Page 48 of My Dark Fairy Tale
I knew what his answer would be.
He would have dropped me off at a hospital or a police station after hitting me with his car if there hadn’t been something about me that spoke to him in a different language than he was used to.
Raffa sensed my playfulness, eyes flashing as they caught the sunlight before dipping down so he could tip my chin and bite at it. “Angry? No. You would have to do much worse to win my temper.”
I made a noise in my throat that sounded to both of us like disappointment.
Understanding flickered in his expression as he collected my hands and pulled them behind my back, collaring them in one of his so that my back was arched. My balance was entirely dependent on him anchoring my front and providing a counterweight at my wrists. It was erotic, a makeshift bondage.
My lids felt heavy, and my heart thrummed too quick in my chest, heating my blood to a low simmer.
“You do not want my rage,piccola, but you want something like it?” he asked low, speaking the words directly into my ear before nipping my lobe with his teeth. “Do not worry. I will teach you the words in any language for what makes your blood hum,d’accordo?”
“How can you know the words I need when I can’t even speak them?” I asked, bitterness on my tongue. My naivete felt more constricting than his hand around my wrists.
“I will know,” he promised, running the bridge of his nose down my chin and along my jaw until his mouth hovered over mine. “As I know now that you want me to kiss you the way I might bite into a plum. All tongue and teeth. Devouring.”
Instead of replying with words, I leveraged his hold on my hands to tip my face forward to claim his lips for myself. His chuckle tickled my mouth a moment before he slanted his head and did as he promised.
Devoured.
None of the gentle exploration from the Bugatti. Only an attack of ownership. Tongue behind my teeth, plundering, seeking new corners yet undiscovered.
I surrendered myself to the kiss, to his hold, and felt like I existed only in the frame of his body, pinned against his mouth. There was a freedom in it that soared through me along with pleasure.
When he’d finally had his fill, he broke away to look down into my face, studying me to catalog the effect he’d had on me.
“Wow,” I said, a little shell shocked.
I was rewarded with a full smile, completely unguarded, almost as if I’d surprised him into an honest expression.
“Che bello,” he agreed. “Now, as much as I wish I could kiss you in this garden for the rest of the day, I think you mentioned wanting to see how a vineyard works?”
I laughed, and it came from my belly. “I did.”
His smile had narrowed, softened, but it was still there, and when he pulled me toward the main building again, he did it holding my hand.
Chapter Ten
Raffa
How do you shield yourself from sunlight?
Even when you wear a hat, glasses, sunscreen, you can still feel its warmth beneath your clothes, taste its humidity on your tongue, see the bright cast of its light through your lenses.
How do you defend yourself against the kind of sunlight that leaked from Guinevere Stone’s every pore?
I realized it would be difficult when she smiled at me in that red dress. Knew it was dangerous exposure when I danced with her at the trattoria. Surrendered to it completely when she parted her slim thighs, trusting me to teach her to know a completely new part of herself without any hesitation, as if I deserved that faith.
Wondered if I might kill and die for another taste of her as soon as we kissed.
Ero fottuto.
I was fucked.
It was just lust, and maybe an inkling of admiration, but the kind I had never experienced before. I wanted to drag her into the bushes and fuck her against a linden tree. I wanted to paint a necklace of bruises around her throat like a collar so that everyone would know she was taken.
The civilized man I’d tried to become before my father died seemed to be crumbling into primitive urges under the regard of those beautiful doe eyes.
