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Our eyes met, and then hers slowly turned when her horse started to sniff her hair.

She had taken it down after the day, allowing the plump waves to cascade over her shoulders, the sides pulled up.

When her hair was that way, she was somewhat softer, more…

pliable. When her hair was pulled back, because her features were a mix of sharp and soft, the style played on her sharper side.

In this way…I didn’t even have the fucking words. With the point of her finger, and an accusation on her tongue, she could send me into battle for fucking folly.

It was so fucking clear to me in that moment why a woman is called a queen.

My wife ruled me.

“Mariano,” she called again, reaching out for me.

I entwined our hands together. “It’s all right, Annie,” I whispered. “She’s just introducing herself to you. She’s curious.”

“Curious about how I taste. Have you ever truly looked at how big a horse’s teeth are?”

I laughed and showed her my teeth. “Mine might not be as big, but they’re fucking sharper.”

Her eyes grew wide, like she was hypnotized for a second, but recovered when the female Friesian tousled her hair. “ Shh !” she shushed me.

“All right,” I breathed out, sighing. “I’ll take her reins and walk her and Guerriero back to the stables.”

“Her,” she said, refusing to let my hand go. “She does not have a name?”

“Not at this moment,” I said. “She’s yours to name.”

Her eyes cut to the horse, but she refused to make direct eye contact. She sighed. “Seraphina.”

I repeated the name and nodded. “ Bella ,” I said.

Even as we walked the horses together, my wife refused to let my hand go or lighten the pressure. After I did everything one-handed, and both horses were secured in their stalls, I swept my wife off her feet and brought her home. I set her down on the bed, then shut and locked our bedroom door.

“What are you doing, Mariano?” She popped up like something had stung her on her fine ass.

“We don’t leave this room until whatever is between us is fucking melted. My wife.” I hit my chest. “My wife set a fucking ice wall between us.”

She strangled the fabric of the dress. It seemed as if she was about to say more, but then she turned away from me. “Not now. Not here.” She had mumbled that last part.

I stared at her for a second. She glanced at me from over her shoulder. She took a step back.

“Mariano,” she said.

My name from her mouth was the only reason I responded with a nod. It was automatic, like it had been programmed inside of my brain before I even took a breath on this earth.

She pointed at me. “You have that look on your face. What…what are you doing?” She backed herself against the wall. She set her hands against my chest when I pressed against her, pushing, but it was a light shove.

“That’s what I fucking thought,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not even fighting me.”

“You want me to fight you?” Her hands curled at her sides.

I shrugged. “If you feel the fucking need.”

She pushed against me, but it had no fire behind it. “There.”

I grinned at her, and her eyes grew wide. “Not now . Not here .” I sucked in my bottom lip, rolling my teeth over it. I flung her over my shoulder, her fluffy dress flailing around her.

“Mariano!” She beat against my back, trying to slap my ass. “What?!—where?! Stop! Listen!”

My hand stopped midway to the door handle. I was going to kill fucking Remo Fausti after I took her out of our house and somewhere else.

Another time. Another place.

It took a lot of physical activity to make me sweat, and I was dry as a bone, but my heart was racing like I was up against a giant.

If this was about my wife falling for that fucker, he was a dead man.

“Set me down,” she whispered.

Gently, I did as she said. My hand instinctively went to her arm when she rocked on her feet.

She opened and closed her mouth, then sighed. “What happened between you and Capri?” she blurted.

My head fucking spun. Maybe she was holding on to me in that moment.

I blinked at her, brought her into focus.

When her sister came here…I had set it out of my fucking mind.

I had more pressing issues to contend with.

Like my wife being sequestered in a house that wasn’t ours.

Too much space and time between us. Her family being the people they were to her.

At our reception, which her father had to contractually attend for a while, he told me while slamming down a drink, “She is your problem now.”

I’d grinned at him and felt the relief of it all the way down to the marrow of my bone, the truth of it. “Always was.”

He left after that.

“Your sister,” I repeated.

“Yes!” And it seemed like flames shot out of her mouth. “My sister! She was here, was she not?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. This. This.

This I could handle. My heart could deal with this truth, but it refused to deal with her falling for another man.

