's a good girl, my own little fuckdoll, that's a good fucking whore.
The Omega gushes out so much slick, she makes a pool between their knees.
"Alpha—" she doesn't even sound like herself, voice warped by cock, "—please, please, please." She doesn't say, I'm coming. Please bite. Make me yours.
She hears him spit, and feels it land on her back, covering her mating gland. One of his hands, hurting from so much hitting, reaches up to scratch nails over it. Fuck you, that's already mine, he snarls in his head, and she can't bear it anymore—
She detonates.
She screams so loudly, it bounces off the walls. The overwhelming sensation is a pull inside her that's ancient and monstrous. Her whole body is shaking; cunt contracting around him, sucking him in, forcing the knot. It's faster than he expected, and he groans, frustrated, as he comes too. It’s a sound that distorts into a growl as it passes through his throat, waking him up.
"That's what you want?" It's a plea wrapped in a taunt, and his Voice streams out: "There you go, all my come inside you." Gives her one last spank as his knot locks them in place. "There you go, Alina. Take it all."
She squeezes around him as the spell settles, pushing back on his knot, ignoring the twinge of ache inside her. Her mouth, wide open, is filled with two of his fingers as his knees give. The weight of his body settles down on top of her and they lie flat on the floor. Him, panting and sweating. Her, sucking on his skin.
“Good girl,” he says in a huff. “My good little Omega.”
He pushes himself deeper inside her, painful and insistent and glorious, his breath warm on her cheek. She comes again, smitten with the stretch; it’s a small, barely-there thing — an aftershock. Gasps through it, his groans right in her ear, his pleasure magnifying hers, eyes rolling into her head, sucking on his fingers harder, meeting its pressing weight on her tongue.
When they slither out, she misses them immediately.
Done, she thinks, smile blooming on her lips. A blink and the same smile forms on his. She feels it over her cheek.
The heart on his chest — her heart — beats furiously against her back.
“You alright?” she asks before he can, mouth missing his warmth, their bodies still writhing together. He feels like an entire world inside her. Whatever switch was supposed to turn them off, lost in the dark, is hit. “You’re not about to have a heart attack, are you?” That’s just how sex is going to be from now on.
“No.” He begins to laugh, joyful now, ecstatic rather than chafing. “I’m wonderful. Are you okay, sweetheart?” His voice is back to its proper register. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m perfect, Alpha.”
“Yes, you are. My perfect Omega,” He purrs, pleased, and her smile becomes a grin. She feels light-headed and light. Crush me, she thinks, and she feels him drop to his forearms, pressing her further down to the floor they’ve ruined. He murmurs absentminded compliments between loving kisses, little truths imprinted all over her face, breath on her neck, small bites on her shoulders. You’re the best fuck of my entire life. You smell so wonderful. You took it so well. I can’t believe I found you. It’s eye-closing, cunt-clenching sweetness that has them both whimpering. “Fuck. That cunt can’t let up? I’m already dying.”
She giggles, embarrassed, hiding her face into the thickness of his wrist, sitting so calmly in front of her face. “It’s not my fault, she loves you.”
He curves his neck down to bump his forehead on her temple, shepherding her, pushing until there’s a clean line to her mouth. He gives her a kiss of sugary chasteness, a close-mouthed charge, a pressing down that’s gone too soon. She pouts when he pulls away. “Well, that’s good,” he says, staring down at her. “I love her, too.”
She has to burrow her arms under her body, expend energy she doesn’t have, all so she can rise up on her elbows and give him the kiss he deserves. Lips open, sucking his summer-sticky tongue into her mouth. Giving him her best, her wild, all the strength she has left.
Thank you, she thinks, staying up despite her trembling. That was everything I’ve ever wanted.
Kneeling on warm water, Alina watches her Alpha: the long cut of him, the lines and curves that make muscle and strength, swallowed completely by shadow. Still standing, flirting with disintegration. He’s wobbly on his knees, exhausted, bent down on the counter, gulping down water from the faucet, and yet, still — every part of him is power. The flex of his back, thighs covered in bulk, calves made of stone, scent so imposing it’s air, forearms a nightmare of ink and veins and threat. Sculpted by God, covered by the gods. On his rib, Hephaestus is creating Zeus’ lightning bolt, covered in smoke.
