“Mira, where is Elena?”
She blinked.
I bit off the end of a sigh. “It’s been a long day. A long few days. Please, tell me where Signora Lombardi went off to.”
“The bathroom,” the younger girl said boldly, shooting an annoyed look at Mirabella as if she too found her slightly pathetic. “She needed to touch up her lipstick.”
“Thank you,” I said, even though I was impatient to find my woman and get the hell out of there.
“D-Dante?” Mirabella cried softly as I moved to the door to the hallway.
I hesitated, but didn’t turn around.
“I-I don’t want to marry you either,” she had the guts to tell me.
So, I took the time to turn around and catch her wide, frightened gaze. “I can’t say I’m surprised when you can hardly look at me without fainting.”
The younger girl snorted and Mira’s aunt cuffed her lightly on the back of the head.
“Are you in love with her?” Mira had the surprising audacity to ask. When I didn’t answer, she nodded slightly and looked down at the half-peeled lump of starch in her hand. “Rocco isn’t as dumb as you think he is. Be careful.”
“And you? You can’t have been careful if you remain unmarried all these years later and Rocco is determined to fob you off on a foreigner he doesn’t even like.”
She flinched slightly, staring at that damned potato like it held the answers to all of life’s questions. “I was meant to be married, but it… it didn’t work out. Now, my uncle is ashamed to have a spinster niece with no prospects. We all have our crosses to bear.”
“You won’t be one of mine,” I promised her without waiting for a response, pushing out the other swinging door into the hall.
I wasn’t willing to leave Elena alone in this viper’s den for any longer than necessary.
My shoes clacked against the burgundy ceramic tile as I stalked down the hall, peering into open archways and behind half-closed doors.
No Elena.
Finally, there was a single locked door at the end of the hall before the stairs. I knew she was behind the wood barricade the way a seer knew what lay behind the opaqueness of a crystal ball. I could feel her.
Without preamble, I pulled the folded knife from my pocket, jerked it open with a flick of my wrist and angled the blade between the door and the wood frame. A moment later, the blade found the edge of the latch mechanism and the door popped open with one thin voiced creak.
Elena didn’t flinch as I appeared in the frame.
Her eyes were pinned on mine in the reflection of the massive, ornate gilt mirror over the sink basin. They were a dense, quilted grey like rolling storm clouds, sparking with crackling lightning that threatened to eviscerate.
Even filled with wrath, Elena was pure beauty.
“Were you going to tell me you were engaged?” she asked in a low, seething voice that slunk toward me like elongating shadows.
I leaned against the door jamb insolently and crossed my arms as I contemplated the curved edge of my knife. “And you? You’ve never spoken with me about Daniel Sinclair.”
There was a sharp sound as she sucked air between her teeth. I watched as the long line of her body coiled tight with controlled rage.
I settled in, excited about the prospect of watching her rage burst free of its cage.
“Daniel isn’t relevant right now.”
“He isn’t?” I faked surprise. “The man you lived with for four years. The one you thought you’d marry and adopt a child with. The same one that you couldn’t get over until you met me?”
“You are such an arrogant bastardo,” she snapped, whirling around to face me with color high in her cheeks. “You think you just magically made everything better?”
“No,” I retorted, pushing off the frame, shutting the door with one hand before stalking across the small room toward her. “Not everything. We still have to work on some things…” I backed her into the sink until she was bent backward over the porcelain, her chest heaving with the strain of her irritation and burgeoning desire. I palmed the skin above her breasts and slid my rough palm up until it collared her neck. The kick of her mad pulse against my thumb made my cock jerk in my pants. “I still have to teach you everything there is to know about pleasing me. With your hands, with your red mouth, your sweet cunt, and your little arse.”
“M-my arse?” she parroted, her eyes as wide as silver dollars.
I laughed huskily as I gathered her hands in one of my own and pinned them behind her back so she was forced to arch against me. “Si, lottatice, your tight little arse. Has anyone ever taken you there?”
“Absolutely not,” she snapped, the flush in her cheeks deepening, spreading down her neck and chest.
I followed the path with my lips and tongue, lapping up the heat of her skin. “I think you’ll like having me there. Do you know why?”
Her breath was a harsh rasp in my ear as I used my free hand to ruck up her skirt. I palmed her silk covered pussy without foreplay. A fierce shudder rocked through her, a shocked exhale blowing in my hair as I pressed a kiss to her thrumming pulse.
She liked it when I was less than civilized, when I didn’t give her a chance to use that big, beautiful brain to overthink every nuance and expectation.
She wasn’t ready to admit she liked it, but soon, she would be.
Soon, I’d have her hot and wet, pliant as warm wax in my hands. She would tell me in detail, in the language of her people she’d once loathed, how much she wanted me inside her, against her, owning her.
For now, I was happy to do that work myself.
“You love it when I worship your body,” I breathed against her ear as I cupped her sex and ground the heel of my hand gently into her clit. “When I use every thing I am and every thing I have to make you come spectacularly for me. Did you know, cuore mia, there is nothing more beautiful to me than the sight of you breaking apart with pleasure?”
Her only response was a throaty little purr as I sucked on the hickey I’d left on her neck earlier.
“No woman before you matters to me. They are insignificante. They are dust,” I growled as I released her hands and turned her to face the mirror once more.
Together, we studied my effect on her body, the heavy-lidded eyes, the parted lips, the flush that glistened beneath her pale gold skin. I reached around her body to cup her throat in my palm. It was a collar as much as any leather or diamonds could be, one of my own flesh and blood that was infinitely more intimate.
“Just as any man before me for you was nothing,” I continued, my eyes pinned on her in the mirror. Her face was swathed in the dim light from the Moreno glass fixture above the frame, while mine was cast entirely in shadow. “I’ve told you, Elena, whatever you and I are made of, it is the same. No one exists for me, but you. No one makes you come alive, but me.”
“Yes,” she admitted, reaching back to cup my erection through my pants. She squeezed hard, her nails pin pricks of pain around my shaft. “No one for you but me.”
“Si, Elena, mai più,” I agreed gruffly as I used my free hand to wrench her skirt up over her pert arse.
Never again.
Never again would I want a woman the way I wanted her.
She possessed me like a scientist with some great unanswerable question. I knew no matter the length of our lives together, I would never know Elena Lombardi in all her iterations. She would continue to surprise me, impress me, and test me. For a man who had been bored by the human condition for years, it was the greatest gift I could have ever possessed, so of course, it made sense that it should possess me in return.