“Right now?” she murmured, glancing down at her fully dressed frame. “Not that I’m aware of.”
His expression didn’t reflect humour though. “Don’t. I’m not in the mood.”
Her heart lifted. Was it possible he was actuallyjealous?
Or was something more going on? Again, she thought back to the phone call, her mind ticking over the heavy pauses, the feeling he’d been about to confide something important in her.
“What’s happened?”
“I told you?—,”
“No, it just—,” she reached out, putting a hand on his forearm. “It feels like there’s something more happening here.”
He looked down at her fingers, frowning, his expression impossible to decipher. “Did you fuck him, Willow?”
The blood pounding in her ears sounded like a roaring ocean. There was something in his question that was so elemental and raw, like her answer really mattered to him.
“Are you jealous?” she asked, trying to infuse a teasing tone to her question.
His eyes found hers and seemed to pierce the very fabric of her soul. He took a step forwards then, so they were inside, his big frame easily overshadowing hers, so that the next step he took had her back against a wall, his knee between her legs.
“When you’re mine, you’re mine. I don’t share.”
Her gasp was a soft sound of excitement and heat. She lifted a hand and curled it into his shirt. “And I suppose that goes both ways?”
His eyes roamed her face. “Yes.”
Her heart trembled.
“If we’re sleeping together, that’s exclusive, until we agree otherwise.”
“You mean until we stop sleeping together.”
He nodded once.
“Francesco—,”
But his finger was tracing her lips, making it hard to think straight. “I like you, Willow. You are one of my closest friends. I have no intention of letting this come between us. So, we need to know we’re playing by the same rules.”
Her lips parted on a soft groan, as he moved the knee between her legs, and she pushed down on it hungrily.
“We are,” she said, huskily.
“I do not want you to see him, while we are doing this.”
Her lips parted for a different reason now, indignation bursting through her. “I’ll agree not to sleep with him, but you have no right to tell me who I can and can’t spend time with.”
“Don’t I?”
“No. Last time I checked, I’m my own person.”
“Yes, but you are a person who’s well known, and frequently ends up in the society pages. I would prefer not to have to deal with the fallout of you getting photographed with Tom, for as long as we’re doing this.”
She blinked up at him, ashamed and surprised to realise she hadn’t even thought of that.
“By the same token, if you care about your relationship with him, you should prepare him for the fact he’ll likely see news of our relationship in the papers at some point.”
She was glad for his proximity then. This was all becoming much more complicated than she’d originally thought. Then again, she hadn’t exactly thought it through at all. She’d looked up at his building, blurted out a fake relationship, and the rest was history.
