AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘But,’ I say, a smile tickling my lips, ‘I was annoyed with my mother.’
He laughs, a low rumble. ‘Your mother? Are you saying I have your mother to thank for that delightfully provocative display?’
‘Well, yes, but I wouldn’t suggest you actually thank her because she’s old-fashioned and she’d certainly blacklist you.’
He laughs again. ‘Duly noted.’ His fingers curve around to my back and he brings his body closer, over the small gap in the mattress, so that our faces are only inches apart.
‘Why were you annoyed at her?’
I can hardly think straight. I just want to stare into his eyes and be lost in their depths.
‘Pietro,’ I say with a small shake of my head, dismissing him from the conversation. ‘She was pressuring me to go to a lunch he’d be at, and I was fed up. Fed up with my private life being open for my family’s discussion, fed up with this constant hope that I’ll end up with him.’ Now it’s my turn to touch. I lift my palm to his chest, running my fingertips over another tattoo. ‘I was fantasising about you, knowing I’d never act on it, and then something snapped and all I wanted was to give in to what I needed, what I wanted. I didn’t want to fall in with everyone’s expectations.’ I wait for my words to sink in. ‘Is that crazy?’
‘No.’ The word is gravelled.
‘It sounds ungrateful,’ I correct. ‘And it is. My parents are amazing people. But I’m just...stifled...by their expectations sometimes.’
‘You’ve always done what they wished,’ he says, scanning my face as if intuiting my behaviour from my features. ‘And you wanted to break the rules, just once.’
I feel heat spread through my cheeks. ‘Yep.’
‘So I’m your uprising?’ He waggles his brows and I laugh.
‘Quite literally.’
‘I can deal with that.’ He kisses the tip of my nose. My heart squishes.
His eyes scan my face some more, and I feel more naked than I am. I feel like he’s about to ask me something else, but there’s a knock on the door and then, ‘Room service.’
He kisses me on the forehead and stands, pulling on some boxers as he strides through the suite. I watch him unashamedly, sheet tucked around me, heart, I fear, well and truly on my sleeve.
It’s been two weeks since the night in the hotel when he decoded the tattoo that scrawls across his flesh, inking out his secrets in ways that I am still unravelling.
For more than two weeks I have had his Celtic words tumbling through my mind, enchanting me and making me wonder at the forces that drive him. Is the tattoo not all the admission I have been needing—without even realising I did need it—that he wants to underscore his every point of difference to the elements he protects?
He isn’t like them. His chest told me so.
It’s been two weeks since I have been thinking about this.
We have met at the hotel six times in two weeks, been to his place once and my place once.
And now it’s a Friday night and, for the first time, we’re going out.
There is risk in this date.
A risk that makes my fingers tremble as they run over the silk of my dress, the slip a barely-there sheath, black, with spaghetti straps. It stops a couple of inches above my knees and I knew, as soon as I saw it, that it would drive Connor wild. I’ve teamed it with a killer pair of black stilettos. My hair is long down my back and I’ve put on an extra coat of mascara and lip gloss.
This is our first date, after all.
He’s chosen a wine bar in the West End. It’s far from all of our usual places. Far enough from university, far enough from my flat, his penthouse, from anyone we know. And, as if we needed any additional cover, it’s a members-only club, so I have to say my name when I reach the door.
A beautiful woman in a white blouse and jeans skims her eyes down a clipboard, not a hint of officiousness in her diligent checking off, and then she smiles brightly.
‘This way, Miss Amorelli.’
I love that he’s used my full name.
‘Your party isn’t here yet, but a booth at the back has been requested.’
