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So chummy. So pleased with himself.
“I think not,” Benedetto said, decisively, even as the older daughters started to push back their chairs.
At the head of the table, Anthony froze.
Benedetto turned toward Angelina, who tensed—almost as if she knew what he was about to say. “I wish to hear you play the piano,” he said.
And when no one moved, when they all gazed back at him in varying degrees of astonishment, outright panic, and pure dislike, he smiled.
In the way he knew made those around him...shudder.
Angelina stared back at him in something that was not quite horror. “I beg your pardon?”
Benedetto smiled wider. “Now, please.”
CHAPTER THREE
“ALONE,”ADDEDTHETERRIBLE, notorious man when Angelina’s whole family made as if to rise.
He smiled all the while, in a manner that reminded Angelina of nothing so much as the legends she’d heard all her life about men who turned into wolves when the moon was high. She was tempted to run to the windows and see what shape the moon took tonight, though she did not dare.
And more, could not quite bring herself to look away from him.
Angelina had not been prepared for this. For him.
It was one thing to look at photographs. But there was only so much raw magnetism a person could see on the screen.
Because in person, Benedetto Franceschi was not merely beautiful or sinful, though he was both.
In person, he was volcanic.
Danger simmered around him, charging the air, making Angelina’s body react in ways she’d thought only extremes of temperatures could cause. Her chest felt tight, hollow and too full at once, and she found it almost impossible to take a full breath.
When he’d singled her out for conversation she’d responded from her gut, not her head. And knew she’d handled it all wrong, but only because of her mother’s reaction. The truth was, her head had gone liquid and light and she’d had no earthly idea what had come out of her mouth.
Nothing good, if the pinched expression on Margrete’s face was any guide.
Still, disobedience now did not occur to her. Not because she feared her parents, though she supposed that on some level, she must. Or why would she subject herself to this? Why would she still be here? But she wasn’t thinking of them now.
Angelina wasn’t thinking at all, because Benedetto’s dark, devil’s gaze was upon her, wicked and insinuating. A dare and an invitation and her own body seemed to have turned against her.
He wanted to hear her play.
But a darker, less palatable truth was that she wanted to play for him.
She told herself it was only that she wanted an audience. Any audience. Yet the dark fire of his gaze worked its way through her and she knew she wasn’t being entirely honest. The yearning for an audience, instead of the family members who ignored her, wasn’t why her pulse was making such a racket, and it certainly wasn’t why she could feel sensation hum deep within her.
She could hardly breathe and yet she stood. Worse, she knew that shewantedto stand. Then she turned, leading him out of the dining chamber, careful not to catch her sisters’ eyes or sneak a glance at her worryingly, thunderously quiet father on her way out.
Angelina tried to steel herself against him as she moved through the murky depths of the house, certain that he would try to speak to her the moment they were alone. Charm her into unwariness or attempt to disarm her with casual conversation.
But instead, he walked in silence.
And that was much, much worse.
She was so aware of him it made her bones ache. And it took only a few steps to understand that her awareness of him was not based on fear. Her breasts and her belly were tight, and grew tighter the farther away they moved from the dining room. Deep between her legs she felt swollen, pulsing in time with her heart as it beat and beat.
Helpless. Hopeless.