“You’re beautiful,” she says when he straightens, not bothering to wipe his chin, taking big hulking steps to walk over to her. “Do you know that?”
He comes into the bath, settling behind her, a giant displacing water to the floor. He’s silent, careful as he opens the warm cocoon of his arms, inviting her in. Not pushing. Come here if you want to. Alina burrows into him, twisting to avoid brushing the bruised and broken skin of her ass against his thigh. Gives her front over to his front, breasts to chest, vulnerable heartbeats, a woman of softness on a man of steadiness.
“Do you?” She asks against his neck. “Know?”
“No,” he says, head settling back onto the stone lip. He sounds beat. “But I’ll believe anything you say.”
She gives his neck a kiss. His jaw too, tickling herself with his beard. Puts his earlobe into her mouth for a moment, and delights in the low purr that echoes off his chest at the suck.
“Are you alright, Alpha?” she asks him, splashing water gently up his chest. You seem so tired.
“I’m just a little worried,” he admits, eyes on her face. “Did I hurt you too much?”
She shakes her head, giving him a smile. “No,” she says, honestly, all five feet five of sore little her. She’s so high on him, she can’t feel anything else. “I feel really, really good.”
He sighs, pulling her closer with a loose arm slung around her waist. “That was rough. I might’ve been too rough, I think. It was your first time, and it didn’t even occur to me until just now that I should have gone easier on you.”
“No, don’t do that.” She gives his collarbones, visible over the water, a kiss. “You were generous.” You gave your Omega what she needed, like all good Alphas do. “You were loving and kind.”
His frown takes a disbelieving turn. “Sweetheart, I beat the shit out of you.”
She grins at his tone, the pride he can’t keep out of it. “Yes, and it’s taking all of me not to ask when you can do it again, so do with that information what you will.”
The Alpha begins to laugh, joy winning out over worry. He does it quietly. An action he matches and interrupts with a short kiss. Chaste, lethargic sweetness she allows only because she knows in her heart that any more passion will break him, and that he’ll break himself if that’s what she needs.
You’re safe here with me, she thinks, wide awake with adrenaline, and I’m safe here with you.
When they pull away, she wraps her arms around his neck, comfortable between his legs, holding him with a gentle smile.
He takes a deep breath of her and closes his eyes.
He’s naked, sitting by the painted table on the western side of the room when she opens her eyes. Good morning, she beckons to him in her head, welcoming consciousness with a blink. Outside, the ciacadas are already buzzing, their song drowned out by the grizzle of chainsaws, louder and closer than they’d been last week. The air smells of dead trees and cigarette smoke; of an Alpha radiating summer heat. Her body feels fragile. How long have you been awake?
“A while,” he answers, slapping the pad down on the faded marble surface and rising off the tan Queen Anne. “You have really colorful dreams, by the way. Insanely vivid. Very weird. It makes your work make sense.”
She shifts on the sheets, smile a wince. “Thank you.”
He nods, walking, “You’re welcome.”
There are pastel remnants on his hands, and they match the red and purple bruises dotting her waist, her ass, her thighs. She doesn’t ask — have you been drawing me? — already knowing the answer. He takes a seat on the bed, grunting as his knees bend, elbows coming to rest on his thighs. Guilt-tinged satisfaction all around him, soft citrus turned with blood, soft and heady. A few inhales of him, and she feels heat bubble up between her legs.
His nose twitches.
“You’re supposed to kiss me now,” she says, injecting as much baby in her voice.
His smile is small when he does; bends down, hands on the bed, lips on hers. She melts into it, a sigh of relief, the pain in her body momentarily forgotten. She can taste the cigarette he smoked on his tongue, staining orange.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he murmurs on the pull. A breath, and then: “I’m so sorry.”
She rolls her eyes. “Would you stop it?” she goes, but it has none of her usual venom. She’s too enamored by him to be sharp; her beautiful Alpha, turning pink with shame in the early morning light. “It’s not that bad.”
His hands come to rest on her face, holding her head tenderly, staining her skin with soft pastels. Colors of hurt on hands that comfort. “It doesn’t always have to be that way when we play. It can be nice and not so painful after.”
