Page 69 of My Dark Fairy Tale
Her blush was obvious even in the dim car. “Maybe because I am. It makes me feel wanted and confident to have your attention. To earn your praise like I did in the car on the way to the vineyard the other day. I’ve always been very goal oriented.”
I laughed, startled by her endearing honesty although I should have been used to it. “Well, I am happy to oblige. Tonight, you will come back to the palazzo with me.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any pajamas at your place.”
Cazzo, her coquettishness was making me hard just as we pulled up to the valet drop-off for the gala.
I put the car in neutral as we waited in line for the valet and slid my hand under her hair to pull her close.
“You can sleep in my cum,” I offered graciously and then ate the little gasp straight off her tongue.
I had not worried about how Guinevere would act on my arm, despite knowing the event brought the cream of Florentine society out of their villas, palaces, and penthouses in enough finery to feed a third world nation for years.
Still, she surprised me.
As she always seemed able to do.
Though it was obvious she had never walked a red carpet, she was elegance personified on my arm as I led her to the photography points and smiled for the cameras. It was a short carpet with few paparazzi, mostly for local news outlets, but she was still blinking owlishly and adorably by the time we entered the palace.
Her Italian was much better than I had given her credit for, and the week of immersive language classes had only honed it further. Whenwe engaged in conversation with the mayor and his wife, she was able to understand the flow of conversation and respond charmingly, if a bit slowly, in kind.
By the time we moved on from the Moris, they were utterly charmed by thebella donna Americana.
As was I.
The entire central piazza of the palace had been transformed into an extravagant outdoor ballroom, complete with a tiled dance floor overseen by a sixteen-piece orchestra. They had transported some of the more recognizable statues from the galleries into the courtyard, so I had the pleasure of teasing my date about her resemblance to a marble nymph with flowers in her hair. It was a warm evening, the sky gone to ink, with pinpricks of barely visible stars and a full-bellied moon I found Guinevere peering at as if they were a work of art framed in the rectangular silhouette of the buildings.
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted when I caught her, as if it was a secret.
“Do not be embarrassed by your enthusiasm for life,” I told her, dredging up an old quote from Ivern Ball that suited her so well. “‘Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch.’”
“I haven’t heard that before,” she said with a shy smile. “But I love it.”
“You should. It is true in general and for you. It is one of my favorite things about you.”
We had a quiet moment without an audience, tucked behind the statue of the nymph in a pocket of shadow.
“Oh? What else do you like?” she asked coyly, leaning back against a pillar and touching the low neckline of her dress. My mouth watered.
I stepped forward, curving around her to shield her from view as I moved her hair off one shoulder and placed a kiss there.
“It would be more sensible to ask what I donotlike about you,cerbiatta,” I murmured against her throat, touching my tongue to her pulse point to feel it pound. “To tell you everything I admire would take too long.”
“Flatterer,” she teased, but clutched me closer and arched into my mouth.
“Ah, Signore Romano, I should have known I would find you in some dark corner, feeding on a woman.”
The Neapolitan dialect made me tense even before the words landed. I turned to face the unwelcome intruder, keeping Guinevere at my back.
Sansone Pucci stood before me with a grim smile.
“Usually, people in dark corners do not like to be disturbed,” I pointed out to him coolly.
The last time Ludo reported to me, Sansone had been in the south, wrapping up a drug seizure off the coast of Calabria.
And suddenly, he was here in my city.
“I find things are always best brought into the light,” he countered with that smug superiority I had sensed in him from afar. “We have not officially met, but I had to introduce myself to the famous Raffaele Romano. Sansone Pucci.”
