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This ended here and now. Edie needed to protect herself against guys like Alexi Galanti. She was too innocent and naïve—what the hell had I been thinking, giving her a job that would expose her to bastards like him? And then left her alone. She needed my protection, now more than ever. Even if we weren’t together, I had a responsibility to keep her safe.
As I approached, Edie’s head swung round as if she had sensed my approach. The deep emerald gaze which had always captivated me locked with mine. My stride faltered, the jolt of awareness hitting me like a bolt of lightning as our eyes met.
‘Dante?’ Her lips slicked with gloss whispered my name—and I heard it in my soul.
‘Galanti, you’re banned,’ I snarled at Alexi without taking my gaze off Edie.
I shoved him aside, grasped Edie’s arm and carried on walking, marching her towards the security booth at the back of the casino. Her skin felt so soft, so fragile beneath my fingertips. Her biceps tensed and I loosened my fingers, scared to hurt her, but kept my grip firm, knowing I never wanted to let her go.
Alexi shouted something after us—mocking or annoyed—I couldn’t tell because of the blood rushing in my ears. But I didn’t care because all I could see was Edie, and all I could feel was the surge of heat shooting up my arm and the rage threatening to blow the top of my head off.
‘Why are you here?’ she said, confused, wary, wounded, but she didn’t resist me as I dragged her into the booth. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
‘We need to talk,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice firm and even. ‘Everyone out,’ I shouted at the three guys in the booth.
The security personnel scurried out, leaving us alone as I forced myself to release her arm and kicked the door shut. The blue light from the monitors illuminated her face. How could I have forgotten how exquisite she was? With her hair gathered in some kind of up-do, the tendrils caressed her neck. Her full breasts rose and fell in staggered rhythm against the revealing bodice of that excuse for a gown. The desire to bury my face against her neck and breathe in her fresh, sultry scent, to lick her collarbone and gather her taste on my tongue, to tear off her gown so I could free those ripe orbs, capture her nipples in my teeth and...
Focus, Dante. Dio!
I shook my head, trying to clear the erotic fog that descended whenever I was near her. I wasn’t here to slake my own hunger. I was here to protect her from guys like Alexi Galanti... And myself.
‘Are you sleeping with him?’ I asked, the words coming out on a hoarse rasp of breath as a sense of loss and injustice wrapped around my heart. I’d given her up to save her from me. And she’d immediately been seduced by a man who was just as jaded and cynical as I was. If not more so.
I should have come to check up on her in person a lot sooner. I’d given her this position to keep her safe, to keep her secure, to keep an eye on her. And then I’d stayed away from her. What a damn fool I’d been.
But I was here now, and I wasn’t leaving again until she understood I would do whatever I had to do to protect her. Even if it meant protecting her from her own naiveté.
‘Because he’s not worthy of you, bella,’ I added. ‘Any more than I am.’
She was staring at me, her face flaming with the delectable blush which marked out her innocence. She might think she was experienced, worldly, because of what we’d shared, but she wasn’t. She was far too gullible, too innocent, too idealistic to ever understand the way men’s minds worked.
‘Answer me, bella,’ I said, steeling myself against her answer as I cupped her cheek. She jerked away from my touch and the knife twisted in my gut. ‘Are you sleeping with Alexi?’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘WHY DO YOU want to know that?’ I whispered at the man in front of me as emotions I’d struggled to keep in check for weeks threatened to destroy me all over again.
The giddy rush of love I still couldn’t control had risen up as soon as I’d spotted him striding towards me—even in black jeans and a dark polo shirt he had looked indomitable, overwhelming, as the casino patrons in tuxedos and evening gowns scattered to let him pass—but right behind that rush of love had been the shattering pain he’d caused.
I clasped my arms around my waist, trying to hold in the violent trembling as conflicting emotions swelled and surged inside me. Shock, panic, confusion, desire, love, longing, but most of all the deep, dark well of hurt that had dogged me ever since the last time I’d seen him.
I stared at him now, trying to understand. But he looked like a madman—his breathing ragged, his chest heaving, his eyes wild with something I didn’t understand.
And while a million questions swirled in my head, about what he was doing here, why he was behaving like this and wh
at any of it had to do with Mr Galanti, the only one I could grasp was one I had asked myself a thousand times since the last time I’d seen him.
How could he look at me with such longing when he had discarded me so easily? It had taken me three weeks to convince myself it hadn’t been my fault. I shouldn’t have spoken to him about his mother, I could see that, but I hadn’t meant to upset him. Maybe what I’d said had been misguided, inappropriate, but it had come from a place of love.
‘I need to know if Alexi has seduced you?’ he said, his voice surprisingly firm for someone who appeared to be talking in tongues. ‘Because if he has I’m going to kill him.’
‘Stop it,’ I hissed, my lungs tight with all those conflicting emotions now. ‘Stop asking me about Mr Galanti—are you mad?’
‘Mr Galanti? Not Alexi. Grazie a Dio.’ He let out a relieved chuckle, the self-satisfied slash of white in his tanned face making him look like a marauding pirate to my confused mind. ‘So you haven’t slept with him.’
His blue eyes lit with determination and danger as he lifted his hand and touched his thumb to the rampaging pulse in my collarbone.
‘This is good news, bella. I am proud of you.’
