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He pauses halfway out the door, his back to me. Slowly, his head swivels, and those piercing blue eyes bore right into me.
“What we do in the shadows of the past rarely looks the same in the light of the present.”
Then he’s gone.
20
TEMPEST
A week and a half later,my first “outing” as Dante’s wife is not, in fact, the disaster I thought it would be.
It’stwicethe disaster I thought it would be.
In my defense, my mental fog was especially bad that evening. Also, cigar lounges aregross, and Dante’s three “potential investors” were piggish older douches who were all but straight up asking Dante if investing in Venom directly equaled free sexual favors from “the girls”. And that was right in front of their wives, which I’d feel badly about if they weren’t just as gross as their husbands.
“I’m not doing that again.”
I make a face as I sniff, still smelling the overwhelmingly stinky scent of cigar smoke on my skin.
“Yeah, but, the thing is,” Dante mutters, walking past me and flicking on one of the lights in the penthouse living room, “you are.”
“No fucking way. That was terrible.”
He turns to level a look at me. “Well, it might have helped to bepresentat the table.”
There’s a chance I snuck off to the bathroom a few times during dinner. Okay, ten times. Not because of any medical issue, I just couldn’t stand to sit there pretending I couldn’t hear the men’s awful conversation while simultaneously pretending I gave a shit about the Kardashians andThe Real Housewives of Duluthor whatever the hell the wives were talking about.
“I wasthere,” I mutter back at him as he shrugs off his jacket. “I never said I’d be the life of the party. And those women wereawful. One of them sent her entree back three fucking times. I mean tell me that’s not just a shitty power play.”
Dante frowns. “Who cares if it is?”
“I do! And another of them asked me if I had cocaine on me as casually as if she was asking me the fucking time!” I scowl. “I mean, are you kidding me?”
Dante folds his arms over his chest, leaning against the banister at the bottom of the curved steps that lead up to the second floor.
“Did you?”
I stare at him. “Excuse me?”
“Did you have coke on you?”
“What? Why the hell would you think I have cocaine?”
“Gee, I dunno, Tempest,” he growls, his brow furrowing and his jaw clenching in a way that iswaytoo hot. “Maybe it’s the fact that you literally had zero bites of dinner, went to the bathroom a thousand times, and were talking a mile a minute when you did deign to join the conversation.”
I glare at him. “I wasn’t hungry. The cigar smoke killed my appetite. And I was nervous. I babble when I’m nervous.”
“Do you need to see a doctor about your bathroom usage?”
I roll my eyes. “I wasescaping. Chill.”
He shoots me a look before he starts to take off his shirt.
“Ummm, what are you doing?” I blurt, my face flushing a little as he shrugs off the white linen, giving me an eyeful of his firm chest, chiseled abs, and those goddamn v-lines delving into the waist of his pants.
“I have to change and then get to Venom for a thing, but I’m showering first.” His brow arches, a smirk creeping over his lips. “Care to join me?”
I know it’s not a real invitation. He’s saying it to ruffle my feathers, to see if I’ll pathetically say yes.