She rests her fingers over his briefly before she wraps them around his wrists. “Like how?”
He blinks, and way too quickly, as if he’s been thinking about it, tells her: “You can pretend to be asleep. I can come into your room.” His blush deepens. “And I can have my way with you.”
She sees it in her head as he does: an Omega bathed in moonlight, laying on her stomach, Heat coming in waves off her body, exposed to the summer air; an Alpha above her, fucking her quietly. “That’s lovely,” she tells him, turning her head to kiss his palm. It’s warm, his hold, and she feels the callouses on the pads of his fingers snag at her lips.
“No bruises,” he whispers. “No hurting.”
She sidesteps his misplaced remorse as it constricts around his aggression. “But I like the kind with the hurting. And you know what? Shut up. So do you.”
His laugh is buried in a breath, his forehead bumping against hers. “Right, of course.” You’re mine, of course, is a thought that rings so loudly in his head. It makes her smile, his easy acquiescence. “But not that rough, not again, not so soon. Maybe in a few months, we can discuss it again. Re-establish our boundaries.”
Her smile slips as she remembers the earth’s cruelty: time will run out, the seasons will turn. She reminds him, “You’re only here for seven more weeks, Alpha.” Will you still want me when summer’s over? The thought doesn’t crystalize — he’s kissing her before she even finishes it; before it expands into possibilities of loneliness in her head.
She tries to pull away to take a breath, and he doesn’t quite let her. Buries a hand into the dark mass of her hair and holds her steady for his mouth. Deepens the kiss, pressing her down, the insistent swipe of his tongue overwhelming her senses, his knuckles on her cheek, downy caress. She swallows his scent and his affection, grateful to be resigned. The kiss ends with her mind muffled, honey-soft, eased.
He murmurs, “This isn't one of those things that end. Tell me you know that.”
“Alright,” she sighs. “Yes.” You can choose me, because I was made for you. She takes a deep breath, trying to find the bearing he’d buried in his mouth. “I was going to go back to Paris in September, would you like to come with me?”
The edges of his mouth lift. “I’d love to.”
“You can help me pack up my flat,” she tells him, stretching her arms over her head as he pushes his body off her, grunting as her muscles protest. “And then after, we can take my things to your home in New York.”
“New York isn’t home, it’s a studio with a bed in it.”
She sits up, wincing as her weight settles on her ass. “Where is home, then?”
“Want to go to Novosibirsk?” he asks, laughing a little, pulling on the jeans he’d left on the floor the night before.
“You’re from Siberia?” She gets off the bed, testing her step. She can walk. I can walk, Alpha.
Good. That’s good. “For the most part.” He hands her a paint-splattered shirt that is definitely not hers. She wears it anyway. “Why do you sound outraged? You got something against Siberia, sweetheart?”
“No, I just thought you’d be from Moscow or St. Petersburg or whatever. I don’t know why,” she tells him, shivering as the cotton of his shirt brushes against her wounds. “I guess I’m just surprised. Is it true what they say about the weather?”
He looks at her for a moment, thinking. “What’s the coldest place you’ve ever been to?”
“Berlin,” she answers with an immediacy that tells of hatred.
He stifles a chuckle. “What month were you there?”
“October.”
He nods, considering. “Did you think it was brutal, the cold?”
She remembers being twenty-one. The stark gray skies, the turning leaves of fall, red and dead and brown, old-world extravagance in the same breath as bloody-minded Brutalist buildings, harsh concrete, lead white, surviving amongst trees. The constancy of two sweaters under a fleece-lined coat, the rain that crawled into her bones and left her nose constantly running. She hated Berlin; has always hated Berlin. She hasn’t been back to Germany since that last solo visit and, as a trauma response or perhaps just plain stubbornness, maintains a steady scorn for any and all post-war Modernist architecture.
When she felt the urge to paint the city, she couldn’t find it in her heart to be kind. Berlin is one of her least popular pieces — all the blues and the blacks she’d used killed all the life out of it.
“Yes,” she says, hoping he can’t see her memories.
He grins, teeth gleaming. “If that’s brutal to you, then yes, it’s true what they say about Siberia’s weather.”
