Seeing that I wasn’t going to contribute any more, she turned away from me, changing back into her clothes. I was on thin ice. The rest of the day she gave me the cold shoulder, only occasionally asking my opinion or coming close to me by choice.
After my conversation with Tito and Donato, I had found her in the bathroom after her shower. I looked her over again, this time not finding the fading bruise, but knowing it was there. She wanted me then too, but I couldn’t. She seemed too fragile, a butterfly with a crushed wing in the hands of a wild beast.
By the tine we finished shopping, the night glistened with ice and fire. The smoke drifting from chimneys made the air smell of roasting coffee and thawed water. We found refuge from the bite of cold in a warm restaurant. Eunice had made reservations for us earlier.
As usual, Scarlett stopped the room when she walked in. Even when she wasn’t dressed up for one of her formal parties, she still had the ability to steal the spotlight and not even notice.
I put a hand to her lower back, meeting every persisting eye.There’s no fucking line here, boys.
We took up an entire upper floor, two long tables set up, prepared for the mauling. The brick walls were older than our entire group combined. French lanterns flickered with fire, sending shadows climbing and stretching. Laughter and chatter rose and dipped, and the enticing smell of sizzling red meat met my nose and made me almost wild with hunger.
Scarlett ordered baked fish, along with salad, and I ordered the biggest steak on the menu. The cold called for whiskey, and I answered it. Scarlett gave me a searing look in return. She sipped on her lemon water after, chattering with Lola about some painting Lola wanted but decided not to buy.
I leaned over and put my mouth to Scarlett’s ear. “I never felt the inside of a woman until you. The heat. The slickness. I only know the feel of you without anything separating us. No one else.”
The glass stilled at her lips, and her wedding rings threw pretty reflections across her face in reaction to the dim lights. Her cheeks went red.
I had a habit of catching her off guard. I did it on purpose.
She fixed me with a curious look. “You mean that you’ve never…?”
“No,” I shook my head and moved back so the waitress could set my plate down. “If I’m not willing to have a baby with my wife, what makes you think I would be so reckless to chance it with some woman that meant nothing to me? I’d never even kissed a woman on the mouth before you.”
“What?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t something I did.”
“But you did—do it with me?”
I grinned. “Yeah. I can’t get enough.”
“Thank you,” Scarlett said, after the waitress put her food down. She turned to me after the woman scurried off. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“You wanted to know,gattino curioso.”
“Curious kitten, huh? When was this?”
“Tell me how it’s different—”
“All right,” she held a hand up, glancing around to make sure no one heard, assuming they would know what we were talking about. “I meant emotionally, Brando.”
“That’s part of it, for me,” I said, cutting through the seared first layer, getting down to the red flesh dripping with brown juices. “There was no emotion before you.”
She used her fork to tear away pieces of the white meat, but she didn’t eat. “What are younottelling me?”
I chewed, swallowed, and then took a drink to wash it down. “I am telling you. I just did.”
“No.” She shook her head. “The last time you acted this way—telling me such nice things, like you did in Italian last night, treating me as though I might disappear—you sent me away not long after.”
“Never again.”
The tone of my voice and the look in my eyes caused her to look away. After pulling her closer to my side, I pushed her plate forward. “Eat, baby. We have a long flight ahead of us.”
* * *
I sent Scarlett up to the room to pack once back at the house, Eunice right behind her to help, and a few men to stand guard.
Donato was going over security footage of the property. One of the men said there was a suspicious person loitering around the house while we were out shopping. Every time he sent another man to investigate, the suspicious man would disappear.
