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Elio stares at me for a long moment. Then, he turns back to the cake, lifts the cake server, and plunges it into the top tier. He does it again, creating a huge slice, then puts that slice on a plate and holds it out to me.
“Why don’t you think anyone else has cut into this, yet?” he asks. I stare at the slice of cake. Red velvet. “Just who, exactly, do you think this cake is for?”
“For… for the event. I thought Valentina was going to do something with it, or…”
My brows wrinkle inward as I notice something on the piece Elio holds out to me. Thinly piped blue frosting, a tiny slice of a letter.
I crane my neck to see the top of the highest tier, my eyes dragging over words I hadn’t noticed before.
Happy birthday Songbird.
“It’s a birthday cake,” I say, stunned. It’s a pointless observation. He obviously knows what it is. It’s spelled out on the fluffy surface. “How does Valentina know today’s my birthday?”
“She doesn’t.”
My throat tightens. The only one who’s mentioned my birthday in the past twenty-four hours is…
Elio.
“You did this?” I turn back to him, finding him still holding the plate out to me, his eyes boring into my face. His stance, holding up the plate, makes his suit jacket gape ever so slightly. It shifts the white pocket square, revealing an edge of lace that looks oddly familiar.
My breath explodes out of me.
“Your pocket square!” I hiss, my body alight with confused embarrassment. “That’s my… my…”
I can’t get the words out. But I know exactly what I’m looking at now. Carefully folded and lovingly tucked into Elio’s luxurious, expensive pocket is my fucking underwear. The panties I was wearing the night he took me.
A smirk tugs at his mouth, the scarring along the left side of his jaw making the expression crooked.
“Probably a good thing I’ve got an extra pair on me, considering you seem to have forgotten yours,” he drawls. “Maybe I should pull them out right now, unfold them, and slide them up your legs. Although, they haven’t been washed.”
“Haven’t been washed,” I echo in astonishment, shaking my head back and forth so hard it makes my brain feel like it’s colliding with my skull. He’s not just using my panties as his pocket square at a very fancy, very public event, but he’s using my dirty panties. “Why… What the hell?” I stammer. “Why wouldn’t you at least wash them?”
It’s an absurd question. Like I’m trying to tease some sort of rationality out of completely unreasonable behaviour. Oh, yes, panties as a pocket square. That makes sense, as long as they’re clean!
Not.
Elio’s smirk extends to a grin.
“Now why would I do that?” he asks, his voice like silk and smoke. He takes in a deep breath through his nose, filling his chest, then lets it out with a satisfied ahh sound. Like he’s just taken in a lungful of pristinely fresh air on a mountainside hike. “Don’t need cologne when I can smell like Songbird instead.”
Oh my fucking God.
I absorb his words, still shaking my head in disbelief. My disbelief only deepens when I remember the scent of his cologne on him from dancing earlier, and I realize he just made a joke.
Elio Titone, a man with more blood on his hands than a butcher, has a sense of humour.
For some reason, that’s even more disconcerting than his violence.
This is too much. I’m overcome with the almost feral need to get my panties back. To lay claim to them, because they’re fucking mine. My hand snaps upward to tear them out of Elio’s pocket, but he’s faster. He blocks me with the plate, and my hand sinks into buttercream and dense red velvet, coating my fingers in sticky softness.
“Shit,” I mutter, pulling my hand back and staring at the mess.
“Lick it off.”
“What? No!”
He sets down the plate then grips my wrist.