The Alpha follows her through the bathroom to her bedroom, their footsteps heavy on stone. Her bed is unmade and untouched, creased white sheets, Anderson Cooper’s book about the Vanderbilts sitting by the foot. She heads straight to her armoire to fish out the oldest pair of pajama shorts she owns: red satin that has faded to pink, rips at the hem, soft as a cloud.
“So, what’s in Novosibirsk?” she asks, pulling on the drawstring, hoping she pronounced the city’s name correctly. “Except truth and ice?”
“A Tintoretto,” he says. He’s leaning on the doorway of their bathroom, watching her, memorizing the signs of her discomfort as she walks around her room. “And my mother. I’ll take you to see them both and then, we can go back to New York.”
She bites her lip, grabbing the hairbrush from her low bureau plat. “You should know that I don’t do too well with mothers,” she tells him. Mine sort of despises me, she doesn’t say, afraid it might sound too needy. “I don’t have any of Ana’s charm.”
“You’re wonderful, sweetheart,” he says, giving her a reassuring smile. “A miracle. The first Omega in the family in a century. Mama will cry at the sight of you. Polovina menya.”
Hearing him speak Russian brings familiar butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “What does that mean?”
“Half of me,” he says, eyes warmer than the morning. “It’s how we say Mate in Russia.”
Alina pushes all her hair to one shoulder, smile widening as happiness settles in her body, bright and orange spice, now and forever. She watches his own grin widen, stretching from ear to ear. They must look like idiots, she thinks, smiling at each other like this. She holds the ends of her hair and runs the brush over it, once, twice, the bristles snagging against tangles, ripping hair out. She can’t feel any pain.
“Half of you,” she says, looking up at him again, can’t stay away. She points her brush at her heart. “That’s me.”
He nods, pushing off the door, holding out his hand for her hairbrush. Let me do that, my love.
“Yes,” he says. “That’s you.”
There’s smoke coming off Ana’s nose when she says, “They compared it to Soutine."
Alina blanches, chin scrunching. A beat, and then she bursts. "Why do they always compare me to expressionists? I paint nothing like him. I don't even like Soutine! We don’t follow the same tradition; our techniques are worlds away from each other. The Italy portraits are Realist. At worst, they’re Post-Impressionist. They could have said Gauguin. What's wrong with Gauguin?” She turns to Nonno, sitting beside the Alpha with a too-large smile on his face, holding his own post-lunch cigarette. “This is your fault.” Her voice is breaking, throat still broken from the night before. “I told you to leave my portraits alone. This is all your fault.”
"It's the colors, piccino, not me.” Her grandfather says, taking a sip of his espresso. “The Swiss see bright red brushstrokes on a painting and immediately think of Soutine. I didn’t make the rules.”
She rolls her eyes.
They got a call from Art Basel’s people that morning, eagerly sniffing for pieces to be shown at Paris+. Her grandfather knows more about the toppling of FIAC than he'd dare admit, and she knows that no art exhibition will be complete without representation from their family. It’s a disgusting, nepotistic chain. Ana had already sold six of her paintings, all from her Green Period. Alina, on the other hand—
“I just don’t understand the need to be labeled. They can put labels on my art when I’m dead. I’m still here,” she says, too passionately for the mid-day sun. Ana presses her lips together, leaning in close to bump her temple to Alina’s shoulder. “I’m alive and breathing and I’m not an expressionist!”
The Alpha passes a hand over his mouth, palm bristling against his beard, red high on his face, dying to let his laughter rip. He cares for her enough not to; clears his throat, bites the insides of his cheeks.
She attempts to not find his self-control incredibly attractive.
Nonno pushes on. “They’re buying each piece for five—”
“Don’t,” she interrupts, standing up with her coffee in hand, trembling minutely in pain as blood rushes back to her bruises. Ana smiles up at her, squinting from the sunlight. “You can’t tell me I’m misunderstood and overpriced in a single conversation. That’s just cruel.” She walks away from the table, intent on seeking out Sophia for a comforting orange.
Her family’s lovely laughter bursts out as soon as she gets past the kitchen threshold. The Alpha’s low cackle, Ana’s high giggle, Nonno’s cigarette-destroyed mirth.
Alina smiles. A little private thing, just for her.
The Alpha is painting her.
