Page 20 of Forsaking All Others

My girls just thought Dario was hot and dangerous enough to make that hotness blaze even brighter.

I sighed loudly and lowered my wineglass, cupping my elbow in my free hand as I cocked a hip and an eyebrow at my husband.

“Can I help you, Dario?” I asked with saccharine politeness.

After a long pause, he pushed off his recline against the archway and stepped deeper into the light cast by the sconces and the overhead chandelier, exposing those gleaming ice-chip-blue eyes under scowling black brows. In the right lighting, you could just make out the faint scar my nails had left on one cheek from our wedding day, but now stubble and shadow covered the mark.

“Maybe it’s me who has to help you, though I would hope at twenty-one years old, your memory isn’t as poor as it seems. Did you forget what today is, Fiammetta?”

No one called me Fiammetta anymore. I was Fia Ferretti now, and hearing my full name almost made me flinch.

“The day I made America my home,” I quipped easily, indicating the room with my wineglass. “Which is why I have all my marvelous friends over to celebrate.”

“There is something else you should be celebrating,” he corrected, crossing his arms over that barrel chest to stare me down.

I rolled my eyes because I’d long ago stopped being intimidated by him. He meant nothing to me, which meant I did not care for his good opinion at all.

“Not that comes to mind,” I returned with a little shrug. “Now, instead of looming like a gargoyle with that surly face, you can either pull up a chair in time for some of Chef’s gorgeous tiramisu dessert, or you can make yourself scarce so the party can continue as beautifully as it did before.”

The room around us was so quiet, the very air seemed thick and immovable. Everyone was watching us with wary interest.

I stiffened when Dario abruptly thrust into motion, stalking across the dining room on those powerful thighs so quickly the ends of his blazer billowed out to reveal how snugly his tailored button-up fit his narrow waist. I swallowed hard and deepened my glower as he got closer, shoving my chin up so I could attempt to look down on him from my inferior stature.

“Well?” I demanded rudely, when he rocked to a stop mere inches from me.

“Speak to me again with such blatant disrespect, and I’ll make you regret it,” he whispered in a sibilant hiss that made a tiny shiver creep down my spine.

“In front of an audience?” I taunted, rolling to my tiptoes in my heels to gain that extra inch of height. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Something like triumph flashed in his nearly translucent blue eyes before one of his hands drove into the back of my hair, dislodging hairpins so that loose coils of my curls spilled over my shoulder, and his other arm snatched me around my waist, hauling me up and into his hard body so I was pinned off my feet against his torso. My mouth opened on an indignant gasp, but his mouth was already there, sealing mine shut, his hot tongue sweeping between my parted lips to plunder me savagely.

And as it always happened the rare times my husband deigned to kiss me, I completely lost my rational mind.

The scent of him in my nostrils was warm and spicy, with a hint of sweetness that made my mouth water. The feel of his unyielding muscles against my soft curves was sublime, tingling in my nipples and traveling down my belly into my groin and thighs like currents of electricity. The scratch of his stubble against my chin and the texture of his silken, nearly shoulder-length hair between my fingers gave me an illicit thrill because it was so intimate an embrace for a man I’d been married to for a year who was, in essence, still a complete stranger to me.

For one perfect moment, I felt safe to be wild and free, writhing hot and desperate for more against a man who should have been mine but wasn’t.

A catcall cut through my lustful fog like a knife, and I managed to wrench my face an inch away from Dario’s before his hand in my hair arrested me in place.

His face was carved into a severe expression I had never seen before, a hard mix of frustrated desire and impotent fury that unnerved me completely.

“Put me down,” I whispered, even though I meant for my voice to be strong.

A part of me was worried that if he did set me down, my legs would give out. They felt, curiously, like rubber.

“No,” he refuted, the word a harsh rasp.

His hand tightened almost reflexively in my hair as his gaze scoured my face, searching for something that seemed to frustrate him to no end.

“We have guests,” I hissed, sliding my own hands out of his hair to push against his shoulders so he would release me.

Again, he did not.

“They know you are married,” he said, but there was a hint of a threatening question in there, like I would be in trouble if I had somehow misled them about my marriage. “They should not be scandalized by a man taking his wife’s mouth.”

“Not in front of the entire party,” I retorted, shoving forcibly now.

“Whenever and however he sees fit,” he corrected implacably, pressing forward to stamp a hard, short kiss to my mouth before slowly sliding me down his torso until my high heels connected with the floor.