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After subsisting on nothing except a handful of hors d’oeuvres and champagne all day, it was finally rebelling.
I groaned again.
It was technically too late to eat, but…
What the hell.I couldn’t sleep anyway.
After a moment’s hesitation, I tossed my covers off and tiptoed out of my room and down the hall.
I hadn’t had a midnight snack in years, but I was suddenly craving an old favorite food combo.
I flipped on the kitchen lights, opened the fridge, and scanned the contents until I located a jar of sliced pickles and a bowl of chocolate pudding on the bottom shelf.
A-ha!
I set my bounty on the kitchen island before I hunted for the last ingredient.
Dried pasta, condiments, cookies, seaweed crisps…I opened and closed the endless row of cabinets, searching for a distinctive cardboard tube.
The cabinets were so high I had to stand on tiptoes to see into the back, and my arms and thighs were starting to ache. Why did Dante have so much storage space? Who needed an entire cabinet ofcooking oils?
If I didn’t—
“What are you doing?”
I jumped and stifled a scream at the unexpected voice. My hip banged against the counter when I whipped around, sparking a jolt of pain whose reverberations matched the suddenly frantic beats of my heart.
Dante stood in the doorway, his gaze bemused as it traveled between me and the open cabinet.
For once, he wasn’t wearing a suit and tie. Instead, a white T-shirt stretched across his shoulders, emphasizing the sculpted planes of his muscles and the deep bronze of his skin. Black sweatpants hung just low enough to elicit dirty thoughts before I quashed them.
“You scared me.” My voice came out breathier than intended. “What are you doing up?”
It was a stupid question. Obviously, he was up for the same reason I was, but I couldn’t think straight through the fog of adrenaline.
“Couldn’t sleep.” The rough drawl drifted toward me and settled low between my legs. “Guess I’m not the only one.”
His eyes held mine for a brief moment before they flicked over me.
A sense of deja vu spilled down the length of my spine, but unlike at our first meeting, I detected a crack in Dante’s indifference.
It was tiny, just a shadow of a flame, but it was enough to fill my stomach with flutters.
His perusal paused at my midsection. The shadow expanded, darkening his eyes from rich brown to near obsidian.
I looked down, and my heart stumbled when I saw what caught his attention.
I slept hot, so I usually wore some variation of a silk camisole and boy shorts to bed. It was fine for the privacy of my bedroom but completely inappropriate when faced with company.
The shorts stopped an inch above mid-thigh, and my top had ridden up sometime during my cabinet foraging, revealing a generous expanse of bare skin.
When I looked up again, Dante’s gaze had returned to my face.
I held still, afraid to breathe as he moved toward me with the languid, powerful grace of a predator stalking its prey.
Every soft footfall was another lit flame in the space between us.
He stopped when his body heat enveloped mine. Inches away, so close I could count the individual stubble shadowing his jaw. “What are you looking for?”