Alina swipes crimson-tinged white on the high points of Ana’s face — her nose, her chin, the high curve of her cheekbones — and pretends not to notice, unsure yet what to say. He isn’t really hiding it, he’d made quite the ruckus swapping canvases, and his thoughts are clear and loud in her head. You have a beautiful neck, he tells her there, in that space in their minds where they can hear and know each other. You have beautiful everything.
“Stop moving, sweetheart,” he says, after a long bit of drawing. She’d just shifted to her right, crouching down, trying to get Ana’s mouth right. Her sister has a rosebud mouth that’s incredibly easy to project anger onto. It’s easy not to make her smile. She places a highlight on her bottom lip to make sure it doesn’t happen.
“I’m working,” she tells him, distracted, but she goes back into position anyway. Straightening her back, cocking her head just so. She looks up at him, positioned to her left, standing in front of a canvas, his long brush dangling between his fingers. His eyes are on her face, memorizing the contours of shadows, finding planes to paint.
“Thank you.” He smiles. “Your eyes are so light brown, they’re gold. Otherworldly. Did you know that?”
Alina flushes, looking away, back to her painting. There’s a tremor in her hand. She doesn’t even try to lift the brush up to the linen.
“No,” she says, feeling so incandescent she’s convinced she’s radiating light off her skin.
His brush is on mestica before he speaks again. “Now, you do.”
He doesn’t say I can’t wait for the gaggle of gold-eyed children you will give me because he can’t; it’s too early for a conversation like that. Frankincense smokes out her, as though set on fire. It’s so strong a scent, she knows it’s defeating his turpentine. When he inhales, it’s deep. Every exhale, marked with triumph.
Summer silence swallows it all, their hidden most desires: cicadas, Sofia’s laughter, Italian streaming in from the large windows. She can hear the voices of orchard hands down below, sweating betas, joking about burning the trees, sick of the hacking. Ai mali estremi, estremi rimedi.
When she could paint again, she abandons the highlights for mid-tone reds, warm and cool, to inform Ana’s perfectly shaped, oft-sunburnt ears.
“I get to paint you, too,” she tells him, inviting no protest. “That’s the deal. I get a portrait; you get a portrait.”
A beat, and he says: “Okay, sweetheart.”
She’s surprised when she is slapped.
Her eyes snap open, gold in the dark, face grabbed, pulled down by the chin, attention forced to where the Alpha is between her thighs, beard wet with slick. Her cheeks burn. "You look at me when I eat your cunt,” he tells her, voice destroyed by lust.
“I'm sorry, Alpha.” She sounds dazed. She is, lost in pleasure and pain and oranges.
An animal: he shakes his head to push her thighs further apart, two fingers tucked inside her. The hand on her face loosens to fall onto her neck. He doesn’t dare grip, knowing all her hidden hurts. Holds just to hold, just to show he can. The power of his attention is heat all over her body, even on skin his tongue hasn’t yet touched.
A lick, two, broad and hot, over her clit; he makes a sound of disappointment when she melts, eyelids faltering. “Eyes open, little Omega.” He laps at her, pulling on unseen strings in her body, fingers grinding, buried to the knuckles. He’s a master and a student, confident and still learning, digging for all her little spots of pleasure. She fights to keep her eyes open and gasps when he closes his — groaning on a suck, face half hidden — so assured that he’ll be obeyed, doubt is a distant privilege. Keep your eyes open, I’ll know if you don’t.
“You’re an asshole,” she murmurs, making him smile against her cunt, spirits high after brandy.
He pulls off her. “Speaking of,” he says, lips moving over all her sensitive pink, fingers slipping out of one hole to find another, steeped in slick and softened by his spit. Ignored for years; surrounded by bruises.
She starts to giggle as he spreads her slick around, feeling through it, making her clench. Her entire body sinks into cold heat, the way it always does when her ass is touched. “Now?” she asks, skin made of static.
She feels flayed. More naked than naked.
He rises from his hunch, knees protesting on the stone floor of her bedroom. She feels the pain he is ignoring on her own legs. “Just a little bit,” he says, making circles that leave her cross-eyed, twisting until her cheek is on her bed. The hand around her neck weaves down to her breasts and lays flat, heavy weight, sitting on her chest. “Yes?”
