Page 42 of My Dark Fairy Tale

“A rich man.”

“Yes, and oftentimes, a bored man.”

“I’m not a toy, you know.” She rolled onto her tiptoes, but she was still so short she had no hope of intimidating me. “I’m not ... somebambolinayou can just dress up and play with.”

I smirked a little because it was cute she was so excited to spit my words from last night on the dance floor back at me.

“No?” I murmured, sliding my entire palm under the heavy mane of hair against her neck, my thumb placed intimately over the thrum of her pulse. “You would not like to be my doll, sometime? Dressed in red, all this hair spread out on my pillow, your thighs spread for the weight of me between them? You did not enjoy being pressed against me while I led you through a dance that made your nipples bead behind the fabric of that pretty dress?”

An almost violent shiver rattled her slim shoulders, but she set her teeth against the physical mark of her desire. “I told you, I’m not a prostitute.”

“Did I say you were?”

“You implied it by saying you’ve invested in me and now you want a return.”

“I do not know the kind of men you have in America, but in Italy, a man is honest about his attraction. I find you ...incantevole. Do you know what that means, Guinevere?”

“No,” she whispered as my thumb stroked gently back and forth over her thudding pulse point.

“It meansbeguiling. Enchanting. And for a man like me, that is dangerous. I cannot afford distractions, but here I am in this ugly apartment feeling ... unsettled because you are suggesting I will not see you again when all I want is more of you.”

“In the biblical sense?” she asked, a little lost and entirely aroused.

I didn’t leash the grin that spread warm and dark across my face. “Si, certo, one day. But until that day, I want to see you in a field of poppies as red as that dress. I want to take you to dinner at my favorite trattoria because I can imagine the face you will make when you try truebistecca alla Fiorentina. I want to finish reading Dante’sInfernoto you before we walk through his house together here in Firenze. I want to witness you falling in love with my country because I think you could make this bored man fall in love with it again too.”

“Oh,” she mouthed, searching my gaze for something I both wanted her to see and desperately wanted to hide.

See the me I used to be,I thought, the young college Raffa with charm and swagger and a zeal for life that entranced people into his orbit.

Don’t see Raffaele Romano, the cold, dark metal of a man made into a weapon.

“What are you asking me, exactly?” she asked, reaching up to gently grip my wrist below the hand framing her throat.

When she pressed her thumb to my pulse, it felt as if a loop closed between us. Our hearts, when I took a moment to observe, beat in perfect bass-note harmony.

“I want to know you,” I admitted, even though it felt like a confession and I had stopped going to church for those such a long time ago I could not remember. “Will you let me?”

“Will I get to know you too?” she asked, and if I had thought she was clever before, I knew it for certain then.

Because it was not a given this knowing would go both ways.

In fact, it absolutely wouldnot.

But I’d avoided indulging in anything for so long, the temptation to do so now was physically overpowering. It burned in my gut and quaked in my bones. It echoed in the beat of my blood knocking against Guinevere’s thumb.

Do something for yourself. Take something for your own.

Know her and let someone, just one person, know you too.

“Si,” I whispered, as I pushed her hair behind her back, leaving her neck warm from my grip but bare for my lips as I sealed my promise with a kiss. “You will.”

Chapter Nine

Guinevere

I practically vibrated in my seat the entire way to the Chianti region, where Raffa’s business associate Imelda had one of the country’s best wineries. It was impossible to sit still when I felt carbonated with giddiness and anticipation.

Raffa wanted to know me.