Page 37 of Niccolo (Mafia Kings #7)

Niccolo

S he was delightful.

I’d been right: she was incredibly intelligent.

If anything, she exceeded my expectations.

And I loved her confidence.

Be careful – you might not be able to handle me.

There was nothing she could have said that would entice me more.

There was a certain prickliness to her disposition, yes –

But underneath, there was also a hint of a smile.

I figured she was playing hard to get…

Which, for me, is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

However, when she said she’d arrived with Aurelio?

Ugh.

At first I thought I had completely misjudged her.

Anyone even remotely interested in that festering bunghole wasn’t someone I wanted to waste time on.

But…

I noticed the obvious distaste in her voice when she said it.

I saw the flicker of repulsion that played across her face…

And I decided to press the issue to see how she would react.

To my great delight, she never once defended Aurelio or acted the least bit interested in him. If anything, she kept dancing around the issue, never directly answering me.

Speaking of dancing, she moved backwards from me slightly – probably to guard her personal space.

I stepped forward again…

And she edged to her left.

I doubted she was even aware she was doing it.

One thing about women: if they’re uninterested in you, they’ll stop making eye contact. They’ll look anywhere but at you.

She didn’t look away from me once.

In fact, her eyes were locked on mine.

There were other signs, too. Subtle, but they were there.

A slight blush in her cheeks…

A quickening of her pulse, which I could see in a vein at her throat…

And a complete disregard for everything else going on around us.

The only thing that gave me pause was when she hesitated before saying her name:

…Aurora Dispenza.

Almost as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to give it to me.

I chalked that up to her struggling with her attraction to me…

Which only made me redouble my efforts.