Page 73 of The Wrong Mafia Bride
"I know how that sounds," she says quickly. "I am literally in an arranged marriage with three men who took my bedroom door off its hinges. Free is probably not the word most people would use."
"But it is the word you are using."
"Yeah." She turns to look at me fully now, and in the fading light her eyes are dark and serious. "My entire life has been about Erin. Protecting her, making sure she was safe, putting her needs before my own. And I do not regret that—I would do it again in a heartbeat. She is my sister in every way that matters."
"But," I prompt gently.
"But I have never had time to just think about myself. About what I want. About my own desires." She looks back at the sunset, her profile sharp and beautiful against the colorful sky. "Here, with you three, I get to be selfish. I get to want things and take them and not feel guilty about it. It is refreshing."
I process this carefully, turning her words over in my mind. "So you are saying being shared by three men who are completely obsessed with you is freeing because it lets you be selfish."
"When you put it like that it sounds insane."
"Bella, everything about this situation is insane. That is kind of the point."
She laughs, and the sound makes me smile. "True."
We sit in comfortable silence for another minute, the sky darkening by degrees, the first stars starting to appear overhead.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"Always."
"What do you want?" I turn to look at her, watching her face carefully. "Right now, in this moment, knowing everything you know—what do you actually want?"
She does not hesitate. Doesn’t look away. Just meets my eyes with absolute certainty.
"You," she says simply. "Luca. Dante. I want it all."
The words hit me square in the chest, and for a moment I cannot breathe, cannot think, can only stare at her while my brain tries to process the fact that she just said out loud what I have been hoping to hear since the moment I met her.
"You can have it," I tell her, and my voice comes out rougher than I intended. "You can have all of it, Bella. All of us. However you want us."
Something shifts in her expression—heat replacing contemplation, want replacing uncertainty. She turns toward me more fully, and the movement makes her thigh press harder against mine.
"I’m still thinking about the other night," she says, a teasing, dangerous edge sharpening her voice.
I stiffen, the memory of that dinner hitting me with the force of a physical blow. I can still see the candlelight reflecting in her eyes while Dante and Luca took what they wanted, right there on the mahogany table.
"I remember," I say, my voice sounding like it’s been dragged over gravel. "I was there, Rosalina. I saw everything."
"You did." She reaches out, her hand settling on my thigh, her fingers splaying over the denim and burning through the fabric. "But you onlywatched. You stayed in your chair, sipping your tea like it was just another business meeting."
The accusation in her tone does something to me, making my chest go tight and warm simultaneously. My hand twitches, wanting to grab her, to prove her wrong.
"I have more self-control than my brothers," I remind her, though even I can hear how thin that excuse is sounding.
"Maybe." She leans in closer, her breath a warm ghost against my skin. "But I didn't want your self-control that night. I wanted you."
The simple honesty of it shatters the last of my professional distance. I reach out, my thumb catching her chin and forcing her to look at me. "Careful, Flower. If I stop watching and start participating, you might find I’m much harder to handle than the other two."
"So make it up to me." Her hand slides higher on my thigh, and my pulse kicks up several notches. "Now."
"Bella," I say, and I am proud of how steady my voice is, considering what her hand is doing. "We are on a fence. Ten feet in the air. This is not exactly the ideal location for?—"
"Are you telling me no?" She leans closer, her mouth near my ear. "Because that does not sound like you, Gabe."
Fuck, she is good at this. Good at pushing buttons, good at finding weaknesses, good at making me forget every logical reason why this is a terrible idea.
