Chapter 5 #3
I set the glass down with exaggerated care. “Better?”
“No. But it’s a start.” His mouth curves up, green eyes bright, and I hate that the expression settles low in my stomach before I can redirect it into anger.
By the time the main course is cleared, I am tired of being reasonable. Stefano notices before I move, I see it in the faint lift of his brow when I push back my chair and stand. He does not ask where I am going. He watches. That almost makes me change my mind.
Almost.
If he wants a performance, I can give him one. I cross the room slowly, and his eyes stay locked on me. Stefano’s chair is angled slightly from the table.
Convenient.
I turn and sit in his lap. For one brief, deeply satisfying second, he goes still.
Not shocked. He does not seem like a man who is easily shocked.
But I feel the pause in him, the smallest break in that perfect control as my weight settles over his thighs and my hip presses against the hard line of his body.
His hand comes to my waist on instinct. Not to push me off.
To steady. To possess. To stop me from doing whatever I have planned, whatever it is that hasn’t yet decided I am allowed to do.
I look at his plate, then at him. “Feed me.”
His eyes darken. And for half a second, I think there is a very good chance I have miscalculated him. But I don’t retreat. The silence stretches long enough for the candles to make a soft sound as they burn. Then he picks up his fork.
“Alright.”
The word should sound ridiculous. But it doesn’t, not in that low husky voice. Not with his hand warm at my waist and his other lifting a bite of the dessert toward my mouth as if this is exactly the kind of game he was born knowing how to play.
I take the bite. And I don’t look away from him.
The dessert is chocolate mousse, dark and not too sweet. I barely taste it. His thumb moves once against the side of my waist, a small pressure through the fabric of the dress. Nothing inappropriate. Nothing anyone could object to if they were watching from across the room.
His gaze stays on my mouth until I swallow. Then he leans closer, the fork still in his hand, the gravely tone of his voice meant only for me. “Do not do that in public.”
I lift my brows. “Do what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I ask playing innocence.
“Like you’re trying to decide whether to kiss me or kill me.”
“I’m not deciding.”
“No?”
“I know which one I’d choose.”
His mouth curves, and he leans closer, close enough that for a moment I think he might actually kiss me. “Liar.”
His hand tightens slightly at my waist, and for a second, the room shrinks around the place where our bodies touch. This is supposed to be a power play. Mine. A way to throw his own role back in his face and prove I can be just as unpleasantly convincing as he needs me to be.
Instead, I am aware of him in layers. The warmth of his thigh beneath mine. The controlled strength of the hand at my waist. The faint scent of smoke and soap at his collar. The bruise on his cheekbone that I put there. The way his gaze has stopped being amused and become something far less safe.
In a silent standoff, I take another bite from his fork when he offers it, because retreating now would be worse. He watches me swallow.
“You’re enjoying this,” he says.
“I enjoy winning.”
“You haven’t won.”
“I made you pause.”
“That was not winning.”
“What was it?”
His thumb shifts against my waist again. “Recalculation.”
I lean in before I can think better of it, bringing my mouth near his ear the way he has done to me twice now.
“Then recalculate this. If you want me to play your acquisition, I’ll play her.
But I’m not a doll, Stefano. I’m not pliant.
I’m not breakable. And if you put me in a room with Leon O’Reilly, I will use every second of it to make sure he pays for what he did to my sister. ”
His hand slides from my waist to the small of my back, holding me there when I start to pull away.
“I know,” he says.
The words are quiet. Not amused. I search his face, but he gives me nothing else.
I stand before my body can make the decision complicated. My legs are steady, thankfully. My face is too. I have learned many things in bad rooms with worse men, and one of them is how to leave before anyone realizes how much the room is costing me emotionally.
At the door, I look back.
Stefano still sits at the head of the table, one hand resting on the arm of his chair, his plate half-finished, his attention entirely on me.
“When do we meet Leon?” I ask.
“In two days.”
“Why two?”
“Because men like Leon hate waiting. The more frustrated he is, the more mistakes he’ll make when forced to move on my schedule. Not his.”
“And until then?”
“Until then,” he says, “you learn how to stand beside me without looking like you want my blood on your hands.”
I let my gaze drop deliberately to the bruise on his cheekbone. “I’ll do my best.”
Too late, I realize he likes the challenge.
“You’ll do better than that,” he says, his voice dropping lower as his eyes darken.
Arrogant bastard.