Chapter Nine Guinevere #3
“This is not how we do business, Romano.”
Raffa cocked his head. “This is how we do business in Italia. This is how I expect things to go, capisci ? I command and you obey. There is no other option.”
“There is always another option,” Wyatt retorted, but his anger had transformed into something closer to agitation and a healthy dose of fear.
“You do not want another option,” Raffa murmured so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him.
I gasped when he uncoiled like a snake, striking out to grab Wyatt by his shirtfront to push him up against the stone wall.
If I had stumbled upon them just then, I might have thought they were lovers for how closely they stood, but I knew, after Galasso, that closeness could be used for intimidation too.
I couldn’t hear what he said then, catching only the low timbre of his voice like a bass note to the cicadas’ song as they nested above me.
It should have been alarming to see him so cold, so absolute in his totalitarianism. He was obviously not a businessman afraid to get his hands dirty by confronting his misbehaving staff. My father would have forbidden me to see him anymore after a scene like this, always wary of men’s anger.
But it was yet another thing I had no true experience with that I found curiously arousing. The cold snap of his voice like a whip. The power of his body unleashing quick and lethal.
It spoke of a masculinity and rare power that I hadn’t seen in any of my university classmates back home. A kind of virility, like he could take care of himself and me if he was called on to do so.
It made me feel safe and just slightly afraid of what that voice could make me do if that tone was leveled in my direction.
“Guinevere.”
My head snapped to my left, where Raffa was standing at the entrance to the path with his arms crossed—muscles coiled like rope beneath his skin, visible under the thin knit of his shirt—staring at me like I was a naughty child.
“Were you eavesdropping, cerbiatta ?” he asked me.
I pursed my lips. “Is it eavesdropping if there is yelling? I could hardly not listen.”
“ Faccia tosta ,” he said with a click of his tongue. “Come here.”
“What does that mean?”
“‘Cheeky.’ Now, come here.”
I paused a moment, only because it was part of the game I was coming to understand we both liked to play. It made me feel bold even when I acquiesced to him.
I walked on my toes until I was a foot away from him, grinning slyly. “Are your ears still ringing, old man? You need me closer to hear what I have to say?”
“I need you closer,” he said with a mock snarl, lashing out the way he had done to the Brit, but only to reel me in with an arm around my waist so I was pressed belly to belly with him. “So I can kiss you.”
“If I don’t kiss you back, will you be angry with me like you were with that man?” I tested, not because I was afraid of him but because I wasn’t .
I knew what his answer would be.
He would have dropped me off at a hospital or a police station after hitting me with his car if there hadn’t been something about me that spoke to him in a different language than he was used to.
Raffa sensed my playfulness, eyes flashing as they caught the sunlight before dipping down so he could tip my chin and bite at it. “Angry? No. You would have to do much worse to win my temper.”
I made a noise in my throat that sounded to both of us like disappointment.
Understanding flickered in his expression as he collected my hands and pulled them behind my back, collaring them in one of his so that my back was arched. My balance was entirely dependent on him anchoring my front and providing a counterweight at my wrists. It was erotic, a makeshift bondage.
My lids felt heavy, and my heart thrummed too quick in my chest, heating my blood to a low simmer.
“You do not want my rage, piccola , but you want something like it?” he asked low, speaking the words directly into my ear before nipping my lobe with his teeth. “Do not worry. I will teach you the words in any language for what makes your blood hum, d’accordo ?”
“How can you know the words I need when I can’t even speak them?” I asked, bitterness on my tongue. My naivete felt more constricting than his hand around my wrists.
“I will know,” he promised, running the bridge of his nose down my chin and along my jaw until his mouth hovered over mine. “As I know now that you want me to kiss you the way I might bite into a plum. All tongue and teeth. Devouring.”
Instead of replying with words, I leveraged his hold on my hands to tip my face forward to claim his lips for myself. His chuckle tickled my mouth a moment before he slanted his head and did as he promised.
Devoured.
None of the gentle exploration from the Bugatti. Only an attack of ownership. Tongue behind my teeth, plundering, seeking new corners yet undiscovered.
I surrendered myself to the kiss, to his hold, and felt like I existed only in the frame of his body, pinned against his mouth. There was a freedom in it that soared through me along with pleasure.
When he’d finally had his fill, he broke away to look down into my face, studying me to catalog the effect he’d had on me.
“Wow,” I said, a little shell shocked.
I was rewarded with a full smile, completely unguarded, almost as if I’d surprised him into an honest expression.
“ Che bello ,” he agreed. “Now, as much as I wish I could kiss you in this garden for the rest of the day, I think you mentioned wanting to see how a vineyard works?”
I laughed, and it came from my belly. “I did.”
His smile had narrowed, softened, but it was still there, and when he pulled me toward the main building again, he did it holding my hand.