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CHAPTER NINE
MINERVAFELTLIKEshe had come down with a terrible fever. She was hot all over, shaking, and her stomach felt like it was tossing and turning.
He was kissing her.
And it was different than the kiss that had happened at the engagement party. Different than the kiss at their wedding.
It was different than anything.
And she feared that she might be too. That somehow, between the revelations of last night, and this moment when his mouth had met hers, and all the in-between—those moments when he had made such a rational case for her being his wife permanently, and she had created a web of justification inside herself and pulled each gossamer strand tight, hoping that it would act as a safety net when she inevitably fell.
And fall she was doing.
Hard. Fast.
Into this deep, dark sensual kiss that kicked against her and made a mockery of what she had thought the day of their engagement party.
That she had thought it was in a kiss. Not a real kiss. For, a real kiss was supposed to make her feel light and airy, was supposed to fill her with joy.
But the feelings that she had for Dante were so much more complicated than that. A series of complications, in fact. That could never be so simple as a fantasy realized. Would that they could be. No, it was nothing like she had imagined because, of course, she hadn’t taken into account that kissing involved another person.
Which meant that the movements were not all hers. Which meant that she wasn’t in charge of how firm it was, of how deep it was.
And because there was another person involved, it was physical.
He was in a misty vapor of her fantasies the way that it all materialized in her head when she was reading about a handsome heroic character that she might want to dream about.
Because Dante was real. Mortal. A man in the flesh, with hot skin and a pounding heart. With hard muscles and hard...
He pressed his hand to her lower back and drew her up against him. Hard.
Yes. All of him was hard.
He desired her. Whether or not it was because he was a man and he could desire whatever he chose at a given moment, or because he desired her specifically, she didn’t know. But he did.
And that was... Intense and heady and frightening.
She also wanted to lean into it as much as she wanted to run from it. More than anything in the entire world. Why was nothing about this simple? Why wasn’t it easy? Why did it feel world-ending and wonderful all at once?
When they parted, she knew.
She looked into his dark gaze and she knew that it was him.
Dante.
And she had no idea how she had come to be the one kissing him.
She, Minerva, who was nothing.
Not by comparison of her exceptional family. And certainly not in comparison with him.
She had done one vaguely heroic thing in her life, and that was take care of Isabella.
But then, she had to wonder if it was heroic at all, or if she had just been reacting.
Because what could you do when there was a little girl vulnerable and alone in the world, her mother was dead and the police were declining to investigate.
She could have allowed Isabella to go into foster care in Italy, but that would have only made her vulnerable to Carlo.
