39. Dante
Dante
I finished off my ham and cheese sandwich while waiting for my wife.
She warned me she couldn’t cook but assured me she made killer sandwiches. She wasn’t wrong. Either that or I was hungry as fuck. If only I could have her pussy for dessert.
My lips curved into a smug smile picturing how she’d blush if I told her what I wanted for dessert. Her reactions were the highlight of my fucking life. Seeing her blush was like another hit of heroin for a junkie.
“What are you grinning at?” Juliette’s voice came from the entrance to the kitchen. “Like you’re contemplating taking over the world.”
I chuckled. “Nah, just pussy,” I remarked sweetly. “I haven’t had dessert since I ate your pussy. Nothing tastes as good as your—”
“Okay, okay.” She cut me off, her cheeks turning crimson. “We get it, my pussy.”
My smile spread wider and I winked at her. “Not to worry, Wildling. You’re safe with me and skiing requires too many clothes for easy access to your—”
“God!” she exclaimed, turning an even darker shade of red. “You really like that word, huh?”
“Only with you,” I admitted, then decided to give her a break. At least for a little bit. “You ready?” I asked.
She looked ready. A pair of black leggings, the familiar yellow pullover, and yellow Uggs. Light blue snowsuit hanging over her forearm.
“I’m not putting this on until we get there.” Juliette’s eyes flashed with irritation. “I’ll sweat my ass off.” Her eyes flicked toward my sweatpants. “I see you dress casually for skiing too.”
Something about the way she stared at a certain region had me smiling with smug satisfaction. Then as if she remembered her earlier argument, she returned her eyes to my face.
“I still don’t understand why you chose that for our daily fun,” she muttered. It turned out my competitive wife hated not being better than me at things. “I told you I’m not even a good skier. Everything snow, ice, or water turns into a disaster when I’m around.”
I sighed. “Trust me, Wilding. If I can teach Priest, I can teach you. My little brother has two left feet.”
She opened her mouth to respond but her phone rang at that moment. She pulled it out eagerly, then her brows furrowed. She didn’t wait, answering it before it could ring again.
“Hello?” she said. I was close enough to hear that it was a man’s voice and her face lit up with a broad smile.
Jealousy shot through me like a lightning bolt, but I kept my shit together.
I’d have to track that call and find out what fucker could put such a smile on her face.
No one had that right. It was my job and my job only.
“Yeah, that won’t be a problem at all,” she purred. “I got the money.”
She hung up and her eyes shone with mischief. I couldn’t peel my gaze away from the way they glimmered. I had never seen her like this.
“By the way, thanks for the black Amex you left behind,” she said, eyeing me as she reached for a banana muffin. It was her favorite fruit and apparently her go-to snack. When she ate, that was.
“I saw you went shopping,” I remarked.
She shrugged. “I figured it’s what you would have wanted me to do.” She ripped off a piece of the pastry and popped it in her mouth. She made a small “mmm” sound that made all the heat rush to my groin. “Otherwise, why leave it?”
She had a point, although I never fathomed she could spend two hundred grand so fast without even buying jewelry. According to the transactions, fifty grand was spent at the retail stores. The rest was a cash advance.
Not that I cared. What was mine was hers and all that. For all I cared, she could blow it all. I made enough in a single day to support our lifestyle.
“Buy anything good?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Yes.”
“What?”
She smiled. “You’ll see.”
Then she flicked her eyes over toward the door. “Are we ready to go start this ‘fun’ you have planned for today?” she inquired, her fingers coming up to make air quotes.
There was a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice, but I chose to ignore it. She’d make her way down the slope if I had to put her on my skis to do it.
* * *
I rubbed a hand over my jaw, studying Juliette’s posture.
She gripped the zipper of her jacket, playing with it while eyeing the skis I held for her like they carried a fatal disease.
We drove up to Wilmot Mountain, the closest option to Chicago for traditional skiing.
I didn’t tell Juliette that while I succeeded in teaching Priest to ski, he hated it and preferred snowboarding.
I could teach her skiing; I couldn’t teach her snowboarding because only people with two left feet could snowboard and that is not me.
There was a class about twenty feet away with five-year-olds that showed more enthusiasm than Juliette.
