He studies me for a beat too long, and for one awful moment I think he’s going to push or ask or, heaven forbid, notice.
Instead, he inclines his head slightly. “Fine.”
The relief that floods me is so sudden I nearly sway with it.
“We’ll buy you something else,” he says.
I blink. “You’re taking me shopping?”
“I’m taking you somewhere you can stop looking at me like I committed a crime by having taste.”
“You committed several crimes. Your taste is lower on the list.”
That earns a genuine laugh, and this time it catches me off guard enough that I almost smile back but then I remember Dante, and I shake my head.
The kitchen grows quiet again, but it’s a different kind of quiet now—less sharp, more dangerous. The kind that remembers what happened in the dark and wonders what might happen in daylight if either of us gets careless.
Lorenzo lifts his cup. “Ten minutes.”
I pick up my juice and stare him dead in the eye. “You are not the boss of me.”
“No,” he says, and there’s something disturbingly intimate in the way he says it. “But you’ll still be ready in ten.”
I hate that he’s probably right. I hate more that as I turn toward the bedroom, I can still feel his gaze on me—heavy, hungry, and patient. Like whatever happened last night is nowhere near over. And the worst part is that the ache inside me agrees.
He takes me shopping that afternoon.
I tell myself I’m only going because the alternatives are worse: wearing his clothes, wearing nothing appropriate, orstaying in that townhouse all day while the walls close in around me and every room remember the sounds I made for him last night.
Still, the second the car pulls up in front of a quiet, expensive boutique tucked along a polished London street, I turn to glare at him.
“This is humiliating.”
Lorenzo barely glances up from the phone in his hand. “For you or for me?”
“For me.”
“Then we agree.”
I hate that answer.
I hate more that he looks entirely at home here—dark coat, black sweater, composed face, the kind of dangerous elegance that makes people move without being asked. The saleswomen inside go instantly alert when we walk in. They know money when it walks through the door. They also know power. That knowledge skitters across the room the second Lorenzo steps in behind me.
“I don’t need your help,” I tell him.
“No one said you did.”
“That sounded like you were going to say it.”
His mouth shifts. “I was thinking it.”
One of the women approaches with a smile bright enough to be practiced. “Can I help you find anything?”
“Yes,” Lorenzo says before I can speak. “Something that doesn’t make her look like she’s more at home on the streets than at my side.”
I turn on him. “I am right here.”
“I’m aware.”
