“Why do you want to know?” I ask, filling my own mouth with pasta and not answering at first.
That earns me a stern look from beneath lowered lashes. “Excuse me?”
“What?” I say around a mouthful of food.
“You don’t balk when I ask you a question. You answer. Thought we’d covered that.”
Definitely not just a dominant in bed.
“I’m curious why you want to know.”
My heart does a little somersault, half expecting that I’ve riled him, but he only takes another large bite of food, follows it with an entire slice of garlic toast that he eats in two large bites, and washes it down with enough wine to drown a small boat.
“When you marry me, your family becomes my family. It’s only custom and logic that demands I ask about your family.”
Ah. Well, that makes sense. “Not much to tell you. You know I was an only child. My mother’s alive but estranged, and I haven’t seen her in years.”
“Why?”
He eats another slice of bread and groans before downing more wine. Wordlessly, I refill his glass. He nods his thanks.
“I don’t really know, except that she hated being married to my father. He had mistresses.” I pause, not wanting to give more information. It isn’t that any of this is a secret so much as I want to see his reaction to mistress.
“Ah. Women hate that.” He’s bare-chested, hunched over as he shovels bite after bite into his mouth. I make a vow right then and there that I’ll ask him to give his cook another job, because I think I might slap a bitch that would try to feed this man. That’s my job. It’s better than sex, and that’s saying something.
“We do. I’m surprised you know that.”
He snorts and twirls another bite of pasta around his fork. “I’ve got a mother, a grandmother, and two sisters at home. I’d have to be a total dumbass not to know that women take the oath of fidelity seriously.”
Not all women, but yes.
I feign nonchalance as I take a tentative bite of bread, but the toast nearly gets caught in my throat. I quickly take another sip of wine. “But what about you? Do you take your vow of fidelity seriously?”
Slowly, Tavi puts his fork down. He folds his large hands together and sits up straighter. If he were a king, he’d make a decree to begin a war with a look like that.
“I take all my vows seriously.”
My heart beats faster. “All of them? To your wife or to your brothers?”
Tavi leans toward me, elbow on the table. The light glints off his eyes, making him look feral. My belly begins to quiver. “All. The oaths I take to the brotherhood. The oaths I take to my wife. And the oaths taken to me.”
Oh dear. A myriad of emotions washes over me—relief, excitement, but alongside them is a deep, abiding sense of fear. Relief that he’ll be faithful to me. Hell, I don’t even want another woman feeding him. Excitement at his stern nature, because I’ve been dominated by this man and I crave another taste. But fear… fear because I wonder if I’ll uphold the vows I take to him to his liking.
It explains why he’s sought to punish me. My marriage to him will be like discipline meant to teach and correct in the face of wrongdoing. My palms grow sweaty. I wipe them discreetly on the edge of my T-shirt.
“I understand,” I tell him. Because I do.
I’ll take a vow to love, honor, and obey this man.
A few weeks ago, that would have unnerved me. I would’ve walled my heart against him in the hopes of never feeling anything at all for a man I don’t love.
But a thread of hope has woven through me. Tavi has a heart. Somewhere deep in the recesses of this stern, forbidding man… he has a heart. A heart that may have forgotten the warmth of love, the heat of passion, or the promise of tomorrow.
Maybe it’s up to me to reawaken it.
CHAPTER 9
Tavi
“Marialena. You’re literally speaking Greek to me, kiddo.” I roll my eyes and gesture for Elise. “And no, doesn’t matter if you’re fifty, I’ll always call you kiddo. Can you please talk to Elise?”
Elise gives me a curious look. I roll my eyes and hand her the phone. I cover the mouthpiece. “Marialena wants to know something about a train or bus, which makes no fucking sense since we’re taking a goddamn car.”
Her brows crease but she takes the phone and starts chatting. I’m finishing emails when I hear her pretty, throaty laugh.
And just like that, I’m hard. It doesn’t take much when it comes to her.
Could be because we’ve had more sex in the past two days than I have in the past five years. Could be because she’s managed to irrevocably wrap herself around my heart, and maybe she knows it. But whatever the reason, we’re landing in Boston in ten minutes and I need to get my act together.
I made absolutely zero headway in Tuscany finding more information about my cousin’s death. No one knows a damn thing. I don’t even have any men stationed in Tuscany, which is why it took so long for me to come identify the body.
I wonder if he was lured there. I’ll have to question Uncle Leo when I get home.
“Tavi, honey,” Elise says, her fingers over the mouthpiece. “She meant the wedding dress train, and the bust on it. She’s trying to find me a dress, remember?”
No, of course I don’t remember and seriously do not even give a shit about things like dresses and shoes and trains and busts, unless it’s her bust and my mouth is on it. I wave my hand at her. “Whatever. Get whatever you want.”
I watch as she bites her lip and twiddles with a piece of her hair. She’s mulling something over.
“What?” I ask while I check on the latest email I got from Santo. He looked at the former Regazza property while I visited Tuscany, and there are a few things of note.
“I really wanted one of those custom Pronovias dresses.”
“Get it,” I say absentmindedly as I flick through the updates and pics he sent me.
“Tavi.” She pauses, insistent. I glance up.
“What?”
“It costs ten thousand dollars.” The sheepish look on her face is priceless, as if she’s expecting me to say no. I know the woman likes to shop and I know she’s got expensive taste. “But it’s… it’s literally stunning. It’s completely designed with fine fabrics and the embellishments are gold, platinum and silver. The entire bodice is made up of—”
“Don’t tell me,” I interrupt. “I don’t care. And I don’t want to hear about what it looks like until I see it on you on our wedding day.”
“Ten thousand dollars!”
“So?”
“So?” Her eyes widen. “Are you serious right now.”
I put my phone down and meet her eyes. “Baby. I don’t fucking care if you get a million dollar dress handsewn by enchanted field mice from Paris. Whatever you want, get it. The only thing I ask is that nothing you order or buy delays our wedding next week. Got it?”
Her eyes shine as she taps the mute button on the phone. “You are getting the best fucking blow job of your life for that,” she hisses, before she taps the phone and goes back to her conversation with my sister.