Yes, Alpha. It’s at the tip of her tongue. She opens her mouth to make it true, and he slips his middle finger inside her. Words become breath, evaporating on the stretch. She blinks, wondering if he’s real. “Tight,” he says. “When was the last time someone fucked you here, sweetheart?”
“Screw you,” Her voice is high, electricity exploding through her skin.
He makes a playful sound, oof. “Cursing at your Alpha, huh?” he clucks his tongue, pushing another finger inside, spitting on her as soon as the tip is in, making the way kinder. “What a brave girl.” He shoves in and grins when she winces, exaggerated thing, nails sawing at her sheets.
You’re a sadist, she thinks, as he turns her insides on itself.
“Yes, and don’t you love it.” He bends down to suck one of her nipples into his mouth. More sensation that makes her body quiver. She breathes through it, his citrus warmth aiding balmy acceptance. My God, Alpha.
Once her gasps become moans, she can feel how much he dislikes it. Hates it, really, how easily she’s adjusted to the spread of his thick fingers, and so she isn’t surprised when he sneaks his ring finger into the next thrust. “Take it,” he growls at her horrid gasp of ache, beard scraping at her chest. Three, isn’t that nice? “Be a good girl and take it for me.” When his mouth returns to her nipple, it’s all teeth.
The tears begin then. The feeling of being so known, a raw throb worse than anything she’s ever felt. Words of love take shape in her mind, squashed down before he can sense them. It’s too early, she tells herself, for that.
Busy, his command is made through the bond: Touch your clit for me, sweetheart. It takes a long while before her mind can comprehend movement, so focused on the intoxicating fullness inside her. He does not rush, knowing his effect, kissing her breasts sore.
The moment her fingers fall on herself, the pleasure stacks, and breaks. Her orgasm pushes his fingers out, stomach clenching overwhelm, her keening soft; knees twisting together in front of his chest, trapping her own arm in the destruction. He teaches her how to breathe with his own deep inhales, waiting for her to calm down, hand stroking up and down her thighs. There, there.
Only when her trembling fades does he stand to unbutton his pants.
His stare, loaded with a desire he doesn’t have to turn into words for her to know. He pushes his pants and his underwear down, and there is nowhere else to look but his eyes.
“What happened to we’ll work up to that?” she asks, desire-stained throat, a very real fear in her voice.
He only licks his lips, and it’s completely staggering, how clearly she can hear his soul thrum. His deep and dark, a clear match to hers. I want to hurt you until every single molecule of pain you’ve ever felt is made of me.
She holds onto her thumping heart and opens her knees.
When he finally speaks, it’s a threat: “I’ll be very kind, little Omega. I promise.”
She nods, flushed crimson red, as though a painting. Steals the words off his mouth, just to flood her mouth with more of his taste.
“Okay,” she says, small smile playing, “sweetheart.”
Nonno takes the Alpha on an inspiring excursion to their cousin Niccolo’s place at the northernmost edge of the city, right by the mountains, and for an afternoon, the house is clear of testosterone and oranges. Sofia pulls out the Jimmy Fontana, even before the girls have finished their breakfast. Boiled eggs, and the last of their healthy apples.
Alina speaks German, knowing their housekeeper loves to eavesdrop. “I let him fuck me up the ass a couple of nights ago.”
“Hot,” Ana says, offering her a cigarette. “Also: ouch. How are you walking?”
He’d kept his word, her Alpha: fucked her ass with a slick-soaked cock, as slowly and as gently as he can. All while spitting all over her face, slapping her cheeks until they were red, and twisting her nipples until she was sure they’d fall off. He’d fucked her lovingly and called her a whore to her face. Little Omega, you like getting your ass fucked open? Tell me.
It had taken so much begging for him not to shove his knot into her.
“Oh, it was a nightmare,” Alina says, grinning, her mouth made of joy. So, so, so much begging. She can still taste please in her mouth, two days later. “I had the time of my life.”
“No wonder he was so out of it last night,” Ana takes a sip water, which bubbles up to her nose as unexpected laughter bursts out of her, no doubt remembering the Alpha’s bumbling arguments against Raphael at dinner. “I bet it’s all he’s thinking about, that’s hilarious.”
They make such beauty, laughter and sisterhood and warmth.
