A caged bird's wings [Xavier & Luna]

I have no doubts. I know women find me appealing, and I know why, but I know that I still don't understand women.

I've had women essentially throw themselves at my feet since I was young. It seemed that every woman wanted me. Every woman except the one I had wanted. Wynter, la mia fiamma, my flame. My spitfire. She was my first love, and my first kiss, and broke my nose almost immediately after said kiss. She was beautiful, tiny, with blonde hair and the most enchanting green eyes I've ever known. I've always loved green eyes, although I prefer brunettes to blondes. It hadn't matter with Wynter. After she "died", I sought to distract myself by sleeping around. Like I said, I've always had women throw themselves at me. I don't blame them. I've heard them describe me as the kind of sexy that makes you stop in the middle of traffic and get hit by a bus. I'm one of the tallest men you'll ever know, only dwarfed by my cousin Declan, who's a mere hair away from being seven feet. I myself am six foot nine, my twin an inch shorter and five minutes older. At times, I struggle with English because I was raised to speak Italian and Finnish. We don't speak English at home, and all of my parents and Uncle and Aunts have accents. My dad, Uncle Maverick, Uncle Severi (formally know as Lucifer) and Aunt Sade all have strong Finnish accents and my mom and Aunt Fiorella have strong Italian accents. I actually have a Finnish accent myself, as I lived in Helsinki for a few years, but I can make it come and go at will. Women like accents and also like different languages. I'm muscular, with shaggy black hair. Charming, Gentlemanly, yet also the badboy every girl dreams of, I'm also a drummer and I have a very deep voice. Girls like that.

But if I thought I had girls after me before, it's doubled, almost tripled, now that I'm emotionally unavailable.

I'm not one hundred percent sure what caused it. I had no problem sleeping around prior to meeting Jacqueline, and even when I dated her, I was still a major horndog. I certainly didn't mind sleeping around after she was gone, but once I met Luna, I slowed down in my sexual conquest. A gradual decline. It was almost refreshing. It was just before, or maybe shortly ater, a dramatic event that I truly stopped.

Wynter had come back.

It had turned out that she actually hadn't died on the operating table, like I'd been made to believe. Instead, her parents had told her I wanted nothing to do with her and had taken her away to England.

I know what you're thinking. You're fantasizing about a modern day Romeo and Juliet. You're imagining that once she came back, we returned to our happy relationship, and happily ever after. I'm sorry, I really am, but life just doesn't work that way. It had been three years, neither of us were the same anymore. I still loved her, still love her, rather, but our relationship was virtually irrepairable.

I haven't had sex or been in a relationship since then. Which brings me back to my early statement. If I had thought women wanted me then, then what was happening now can only be described as sexual insanity. Apparently, women like sad, unavailable, moody, broody, broken men. I don't understand it at all. Why do women feel the need to fix the unfixable? If it ain't broke, don't break it, and if it is broke, it ain't worth your time.

But I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, if it weren't for women and their need to fix things, Luna would have left long ago. I smiled, looking over at her. She'd been talking for five, maybe ten, straight minutes, but I wasn't really paying attention. I know she knew it, and it was kind of irritating her. It honestly wasn't my fault. She started about school, then dogs, and now she may have been talking about family. Or maybe it was ballet. I didn't know. All I knew is that women felt the need to fill the silence with idle chatter, while I was perfectly content to sit in silence and watch her. She was cute when she was mad, cuter than she was normally, and that was pretty damned hard to do.

"La mia piccola luna," I murmured. My little moon. She was beautiful, inside and out. She was small, fragile as a little bird. You could hold her in your arms, but one wrong move and her brittle wings would break. Little birds aren't meant to be in cages. They are meant to be free, to fly. I frowned slightly, studying her. Her cheeks were still rosy and pink, but her skin seemed a little paler than normally, as if she was recovering from illness. Her big sky blue eyes were full of life, her lips curved upward in a small smile, revealing little pearly teeth. She smelled fainly of Dove conditioner, different from her usual fruity hair products. I liked the Dove. Emilie used to use it, and I've always loved the smell of it. I knew for a fact her hair was as soft as a baby's, and a beautiful chocolate brown. Without thinking, I lifted her hand gently, putting our hands palm to palm. She was so petite, her pams slim, as her fingers were. Tiny, elegant, piano hands, smelling faintly of vanilla, soft as soft can be, and as pale as the moon. I was happy to see that her nails were growing out again, and I could see small moons at her finger tips. They weren't long, but they meant that whatever stress she'd been enduring before had vanished.

I knew I was the opposite. My hands were a golden tan, as was most of my body, and I had very large, masculine hands that dwarfed hers. My nails were short, black nail polish chipped as hell, my hands leathery and calloused from many years of manual labour and drum practice.

"Così piccolo, così fragile, come un passerotto," I murmured again. I liked speaking other languages when she was around. She was adorable when she was confused, like a puppy. I gently released her hand, bringing myself to the present, "Sei così piccolo, Luna, così fragile. Devo stare attento con te, perché non mi spezzo le fragili ali. Hai bisogno di volare, di essere liberi. Dancing on il vento per il canto della vita." I sighed.

Finally I switched to English, "Sorry, Luna. I was just..." I frowned. What did I want to say? How did those words go? "Memorying things if lost time." That didn't sound right. Oh well. "Anyway, I thought you'd like to meet my family. Uncle Lucifer ---although he goes by his real name Severi now --- recently married and they're coming to visit me. Kaydence and Xander were going to visit anyway. They decided they're coming here in the fall." There. My English was back.

"And sorry about all the Italian. I speak Finnish and Italian at home, so I alternate my thoughts between the two. I find it hard, sometimes, to memory... Or whatever that word is, to memory my English. Or even to speak English at all." I blushed, embarrassed.