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Parting my lips, I accepted the smallest sip of the broth, but tasted nothing but the bitterness of apprehension. He was brutally handsome. And I was going to be his. I licked a drop from my lip. Marco brought the same spoonful to his mouth and finished it.
His hand rested on my thigh. As he held out another spoonful, his fingers slipped into the slit over my thigh. I pressed my legs together.
“I can feed myself,” I grumbled and picked up my spoon. “I’ve been taking care of my needs on my own for a while.”
His palm slid between my thighs. “Taking care of you is my responsibility, my pleasure.” He waited, both with the spoon and the way he grazed his finger along my flesh. “Open.”
I parted my lips, but he waited. The sexual energy spiking between us seemed to drown out the voices, the clink of forks against China, the tinkle of crystal…and any intentions I had of resisting him. Like the moon on the tide, he was pulling me in. Yet, I knew better.
Marco was the dangerous riptide beneath hypnotic waves, impossible to fight, destined to sweep me out to sea, to drown me in his power. My gaze shifted first.
“Allegra. I asked you to open.” The dark timbre of his voice slipped through my veins, and my thighs widened. His fingers inched higher on my leg. Then he stilled. I shivered as every nerve, molecule, and synapse fired. He was stealing the oxygen, and I was sinking into a black hole of unfamiliar emotions.
With one hand, I guided his spoonful of soup to my lips. With the other, I held his wrist between my legs. His gaze hardened, but my self-control softened.
No doubt he recognized his fingers brushed against the knife strapped to my thigh. A shiver slithered along my spine, tightened my lower belly, and zinged into my pussy.
I’d mistakenly believed I’d experienced arousal when I’d touched myself to my memories of him. Nothing before had ever triggered the hard clenching of my core.
Fear of him discovering just how soaked my panties had become kept me from shifting on the chair.
“Any higher and I’ll use it.” My voice came out stronger than I felt.
“Does violence make you wet, topolina?” His lips brushed the shell of my ear as he softly spoke to me. “Are you wet now?” My nipples tightened, and his fingers continued their trek higher. “Tell me or I’ll find out for myself.”
Needing liquid courage, I tipped my wine to my lips and finished it.
“Yes,” I hissed. “Because I’m imagining my knife slowly sinking into your flesh until your warm and thick blood bubbles against my fingers.”
“Don’t tempt me with the sight of blood, even my own.” Marco slid his hand from between my legs, leaned back, adjusted in his chair, and tugged on his trousers. “Or we’ll need to continue this stimulating choice of dinner conversation privately.”
“I’ve heard you live dangerously,” I said. Relief flowed through me. I drew in a breath to quell the rampant beating of my heart.
“Does your sharp tongue get you into trouble?”
I lifted a brow. “What have you been told?”
“Your father praised your virtuous qualities, your submissive nature, and how you’ll make a perfect,demurewife.” He sipped his wine.
“I’m to be a wife who is content to hang on her husband’s arm and keep her opinions to herself.” My voice seemed steady when I felt anything but calm.
“You’re under the false impression those qualities would appeal to me,” he said.
“You’re under the false impression that I care what you want. And since our conversation is causing you visible discomfort, perhaps we shouldn’t speak to each other at all.”
Luckily, I didn’t have to parry another round of arousing retorts. Servers entered with the beef braciole. Marco draped a napkin over his lap, covering the noticeable condition of his cock as a server approached from the left.
I averted my gaze rather than drool at the idea that I was the one setting him off. That he was as affected as I was.
My wine was refilled, and I took a large gulp.
With a sharp knife, Marco sliced into his beef with long, smooth strokes. Dark hair dusted his knuckles. Red diamonds winked from the gold lion’s head ring on his left hand.
I glanced at the ring on my finger as I held my fork. “I want a long engagement.”
Marco stilled at my words. “Impossible.”
I slapped my fork on the table. “There are always choices.” As Knox had reminded me. And I was definitely opting for stupid decisions because I was negotiating with the one they called The Enforcer. “Two weeks isn’t long enough to decide if we want this marriage.”