After, Ana remarks: “There’s so much sex happening around me and all I’m doing is painting abstracts and eating carbs. Maybe I should go see Alessandro.”
Her sister claims to like the scent of the delivery man’s sun-destroyed skin. Earthy, she calls it.
“Why not?” Alina goes, shrugging as she lights her cigarette. “Let’s keep the paint-stained, big-dicked, Alexander-named theme going.”
Ana’s laughter begins again. “Jesus, I didn’t even think of that. That’s decided, then. I’ll do it just for the poetry of it.” Ana raises her cup of espresso. “Here’s to moaning the same name tonight, meine liebe.”
Later, they go up to the library and draw studies together on the carpeted floor. Ana gives her old nemesis — oil pastels — another try and Alina, by memory, draws her Alpha’s eyes for the portrait he’d promised he’d sit for. They already have pages of sketches between them when Ana points to her work: “Is he the one, do you think? Aleksander?”
Alina looks up from her charcoals and says, “Yes, he is.”
The smile that overtakes Ana’s perfectly symmetrical face nearly overwhelms Alina; what a beauty you are. “God, stellina. All the stars aligned. If Nonno didn’t love the Baroque, if you’d gone to Thailand like you wanted to, if he said no to the residency, even—”
“Or never picked up a brush,” Alina adds, “Or didn’t smell the way he smelled—”
Ana’s eyebrows lift. “What does he smell like?” she asks, a beta, blessedly clueless.
Alina couldn’t say: the way I’ve always known he would; like the oranges I can’t live without; like childhood cravings, and teenage desires, and adulthood patience; like the earth in the winter; like the love of my life. She doesn’t think Ana could have understood — the gravity of a lock, of being someone’s Mate, of having their life live inside you. Instead, she skews romantic. Romantic but true: “The next seventy years.”
Ana’s eyes shine with pride, with support and Alina’s heart thrums with so much affection, she has to actively stop herself from tackling her sister to the floor, the way she used to when they were children.
“Congratulations, stellina.” Her smile melts into a playful smirk. “I’m very happy and only slightly jealous of you. I mean, the man looks like a Greek god. How dare you. I mean, deserved, but — how dare you.”
Alina nods, smiling. “Thank you,” she says. “That’s exactly what I want you to feel.”
A beat of breath, a blink, and a realization touches upon Ana’s eyes. It’s followed by a loud peal of laughter.
“Oh, God.” She cackles. “Nonno will be so happy about this. Watch him hire five different wedding planners before summer’s through —” she clears her throat and pulls out her best impression of their grandfather. “Perché per Alina tutto deve essere perfetto.”
Alina giggles; tells her sister, “Don’t be ridiculous.” An eyeroll here, a hand to her heart there. “He’ll be heartbroken. He’s more in love with Aleksander than I am.”
It is weeks later, in the first flush of August, that Alina brings her Alpha to the river for a swim.
It’s not at its best state, not quite as glorious as it once was. All that’s left of the trees are stumps, a painful sight. However, the riverbed wildflowers, devoid of any competition, flourish on the earth. Eyebrights of purples, yellows, and white, with dark columbines clinging onto them, stark and dark; blue monkshood, deep purple, brought to lower land by the rushing current, catching sunrays; and buttercup-bright globeflowers, overtaking the rest — all on a field of dancing green.
She pushes him in, and he lets her. He lets her do a great many things: hop into his arms; tease him about sunscreen; show him all the days she’d spent in the water, hiding from his overwhelming scent. He gives her a kiss for each old memory, his freshwater-stained lips marking their end.
After, when they are drying on the damp grass and sharing a bottle of Sofia’s homemade water kefir — flavored with oranges, of course, what else? — he tells her, “My life is nothing like this, sweetheart. I won’t be able to provide this for you, not if I sold every painting I’ve ever made for millions.”
His words bring pain, but in a round way she’s come to associate with him. There is no end in sight, only a multitude of beginnings. She says, mouth sparkling, “In a few years, when you really know me, I’ll remind you of this conversation. I’ll tell you that I was very hurt that you thought that I was so shallow, but I won’t tell you that now, because you don’t know any better, not yet.”
