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“I don’t drink coffee.”
“You’re not human,” I breathed.
His palm ran from my hip to my lower stomach. Heat curled inside me with the smallest amount of pressure from his hand. Each finger burned through the fabric while his lips brushed the nape of my neck. My insides were melting, dissolving into nothing but memory as he softly bit down and then licked the skin. I gripped the edge of the countertop, a moan crawling up my throat.
“Why are you dressed to go out?”
I sucked in a shaky breath. “I’m going to the dress shop with Mamma at ten.”
“Are you now?” He ran his face across my bare shoulder, his scruff teasing my skin. “Who’s taking you?”
“Benito’s picking me up.”
It went silent for a moment, and I suddenly wondered if he would tell me no. Would he be strict? Irrational? All the horrid possibilities came to mind as I finally realized I was putting my future in this man’s hands. I hardly even knew him. I wanted to know him, just so I could understand how he would react. At least, that’s what I told myself. I wanted to know what he did last night. What his middle name was. Who he had loved or who he did. I wanted to know everything, and that made my chest ache with the inevitable break.
“You’ll take a burner phone until I can get you a new one.”
I exhaled. In relief? I wasn’t sure. It was hardly enough to understand his character, but it was something.
“Nico, it’s not necessary to have Luca stay here with me. I don’t need a babysitter.”
A strained quiet crept between us before he stepped away.
“Your past says differently.”
I tensed, somehow not believing he’d said that.
I got my first glimpse of Nico that morning. He walked into the living room, pulling off his tie, and I couldn’t help but notice he wore the same clothes he had on last night. Swallowing the bitter taste in my mouth, I said, “I’m not going to run away.” I did that once and it wasn’t liberating; it was the biggest mistake I’d ever made.
His gaze was a lit match in a pitch-black room. “There’s nowhere you could go that I couldn’t find you.”
A cold shiver rolled down my spine at the indifferent tone of his voice, because I believed him. Though, an edge to his expression made me believe he wasn’t only leaving one of his men with me for my safety or the fact that I might try to run.
I paused when the realization hit me. Did he believe I was involved with another man? It would make sense with the way he’d implied more than once that I was somehow unfaithful.
Did he think I was that stupid? I would have to be incredibly foolish to be in a clandestine relation
ship, especially after what happened to me before. No offense to Adriana—she thought with her strange heart, not with her head.
Annoyance bubbled to the surface.
This man could sleep with whoever he wanted. My throat tightened as I imagined he’d done just that last night, and I was babysat so I didn’t do the same? It was the way this life worked, I knew. But I’d only understood it from afar, not personally from a man I would soon call Husband. From a man I would share a home with.
Annoyance turned to bitterness and spread through my blood like poison.
I would never have a husband of my own. I would always have to share him. And that truth felt so real, so raw at that moment, tremors of resentment ached in my chest.
My eyes narrowed, just like they had at the church when I’d first seen him.
His gaze imitated mine.
I had no desire to inform him there was no other man. It didn’t matter if there was, anyway.
My heart would never be his.
It was the one thing in my life that was mine, and I would never sign it over.
The entire ride to the dress shop, Nonna and Adriana watched me with blank, non-blinking expressions. Benito stayed silent in the driver’s seat, and Mamma talked, over-animated and nervously, about the wedding.