1. Elio #3
It should irritate me, that calm. Instead, it wrecks me. Fear, at least, would put distance between us. It would keep me in check.
I cross the room slowly, feeling the distance closing like a hand around my throat.
My shoes make no sound against the rug, but she must sense me anyway the same way she had back at the banquet hall.
I stop a few feet behind her, close enough to smell her perfume.
“Running from the old men already, Principessa?” The endearment slips out of my mouth before I can stop it, and I almost curse myself for the weakness of it.
It is ironic, really, that the name has always stuck when Isabella is anything but fragile.
She is no sheltered doll to be placed on a shelf and admired from a safe distance.
There is steel in her.
Intelligence that cannot be dismissed.
A quiet defiance that does not bend to men like me.
But the word still tastes right on my tongue when I look at her.
She turns slowly, and that honey-gold gaze locks on me.
Up close, there is no buffer of a crowded room and public decorum to scrutinize us.
Here, there is only her face highlighted by moonlight, her eyes bright and her mouth curving upward with the kind of smile that should come with a warning label.
“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” she asks.
I exhale once through my nose, the sound almost a laugh and not nearly as amused as it sounds. “I was not the one who disappeared from her father’s side while he was making his rounds.”
“No. But you were the one staring at us like you wanted to set us on fire. Planning on taking us out once nobody was looking?” The bluntness of her tone lands like a match dropped into dry grass.
For a second, I just look at her.
Most women would not dare say something like that to me.
The smart ones would keep the accusation buried beneath flirtation.
The cautious ones would never acknowledge it at all. Isabella has never belonged to either category, unfortunately.
She says the dangerous thing simply because it is true and because she knows I can never decide whether I want to silence her for it like I do with anyone else or drag her closer until she says worse.
“Or maybe,” she says, tilting her head just slightly, her eyes narrowing, “you were staring our way for an entirely different reason…”
“Careful,” I murmur, taking another step forward. “You should know better than to romanticize me.”
A flicker of amusement touches her expression. “Would the observation be inaccurate?”
Christ.
I should leave.
That thought arrives clear and sensible and utterly useless the second it forms because my body has already chosen otherwise.
My eyes drag over her face down to the elegant line of her throat. It’s there that I see the faint fluttering of her pulse.
It’s too quick for someone pretending to be so calm.
So, she is affected.
The discovery gives me no peace at all, however, only adding another layer of temptation to drown beneath.
I wonder what else about her is betraying the poise she wears so beautifully.
Is her breathing this steady by force, or are her hands aching to touch something the way mine do?
Whether she has any idea how close I am to forgetting every rule that has kept this from becoming a catastrophe is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
“Did you come here to see if I would follow?” I ask, my voice barely above a murmur.
Her lashes lower just enough to suggest thought, though we both know she already has an answer being held back on the tip of her tongue. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
Her chin lifts. Defiant little thing. “Why?”
Heat flares low in my gut.
I close the distance between us in two strides instead of answering her question, my hand fitting around her throat to use to back her against the wall behind her next to the windows.
We’re close enough now that her perfume fills my lungs. It’s light and floral with an undercurrent of warmth like cloves.
My hand flexes, just once, as I fight the urge to lean down and tease her mouth with my teeth.
Lust is simple.
It is controllable, a bodily need that comes and goes like bad weather.
What I feel when I look at Isabella is something else entirely, something more corrosive.
It lingers, festers, makes me restless in my own skin no matter what I do to purge myself of it.
“Careful,” I murmur again. My hand rises from her throat to brush a stray lock of chestnut hair behind her ear. My fingers linger there, tracing the delicate shell of her ear. “A girl like you shouldn’t play with men like me.”
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t pull away. Instead, she leans into the touch. “And what kind of man are you tonight, Elio Conti?”
The kind who is about to break every rule drilled into him since he could hold a gun, I want to say.
Instead, I cup her face and tilt her head to the side.
My lips brush along the spot just below her ear, relishing in the shiver that rolls through her body from the contact. “The kind who’s going to fuck you until you forget why you ever thought this was a bad idea.”
She laughs softly.
Her hands come up to fist in my shirt, pulling me closer. “Then stop talking and do it.”
I can never deny her anything.
My mouth crashes down onto hers.