Page 35 of Toxic Love

“Oopsie!” I giggle like an airhead. “I’msoclumsy! It’s probably because I’m just a silly widdle girl and I’ve never been to a big fancy party with real dancing like this one!!”

Dante levels a cold, dark glare at me.

“Having fun yet?”

“Loads,” I grin saccharinely. “What aswellparty.”

Dante twirls me again, and this time, as I’m once more aiming my heel for his foot, I jolt when his hand suddenly slides from my hip. It skims deftly over my bare skin where the dress splits, his touch leaving throbbing, electrified shivers in its wake before his large fingers tense like an iron vice around my thigh, stopping me from stamping my foot on his.

His mouth suddenly dips to brush against my ear and the crook of my neck.

“You made this bed, little hurricane,” he rasps darkly. “So now you’ll fucking sleep in it.”

I try to twist out of his grip, but it’s like fighting concrete. He doesn’t budge one eighth of an inch.

“You will swallow your terminal need to pee in the punchbowl andbehave,” Dante growls quietly. My core turns to molten lead as he yanks my thigh up to his hip, whirling and dipping me as the quartet slips from Tchaikovsky into a tango.

I shift abruptly, my knee jerking toward his balls. Butagain, his iron hands wrench me back into place, my knee up on his hip, my breasts squashed against his rock-hard chest, my entire body pressed right against him.

“I saidbehave,” he growls.

“Or?” I snap back.

“Or I willteach you to.”

Sweet Jesus.

The fact that the more forceful, overbearing, and domineering he is to me, thewarmerI get deep in my core is so very, very fucking unfair.

Fuck you, trauma. You too, issues.

I try to ignore the tingling sensation creeping over my skin and attempt to twirl out of his grip. Predictably, that gets me nowhere but tighter against his body.

“I won’t warn you again,dear,” Dante mutters.

“Well, marriage is sure going to be fun,” I spit. “Threatening me already, Ike Turner?”

He smiles coldly. “I’mnot the threat.” He drags his gaze past me and around the room. “These are not good men. Not most of them. And if you thinkI’mnot happy with your last-minute changes involving marriage deals and blood markers…”

“Gee, I’m so sorry you don’t get to screw a teenager anymore. That must be a real bummer for a creep like you?—”

I gasp sharply as his fingers dig like iron into the bare skin of my hip. When his hand suddenly slips a few inches higher, my blood turns to fire.

God. Fucking.Damnit. What is it about his touch that sends me into a spiral? I’m overlooking that this is the most intimate I’ve been with a man since I was seventeen.

Dante’s touch is…something else. Something forbidden, yet alluring. Something sizzling and dangerous that scares the shit out of me while keeping me biting my lip for more.

“Once again,” Dante growls. “The marriage to your aunt had everything to do with business arrangements andnothingto dowith sleeping arrangements, and for the very last time, I had and continue to havezerointerest in fucking her.”

“Let’s hope not,” I snap back with a venomous glint in my eyes. “I doubt any of these mafia creeps would be too happy to find you sticking your dick into other girls after you’re married.”

Dante comes perilously close to laughing. My brows furrow.

“What?”

“Easily half of thesemafia creepshave at least twogoomarswarming their beds each.”

“I’m sorry, they have what now?”

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