Dio! You’re not even making sense to yourself.
“I talked to him just the way I talk to any colleague.”
“You don’t flirt with Matteo,” I blurt out, before I can stop myself.
Her eyebrows lift. “Matteo is old enough to be my father.”
“And Renzo isn’t?”
What the fuck are you doing, Nico?
Confusion shadows her expression. “What’s this about?”
I have no fucking clue!
“It’s just…you’re my wife, and it’s unseemly for you to be flirting with my…ah, friend.”
She sets the clipboard down with deliberate care. “What’s unseemly is you deciding what my behavior means when you don’t know anything about me because you haven’t been here.”
I take a step toward her. “I’m here now.”
“Isn’t that nice for you?” There’s anger in her tone as she moves closer. “And I didn’t flirt with Renzo. I spoke to him. The way adults do.”
I move. There’s only a step between us. “I didn’t like it.”
She doesn’t retreat. “Why?”
The cellar hums around us. Barrels creak faintly as the temperature shifts.
“Because,” I force out, my voice low, “it made me realize how easily someone else could see you. How easily I could lose ground I haven’t even earned.”
She gasps. “You’re jealous?”
“Yes.”
She blinks, shocked, and then her lips set mutinously. “You don’t get to be jealous, not after what you’ve put me through.”
“I know,” I agree. “That doesn’t make it go away.”
For a moment, we stand still—too close now, the space between us charged and fragile.
I want her. Desperately. I’ve never wanted a woman more.
She sees it. “This is a bad idea,” she murmurs.
“Yes,” I confess as I pull her to me, a hand on her waist, the other in her hair.
I kiss her.
It’s not the careful acknowledgment of obligation from our wedding. Nor the soft touch of last night.
This kiss is devastating in its intensity.
Her hands come up, grip my shirt as if she needs the balance.
I hear the soft whimper she tries to swallow, the way her body curves into mine like she’s made for me.
I deepen the kiss—slow, thorough, reverent.
