The guard’s gaze hits the floor so fast his chin nearly strikes his chest.
Dante holds the silence a beat longer than necessary. Letting it scar.
Then he turns back to me, and the darkness in his expression shifts to something hungrier. His nostrils flare.
“That one too.” The words come clipped. Controlled. “Next.”
The third dress is red. The fourth is midnight blue with a slit up the thigh. The fifth is champagne-colored and backless, held up by two thin straps and faith.
Each time I emerge, he devours me. Each time, the tension in his body ratchets tighter. He hasn’t moved from that chair, but I can see the force of his stillness in the rigid line of his shoulders, the white-knuckle grip on the armrests.
And mine ratchets right along with it.
“One more,” Marguerite says, guiding me back to the fitting room. “I saved the best for last.”
The dress is burgundy. Deep, rich, the color of wine at midnight. It’s cut like sin itself. Sweetheart neckline that frames my breasts like an offering, fitted waist that makes my hips look obscene, skirt that falls in a cascade of fabric that manages to reveal and conceal at once.
I stare at myself in the mirror.
My shoulders pull back. My chin lifts. The woman in the mirror stands like she belongs here, and my body believes it before my mind catches up.
I walk out.
Dante rises from the chair.
“Cazzo.”
The word escapes him. Involuntary. Wrecked.
He crosses the distance between us in three strides, and then he’s right there, so close I can smell his cologne, so close I can feel the heat coming off him.
“This one.” His voice fractures on the words. Low. Raw. “Wear this one tonight.”
“Tonight?”
His knuckles brush my jaw, tilting my face toward his. His thumb traces my lower lip, and my pulse stops.
Everything else has vanished. The dresses. My heartbeats. Anything that isn’t him.
“We’re done here.” He’s not looking at the saleswoman when he says it. He’s looking at me. Only at me. “Have everything sent to the compound.”
Then his touch falls away and he’s striding toward the exit, leaving me standing there in burgundy silk with my heart pounding against my ribs.
Marguerite appears at my elbow. “Well,” she says, a knowing curve to her smile. “That was memorable.”
I don’t trust my voice to answer.
The ride home is silent.
He sits beside me in the back of the SUV. My throat is tight. My skin prickling. Neither of us speaks. Neither of us needs to.
His palm lands on my thigh.
High. Higher than propriety allows.
Warm through the thin fabric of my dress, curving around the inside of my leg. I should remember what this is. I should remember the arrangement, the contract, the reasons this is dangerous.
I don’t move.