A low growl vibrated in my throat, and just the thought of it felt like it was going to send me off that fucking cliff, except, I wouldn’t die.

I’d become inhuman when I touched the ground.

“Ah no!” She shoved at me. “You do not get to make those noises at me!” She growled back. She was speaking in English and Italian. “I am the one who gets to rip your throat out, if what she said to me was the truth!”

“Tell me,” I said easily, though on the inside, lava flowed through me, “what did she tell you. That I fucked her?”

She sucked in a breath. Her eyes narrowed. The hazel color glistened with the soft light in the room, but it was a trick of the light. It was a death stare. Two hands could easily come out of it and go for my heart. I’d allow her to.

“Not in so many words,” she said, and it was the total opposite of what it had been. Wild. She was reigning her temper in. “Why did you take Remo from the palazzo?”

My eyes narrowed against hers.

“Tell me,” I said, rolling my shoulders, “do you care, my wife.”

“I only care about the reason,” she said.

In that moment, lies and truth were warring. My mind and my heart.

“The reason,” I repeated. “Tell me, did you fuck him.”

“Fu—him?” She stumbled over the words and gasped, then her hand came up and slapped me across the face. I turned my cheek to give her the other side. “Fu—him!” she repeated, outraged, like the fire had truly made it to the wick of her temper.

She exploded, reaching for decorations around the room, throwing them at my head. Some of them were breakable. Some not.

“Did you fuck her or not?” she shouted at me, and it was a shout from deep inside of her chest, the kind of yell that could become a battle call.

“Did you fuck him or not?” I repeated her words but twisted them to fit the roles.

“I should have?—”

This time, I was on her, and she couldn’t fight against the strength of my body.

Her back came against the wall, and she went to claw at my face.

I took her wrists in my hands, pinning them against the wall, one on each side of her.

She was shoving with all her might, her hands turned into claws, but she couldn’t move me.

“Let me go !”

“Say it,” I dared her, my voice calm, collected, the exact opposite of hers. “Finish that fucking sentence. Tell me, you should have what, my wife.”

“I should have done the same thing you did to me! Rip your heart out.”

“Tell me,” I said, getting close enough to her for her to bite my lip. It opened the wound from last time, and I was bleeding. Fucking good. We’d mark the occasion. Even if she couldn’t touch my chest in this moment, she was fucking ripping me to shreds. I leaned close to her ear. “With who .”

“I do not have to tell you anything!”

“Ah,” I breathed out. “But you do.”

“Make me!”

“That,” I said, “I can do.”

“Not with your cock,” she snapped at me. “It is too big, and I am not sure if it will hurt the…”

I released her to her feet. She used the wall to balance herself as I turned away, fixing my suit, going toward the door.

“Where are you going?” She sounded panicked.

“You ordered me to make you.” I shrugged. “That’s what I’m fucking doing.”

“No! You do not get the right to start this bool -shit and then walk away!” She ran after me, jumping on my back, like she was a cowgirl at a rodeo, and I was that boool she was trying to fucking wrangle.

“You do not get to make all the rules, Mariano Fausti! You knew I was going to do this. Stop you!”

“Yeah,” I said. “I fucking did.”

“I hate that I cannot let you go!” she cried.

“I hate that I am so dependent on you now! My heart. My soul. My entire body gets… sick without you.” I felt her tears on my neck.

“This is not me. I am not used to this being me.

Oh Dio . I do not understand how I love you so much!

You are right. Love is not even the proper term.

I do not know what this is between us. I do not understand it.

“I was almost to death in the palazzo I was raised in, learned to thrive in, and the minute you walked away from me, I had to fight myself to the floor so I wouldn’t run after you.

What is going on with me? This is not normal!

” She began to sob, but she was still holding onto me.

“How much I love this child of yours already. I love him or her with every fiber of my being, but I do not understand the rush of what exists between us!”

Her tears were fucking destroying me, and even though I sensed more from her, after this was all said and done, I was going to get in the ring with my older brother, allow him to fuck me up in physical ways—ways she could see and feel. My insides turned out.

I kissed her hands, bringing her back to the bed, and was able to pry her around me. She cried into my neck, breathing me in.

“My Annie,” I barely got out.

She sucked up some air and then looked at me, tears welling and falling from her eyes.