I laughed. “Come on, you can do it. First, let’s strap them on.”
She didn’t move, so I bent down and strapped her boots in. Then we got down to business and went over the basics. First, we tried to “glide” as she called it. Next, we ski-walked around the class being held for the little kids while they threw us curious glances.
“Okay, I’m ready for the real hill,” Juliette announced.
“I don’t think—”
“Dante, I’m ready for the real hill,” she repeated, glaring at me.
I sighed. Stubbornness was Juliette’s weakness. She let her emotions guide her too much. “I’m going to do it with you or without you,” she added with a lift of her chin.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
We walked to the top of the hill and Juliette positioned herself. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were red from the cold but there was clear excitement on her face.
I pointed to a spot. “Wait until I’m standing there, then ski down, controlling your speed. Use the poles the way I showed you.”
She nodded eagerly, but my gut feeling warned me she wasn’t listening. She was already picturing herself flying down the mountain.
“Juliette, are you paying attention?”
“Yes, yes. I’m waiting until you’re standing there, then I’m going to ski down and use my poles the way you taught me. Piece of cake. Get your ass in gear.”
I shook my head.
Making my way down the hill, I reached the spot and turned around to see Juliette already speeding down.
“What the fuck—” I hissed.
She was going too fast.
“Slow down, Juliette!” I shouted, waving my hands. She looked like she was daydreaming. The smile on her face was one of pure bliss, but it quickly turned into panic. She tried to stop, making an inverted V. All she did was tangle her feet and— boom .
She rolled down the hill and straight into me.
“Fuck!” she grunted as she crashed into me. Her breathing was hard and her eyes wide, but adrenaline must have still been pumping through her veins because she dusted herself off and announced, “I almost did it. Let’s do it again.”
I glanced around, wondering if maybe I wasn’t seeing something right. She’d almost killed herself, not almost done it. The looks on passersby’s faces told me I was right.
“No,” I said firmly. She was only recently mine. I wouldn’t risk losing her on some adrenaline rush.
“I was good,” she claimed. “I just fucked up the whole inverted V but other than that—”
“Other than that, you could have broken your neck.”
“But it was such a rush.” She grinned, her eyes shooting back to the top of the hill. I was starting to wonder whether my wife was an adrenaline junkie. “I want to try it again,” she begged.
I shook my head. “Please, Dante.” She even fluttered her eyes. “One more time.”
“No, Wildling. I want you alive, not dead.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “Fine. Then what can I do safely?”
I took in the five-year-olds and their little makeshift hill.
“That’s a hump,” she hissed. “It barely reaches my knees.”
“When you can go over it without falling, then we can try the hill again.”
She puffed out a breath, clouding the air in front of her. “Fine.”
Her eyes burned with irritation as she pushed herself off me and got to her feet very ungracefully. I pushed myself up, my mouth curved up into a wide grin. My wife was adorable when she was pouting.
“Want me to help you?” I offered.
“It’s a baby hill,” she hissed. “I can manage.”
I’d give Juliette one thing… she was definitely goal-oriented, putting all her determination into it. But it was clear after the twentieth time that she landed on her ass, skiing wasn’t her thing. The kids had all vacated onto the bigger slopes or went back to warm up inside.
“This isn’t working, Dante,” she groaned softly, sprawled on the snow faceup, the front of her skis vertical in the air. Then, for dramatics, she even face-planted into the soft powder. “Oh fuck, that’s cold,” she yelped, lifting her face up and rolling over.
I chuckled. “You think?”
A teenage boy flew by us on a snowboard, almost running into Juliette and bypassing her by a thread.
“Watch it,” I yelled after him. “You could have hurt my pregnant wife.”
The kid’s head whipped around and he lost his balance, tumbling over himself and down the hill. He landed on his ass, breathing heavily, although he had plenty of energy to flip us off.
“I guess I’m not the only one bad on snow,” Juliette drawled. “And pregnant? Seriously?”
I watched as she tried—and ultimately failed—to stifle her laugh before breaking out in a full-fledged cackle, unfazed by the glares shot our way.
This was what I wanted from the moment I’d laid eyes on this woman.