Page 24 of Valentino

I don't know why I ask it. It's out before I can choke it down. Her chin is still caught between my fingers, and I feel the second she understands. The shift in her. The slow curve that pulls at the corner of her mouth.

She smiles. Slow. Mocking. Pleased.

She thinks I care.

I mentally curse myself because she is right. She read it perfectly. "Why," she says, and that smile widens, all teeth, "are you jealous, Conti?"

I should let go of her, put the car in gear, drive to the hotel and walk away. Then pray about all of it later.

Instead my hand slides down. My palm finds the long line of her throat, and I close my fingers around it, not hard, just enough that her pulse jumps against my thumb like a frightened thing. Her smile drops, and her lips part. Bright eyes go wide and dark, but she does not pull away. I feel her throat constrict against my hand.

"I asked you a question," I say. "Do you want him back?"

Her chest rises and falls. Her hand has come up to rest on my wrist, but she does not push me off. Her fingers just curl, holding on.

Amanda

His hand stays wrapped around my throat, warm and heavy, and I hate that it isn't choking me. That it feels like the opposite of a threat. His thumb rests against the soft spot under my jaw, not pressing, just… there, like he's holding something fragile he hasn't decided whether to break.

Some sensible part of my brain is waving a little red flag in the back of my skull, reminding me that this man kills people for a living. But that part of my brain is being drown out by every other part because this is the most alive I've felt in months.

Great. Wonderful. I am going to combust in the front seat of this car.

"That," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expect, "is not actually a question I owe you an answer to."

His dark eyes don't move from mine. "No?"

"No." I lift my chin. "You're Vittoria's cousin. We've met what? A dozen times? At parties. Dinners."

His jaw tightens."We talk sometimes. We hang out, in the loosest possible sense of the word, because you don't actually hang, you loom. But who I sleep with, who I want, who I don't want—" I drag in a breath, and his thumb shifts with the movement of my throat. I have to fight to keep my thoughts in a line. "That is not your business, Valentino. It is so far from your business it's on another continent."

For a long second he says nothing.

Then he presses.

And I MOAN.

I fucking moan.

The spell breaks. His hand leaves my throat all at once. The air feels cold where his palm was, and I hate myself for missing the weight of it.

He faces forward. His fingers wrap around the gearstick. The wipers shudder back to life as the engine turns over.

He clears his throat.

"I don't want Elio distracted from his job," he says. His voice has gone flat and clipped, sanded down to nothing. "That's all. Whatever happened between you, it stays in the past. He watches the street. He keeps you safe. He can't do that if he's looking at you instead."

"Wow," I say. "You really thought that through, didn't you?"

He keeps his eyes on the windshield.

"It's a security concern⁠—"

"It's a security concern," I echo, and I make my voice as flat and bored as his. "Right. So when you wrapped your hand around my throat just now, that was you protecting Sartori's investment. Got it. Very professional. Should I send you an invoice?"

"Careful–"

"You want to know the funniest part? You're actually wrong. About Elio. If he's distracted because he had feelings for me, that doesn't make him a worse bodyguard. It makes him a better one."