Relaxed.
Dangerously attractive.
Idiot, I told myself.
I looked away for half a heartbeat—an instinctive, stupid reaction—and the second I did, I knew he noticed.
“Or are you avoiding me so thoroughly,” he drawled, “you’d rather go thirsty than look at me after dinner?”
Heat crawled through my blood, slow and angry. I kept my spine straight. Took a measured sip of water. When I lifted my eyes again, I held his gaze like a weapon.
“I don’t hide from any man, Enrico,” I said, voice controlled, cold. “I simply appreciate the peace silence offers. Something you seem incapable of providing.”
A dangerous smile curved his mouth.
He walked into the kitchen, steps unhurried, each one calm enough to be intimidating, until he was close—too close.
“If you’re going to live here,” he said quietly, “you should start wearing something less… provocative for your little midnight walks.”
His eyes dropped over my body with slow, deliberate heat, burning along my skin as if the fabric didn’t exist.
“I have limits,” he continued, voice lower now. “And they’re dangerously short when I find you walking around my house in the middle of the night wearing that damn thing.”
A sharp spark flared inside me—something I tried to crush immediately.
I couldn’t.
My breath caught. A shiver ran up my spine that had nothing to do with cold.
Enrico took another step and erased the last inches between us. His heat mixed with mine. My heart sped up, traitorous and involuntary.
“Are you trying to provoke me, Valentina?” he murmured, so close his breath brushed my mouth. Warm. Slow. Intentional.
I lifted my chin slowly, defiant.
Locked my eyes to his.
“And if I am?”
His jaw flexed. His gaze darkened until it felt like storm clouds pressed against my skin. The air between us vibrated—tight with tension, with expectation.
My nipples tightened beneath the thin fabric, and I hated myself for noticing.
He leaned in further, reducing the distance to almost nothing. His voice came out rougher, darker—heavy with a promise that was both threat and temptation.
“Then don’t pull back when I give it back to you.”
My body screamed to give in.
My pride refused.
I didn’t step back. I didn’t surrender.
I held his gaze and burned from the inside out with the insane, reckless urge to grab him by his shirt and prove I wasn’t the only one who could play this game.
But pride kept my bones rigid.
And he knew it.
