Page 53 of My Dark Fairy Tale
Chapter Eleven
Guinevere
I was worried the intimacy of our day would falter after we discovered someone was effectively stealing from the winery and had an awkward run-in with his sister and best friend, but Raffa proved me wonderfully wrong. If anything, he seemed filled with intent, his attention keen eyed as he showed me thefattoria’s well-organized cellar suffused with the sweet musk of aging wine and barrel wood. Imelda had made herself scarce after setting up the wine-tasting table for us, and Raffa himself seemed determined to be my sommelier.
“I am beginning to think you have a kink for teaching me,” I teased him as he poured a splash of Chianti Classico into my glass after explaining the specifics of its bouquet to me.
“Maybe,” he admitted, watching with dark eyes as I placed my nose at the top of the glass to breathe in the scents and then breathed in again through my mouth before taking a sip that I aerated with my teeth. “It seems in this I do not have to.”
I laughed and admitted, “My father is Italian, remember? He taught my sister and me about wine well before we could drink it.”
Gemma had loved the science of viticulture and was studying to be a sommelier herself. One of the reasons she had decided to live abroad in Albania for a year was to study in one of the oldest wine-makingregions in the world. It made me feel close to her, tasting wine in an Italian cellar, knowing she would have loved it like I did.
“More evidence that we do not know each other very well,” he chided with a cluck of his tongue as he leaned against the table across from me. “You have not spoken much of your own sister.”
“She died,” I confessed softly, staring into the garnet liquid so he wouldn’t see the agony in my face. “Last year. It was a really rare form of heart attack. She was living abroad when it happened, and we just ... weren’t expecting it. Of the two of us, it always seemed more likely I would be the one to die young because of my illness.”
“Mi dispiace,” he said softly, reaching across the table to draw two fingers down the back of my hand. “I lost my father four years ago, and it still feels fresh.”
“You were close?” My curiosity sprang like water from a tapped well. Raffa had shared so little about himself in contrast to how comfortable I felt in his company. I was eager to know more, especially after his best friend had been rude to me and Martina had seemed shocked he would’ve played the white knight for anyone.
“In some ways,” he mused. “In others, we were at odds. It is often the way with parents, I think.”
I winced a little, hiding my reaction behind the glass as I raised it to take another sip. After swirling the wine around my palate, I spat the liquid into the silver spittoon.
When I looked up, Raffa had a brow raised. “I will not think less of you if you want to actually drink the wine.”
A blush fired my cheeks. “I didn’t think so. I just have to be careful with alcohol.”
His other brow joined the first. “Because of your condition.”
“Yes. I would have to watch my intake anyway, but I had a kidney transplant when I was sixteen, so I have to be doubly cautious.” I hesitated. “My sister was the donor.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat that was somehow sympathetic without being coddling. “It is not such a bad thing. As much as most Italians are loath to admit it, alcohol is not exactly a health food.”
I laughed, shocked that he continually found ways to put me at ease. “That’s true.”
“But you enjoy it?” He nodded at my glass.
“I know Chianti is made specifically to pair with food, but it’s lovely.”
“Lovely,” he murmured, coming around the table to my side, where he seemed to reach for me before crossing my body to grab another bottle of wine to pour into two clean glasses for us both. “That is not a word I would use for wine, but for a woman.”
“I think it works for both,” I breathed, my nipples pebbling from the brush of his forearm across them as he replaced the wine.
“Both,” he mused, wickedness slowly pulling his mouth into a crooked grin. “I cannot say I have tasted both to know if you are right.”
“No, not together,” I started to correct him, but my words were lost to a gasp when Raffa picked me up by the hips and placed me on the table. “What are you doing?”
“This is a wine tasting,” he said drolly. “I am tasting my wine.”
I opened my mouth to say something but forgot entirely when he lifted my glass to my nose so I could smell the red before he tipped it against my mouth.
“Open,” he coaxed, a light flush on his pronounced cheekbones. “Taste.”
I shivered as cabernet sauvignon pooled on my tongue, all red fruits and a shadow of oak.
“Do not swallow,” he ordered in that domineering, faintly cold way that made my skin flush.
