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As though he’s reading my mind, he laughs softly.
“What?” I squeeze my thighs together beneath the table.
“I love the way you blush whenever I compliment you, kitten.”
I look down at the table as my blush deepens further. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s adorable.”
I swallow as I allow my gaze to drift back to his. The way he’s still looking at me is doing nothing to lessen the heat in my cheeks or between my thighs. Thankfully, Sophia walks into the dining room carrying a huge dish of lasagna and breaks the spell he has me under.
* * *
Placingmy hands on my stomach, I groan softly. “I think I ate too much.”
“You barely ate any of the cheesecake,” Dante replies as he watches me from across the table.
“Because it’s bigger than my head. You should have had a slice.”
“I don’t eat sweet things,” he replies with a wicked grin. “Well, apart from you, kitten.”
I blush at his words. We’ve managed to have a very polite, bordering on pleasant, dinner, without any talk of sex or the other massive elephant in the room — our upcoming wedding.
“You just had to go there, didn’t you?” I whisper, placing my cool hand on my flushed cheek.
“I can’t help going there with you,” he says, his tone low and serious now. It makes goosebumps prickle over my forearms and my insides turn to liquid. I’m such a slave to my hormones around him, especially now that I’m pregnant. It’s as though my body is hardwired to his in some way.
I fidget with a stray thread on the sleeve of my cardigan because suddenly the air is thick with tension again, supercharged with electricity and sex. He pushes back his chair and walks to my side of the table. I expect him to pick me up and throw me onto the dining table, because that is how our encounters like this seem to end. But instead, he drops to his knees.
When he produces a beautiful emerald ring, I almost pass out. He holds it between his thumb and forefinger and the deep green gemstone sparkles in the candlelight.
“Will you marry me, Kat?”
Instead of answering, I sit here like an idiot blinking at him.
“Maybe I should have done this before,” he says with a sigh.
“It wouldn’t change the reason why you’re asking me though,” I remind him, my voice barely a whisper.
He rubs a hand over my gently rounded stomach before taking hold of my hand in his, lacing his fingers through mine. “Weare in this together, Kat. Me and you. My father can go to hell for all I care. The Moretti name is an empire built on a century-strong foundation of blood and tradition. It’s my legacy. Everything I have and everything I am is saturated in the misery of others and the perpetuation of outdated traditions. This house, and everything in it, was built and bought with blood-soaked money,” he says, rubbing the pad of his thumb over my knuckles as he stares into my eyes.
“Everything in my life has been given to me because of who I am. Everything except you, kitten. You are the only thing in my life that I have ever truly chosen for myself. So yes, I want to marry you because I want to honor my family and my mother’s memory, but I also want you to stand by my side until the end of days.”
I swallow the swell of emotion that surges all the way from the pit of my stomach to my chest. This is the first time I have ever seen even a hint of anything resembling vulnerability in him. He’s trying, right? Fighting against his true nature to give me something of what I need from him. And shouldn’t that count for something? Because the truth is, I feel more cherished in his darkness than I have ever have in anyone else’s light. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
The thick vein pulses in his neck before he looks up at me again with dark eyes full of fire.
He slides the flawless stone onto my finger. “It’s beautiful,” I tell him.
“It was my great grandmother’s.”
“Really?” Suddenly, this moment feels even more intense than before.
“She believed it had magic powers,” he says with a wry smile.
“Good magic, right?”
“The best,” he replies before giving me a soft kiss on the lips.
