Page 65 of My Dark Fairy Tale
He turned on his heel, waved at the few locals gawking at him, and then whistled as he walked back toward the car. When he caught my eye over the hood, he inclined his head.
“Should we go, then?”
I nodded, struck dumb by the display, and slid bonelessly into the interior.
It was only when we were well on our way to Raffa’s palazzo that I found the words to say, “Well, that was intense.”
Raffa’s mouth was flat, and his hands were white knuckled on the wheel.
He didn’t respond.
“Do you usually deal with conflict like that?” I teased, but the joke fell to the floor of the car in the heavy air.
His fingers squeaked as he curled them tighter around the leather. He flinched just slightly when I gently placed my hand on his tensed thigh.
“Raffa,” I murmured. “Are you okay?”
“What he said to you was notright,” he said through gritted teeth, eyes flashing to mine just long enough for me to see the anger still burning there.
“No,” I agreed. “But I am not a whore, and him saying the words didn’t make me believe them.”
He made a noise of frustration in his throat. “Maybe in the US men do not deal with insults like this, but here? It is the worst insult for a someone to say such things about a man’s mother, sisters, orragazza.”
“Ragazza,” I repeated, because it could mean “girl,” but in this context it usually meant ... “Is that what I am, your girl?”
He let out a sharp, almost barking chuckle before most of the tension dissolved in his big frame, his thick musculature no longer like granite beneath my hand. When he reached for my fingers, I offered them to his hold and watched as he placed a kiss in the very center of my palm.
“You are not anidiota, Vera. Do you think I buy new wardrobes and carry sick women to the bathroom if I do not want them to be my girl? If a part of me had not already considered you mine?”
I smiled, because the compliment was so him. Condescending to start, with the sweetest finish tinged in primal possession. It was an addictive cocktail I wanted to drink until the end of time.
“I like the sound of being yours,” I told him boldly, running my thumb over his bottom lip, loving the contrast of the silk against hisstubble, almost a short beard now. “But for the record, I do not need you to protect my honor.”
“For the record,” he countered as we pulled through the automatic gates into the courtyard of the palazzo, “I will protect you from anything that comes for you in any way that it comes.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he placed our joined hands over it. “No, Guinevere. This is the kind of man I am, so this is the kind of man you must accept.” He paused, mouth flatlining. “For at least the next four weeks.”
I stared at him for a long moment, and he let me, his own gaze unwavering on mine. There was a scar on his chin, white beneath the black stubble, that I wanted to trace with my finger, and a cowlick in his wavy hair that constantly caused an errant piece to fall over his forehead in his eyes. Only two weeks of knowing him and I felt as if I had memorized every beautiful aspect of his face, the exact color of those maple-brown eyes and the curve of each thick, slashing brow, the mobility of his smiles and the variation of his glares.
Yet I did not know much beyond the facade.
I did not know what he did for a living, exactly, or where he had grown up. I knew he had sisters and a best friend named Leo, along with a motley crew that seemed to cycle through his palazzo as they pleased, each one a hybrid of friend and employee. I knew he could be cold and domineering but also secretly, achingly generous and kind.
I knew that if I let myself see beyond the beautiful veil of his face, I could fall in love with this man.
Even if what I found was darker than what I’d known.
Hadn’t he called himself Pluto instead of Prince Charming?
Did it matter that the hero who had saved me my first day in Tuscany could be so much more complicated than a two-dimensional stereotype?
There was a huge gap between the hero and the villain, and most people occupied the gray space within.
In fact, I couldn’t delude myself into ignoring how arousing it was to see him stand up for me like that. To know that one insult againstmy honor could bring him to such violence was almost intoxicating. That he could curb that same tendency with me and be so tender only multiplied its effect.
“Okay,” I said, curling my hand around the sharp edge of his jaw, fingers digging into the hinge to bring him toward me for a kiss. “I can accept it for four weeks or four decades. It actually makes me feel safe.”
When I pulled away from our brief embrace, his eyebrows were raised and his tone wary when he said, “I broke the man’s finger.”
I winced. “I figured by the sound it made. And the angle.”