The Alpha doesn’t speak, only looks at her with his Vantablack gaze — made of love, made of understanding, made of I’m sorry’s from the future. This man, she thinks, is mine. This man, who is her miracle.
She leans in and kisses the droplets of water on his cheek. “Now, I’ll just tell you this, and you’ll just have to trust me, alright?” She waits for his nod and gives him a smile when it comes. “I don’t need all this, Alpha. I need you.”
Their foreheads meet, and it’s the start of a life.
IV.
In Conversation: Aleksander Morozov, Painter
Aleksander Morozov was the 107th Artist in Residence of the Starccovo Collection. The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Tommaso Starccovo, Chairman of the Board. You can watch the video on the Museo Starccovo YouTube channel. Click here.
TS: This is odd, isn’t it, son?
AM: It is. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
TS: [Laughs] What do you want to talk about first: your creative process for Mate (2022), or how you fell madly in love with my Alina [Duchamp Prize-winning artist and recipient of the 2013 Venice Biennale Silver Lion, Alina di Savoia Starccovo Morozova] during your residency?
AM: [Laughs] I don't think we can talk about one without the other.
TS: She’ll kill me for even mentioning her name.
AM: Yes, she will.
TS: I just think it’s wonderful, truly wonderful, that you two found each other.
AM: I think it is, too. And we have you to thank for it, Tommaso.
TS: Yes, I take full credit. It might be the best thing I’ve ever done. [Laughs] Alright, let’s talk about your painting, son. Mate (2022) is remarkable for its departure from the heavy chiaroscuro you’re well known for. You painted nearly without black or umber.
AM: Mostly ivory and burnt sienna, yes. Did that disappoint you?
TS: Piccino, you painted a breathtakingly beautiful portrait of my grandchild, you couldn’t have disappointed me if you used mud. [Laughs] However, that it is such an anomaly in your body of work remains notable. Was that intentional?
AM: It wasn’t planned, the painting. I didn’t have time to be cerebral about it or think about classical forms and all the ways I could muck it up. The subject, too. I mean, I take most of my subjects from myth, but with Mate (2022), I drew on a myth I myself was experiencing. I knew about the Scent Lock — everyone in my family is an Alpha, even the women — so, I knew about it, this old wives tale, this thing that had happened to a great great grandfather and his great great great grandmother. I grew up waiting for it. Hoping, you know? That it would happen to me, this thing that never happens to anybody. Always hoping. But then, I reached my twenties and finished my twenties, and then, I reached my thirties. Two years ago when I came to Trento, I was thirty-six and I had given up on it, the idea of a Mate.
TS: And then came Alina.
AM: Great girl, that Alina.
TS: [Laughs] Quite something, isn't she?
AM: My plane landed in Trento, and I just knew she was here. I knew. It’s pure luck that she was not only in the same city, but she was also in the same house. The first morning after I arrived, the three of us had breakfast together and I could hardly hold it together. It felt like I was living in a dream. I couldn’t believe she was real. That it was real — all those fairytales from my childhood.
TS: You two made this old man believe in romance again. Did you start painting her immediately?
AM: No, I was working on a different piece. The Cassandra piece. You might’ve noticed that it’s still sitting unfinished in the studio. I’ll get to it someday, I promise.
TS: What was it that made you start painting Alina instead?
AM: I used her as a model for Cassandra, as you know. Alina is very generous and spent some time sitting for me. So, I spent some time looking at her. We were also using the same studio, working together, so she was always around. After a while, it seemed silly to have her there and be painting another woman. But I should say I made the decision on the fly. I didn’t really think about it, I just swapped one canvas for another. She didn’t let me get away with it without striking a deal for herself, though.
TS: A deal. [Laughs] Is that how she came to paint a portrait [Arance (2022) by Alina di Savoia Starccovo Morozova] of you?
AM: Yes. It was only fair.
TS: You’ve painted a great many portraits of her since. You have a whole collection of them now. Would you say she’s become something of a muse?
AM: I have an odd relationship with that word. Alina’s my wife. She’s the skin that holds my body together. She’s more than a muse. She's not the reason I paint, Tommaso, she's the reason I breathe.
Mate (2022) and Arance (2022) are both on display in Giacomo Hall of Museo Starccovo. They will be open for public viewing until the Spring.