Page 66 of My Dark Fairy Tale

His eyes were narrowed, and one thigh jittered up and down in an anxious motion. “I threatened him.”

“Yes,” I agreed, wondering why he was pressing on this bruise, thinking it was my wound when it was clear it was his own.

One hand went into his pocket to grab the card he’d stuffed there. He held it up so I could see that it was a driver’s license of one Enrico Tornei.

“I told him I was taking this in case I changed my mind and decided that a broken finger wasn’t enough of a lesson.”

I blinked. “Um, just out of curiosity, what would have made you change your mind?”

Raffa put the license back into his pocket before reaching out to palm my throat, thumb rubbing over my pulse point. I’d never been held like that before. It felt proprietary. A necklace of ownership.

My pulse kicked into a sprint, and my chest tightened.

Ilikedit.

“Your reaction,” he said. “He is lucky you are made of sunshine. If you had shed one tear or voiced one misgiving, I would be dropping you off and going to pay Signore Tornei a visit.”

“Raffa,” I said, my tone a mangled mess of amusement, exasperation, and a little awe. “You can’t just ... assault people.”

“I can if they hurt your feelings.”

I shook my head. “Who are you, even?”

Finally, the edge of his firm mouth curved slightly into the little lopsided smile I was growing addicted to, the look of reluctant amusement more attractive than most people’s full-blown grins.

“Raffaele Romano, the god of Firenze’s underworld, remember?”

I laughed, leaning into his grip on my throat in a way that made my nipples hard as I sought his mouth. “All hail Rex Infernus,” I teased.

He frowned, hand shifting so he could lift my chin. “Latin?”

“Another name for Pluto,” I said with a little shrug. “It was always my favorite. It means ‘King Below.’”

“King Below,” he echoed. “Fitting.E stasera sarai la mia regina.”

And tonight, you will be my queen.

Chapter Fifteen

Raffa

“Stop pacing,” Martina said through her laughter. “A woman cannot be rushed.”

I checked my Rolex again as I turned on my heel and walked back along the path I had been tracing for the last fifteen minutes. There was being fashionably late, and then there was beinglate. But that wasn’t the entire reason I was anxious.

Guinevere’s reaction to my aggression that afternoon had both eased and excited something inside me. I had acted instinctively, as I would have if he had insulted Mama or my sisters or Martina. No one insulted the women in my life and remained unscathed.

Apparently, Guinevere was now among their ranks, and truthfully, it was hard not to question if I would go to the same lengths for her that I had and would go to for my family after knowing her for all of two weeks. It was so unlike me and so wildlystupidthat I could not quite digest it.

But I knew it was the truth.

Especially in the car, after she’d questioned me. When she had blinked those luminous dark eyes, filled with their usual curiosity but also a notable degree of acceptance and even a little arousal. When shehad taken my face in her hand and kissed me in a way that felt like a stamp of approval.

“Okay,” she had said, “I can accept it for four weeks or four decades.”

I rubbed a hand over my eyes as a fantasy of those four decades unfurled like cinema roll behind my lids.

Enough.