Page 71 of My Dark Fairy Tale

Her dark eyes searched my face, so soft and warm, inviting me to trust her enough to explain. For one heart-stopping moment, I wanted to lay all my awful history at her door and beg her to let me stay.

“May I cut in?”

I swallowed my sigh, wishing the night could have been about enjoyment instead of riddled with irritation.

“No,” I told Stefania without looking at her.

Guinevere stayed in my arms, but her gaze tracked the woman behind me. I danced us farther away.

“She looks like she swallowed a lemon,” she told me.

“That is just the way her face is.”

“Raffa,” she scolded, but she was biting back a smile. “Don’t be rude.”

“Why not? It was rude of her to interrupt our dance.”

“Is she a friend? I assumed so because she seemed comfortable enough to ask for a dance in the first place.”

“She used to be,” I confessed flippantly, though something in my gut clenched as I continued to say, “though lately she has confessed to wanting ... more. Marriage and the like.”

Guinevere’s lovely face cycled through expressions before landing on something like amused bewilderment. “Can I ask ... why does she seem to think you want to marry her?”

I enjoyed the way she framed the question because it spoke of her resolve to believe that I had never intended to and never meant to give Stefania that idea. There was no insecurity in her tone or judgment, just that brand of Guinevere Stone curiosity.

“Our families run in the same circles, and my mother has always thought Stefania would make a good wife for a man in ... my position. She comes from a good family with wealth and connections.” I shrugged.

“And she’s beautiful.”

I shrugged again. “There is beauty in everyone. It does not mean you are attracted to everyone.”

“So you have never ...” She flushed, and I chuckled warmly, touching her cheek with my knuckles to feel its heat.

“No, I have never wanted to. And if you do not mind, I would prefer to think about sleeping with thedonna accattivantein my arms.”

We finished out the dance like that, flirting and laughing as if the deputy chief of the anti-Mafia commission was not watching me like a hawk, and as if Stefania was not eyeing me like a praying mantis.

At some point, I spun her dramatically and reeled her back into my arms, bending her back to place what was meant to be a playful kiss on her mouth. But the moment our lips met, I was lost to the taste of her tinted in sweet white wine and some kind of berry lip gloss.

Everything fell away.

Sansone.

Stefania.

The rising threat against my outfit and the pressures of my position, the responsibility to my family.

Nothing existed under the black-velvet sky except Guinevere and me, safe inside our globe.

“Come with me,” I whispered against her damp mouth when I realized I was dangerously close to indecency.

In answer, she took my hand and let me lead her from the well-lit dance floor back into the shadows of the columns and then out into the Boboli Gardens. The gravel crunched under our feet as I took her up the left path bracketing the planted terraces and fountains into the lantern-lit side garden behind rows of hedges. We walked for another minute until we found a stone bench I could pull her down onto, pressing my mouth to hers before she was even fully seated.

She hummed her pleasure onto my tongue and sank her hands into my hair, nails scratching at my scalp.

“I want to touch you here,” I told her, voice already raw with want, my hand slipping from her throat to span the width of her upper breasts exposed by the low cut of her gown.

“Yes,” she hissed, tipping her head back to give me better access, wanton as a nymph from Roman legends and just as ethereal. “Every night I’ve gone to bed without you, I’ve imagined how you might touch me next.”