“Let me go!”
I beat at his chest, weak and furious and shaking all over.
“No.”
He wades out of the water with me still locked against him, boots thudding back onto the jetty, water streaming from both of us.
I don’t stop fighting. “Stop pretending I’m not giving you a great way out!” I scream. “I’m sure she’s laid out on a silver platter right now, waiting her turn to be Isabella Dragoni!”
He freezes again. Slowly, deliberately, he looks down at me. Moonlight cuts his face into something brutal and beautiful and terrifying.
“Amuri mio,” he says softly, dangerously. “If you say her name one more time, I will make you regret it.”
I laugh hysterically. “Why? Because she’s everything I’m not?”
His jaw tightens. “No,” he says quietly. “Because you’re everything she will never be.”
I open my mouth to scream something else at him. But he hoists me up into his arms instead, slinging me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing.
“Put me down!”
“No.”
“I swear to God, Giovanni, I will?—”
“We will go to bed,” he cuts in calmly. “And you will stop trying to run from a war you are already standing in the middle of.”
He carries me back up the path as if I’m nothing but a warm, furious burden against his shoulder, my fists pounding uselessly against his back.
I hate him.
I hate him.
And God, I hate that my body feels traitorously safe in his arms.
He takes me straight into his suite, dripping water across marble floors, straight into the bathroom, where steam is already curling faintly from the massive shower.
He sets me down. Turns on the water. Then strips his ruined shirt over his head and tosses it aside without breaking eye contact.
I cross my arms over my chest, shaking. “This is not happening.”
“It is.” He steps into the shower and pulls me in with him, fully clothed.
The hot water crashes down over us, steam blooming instantly.
I gasp. “This is insane! You’re insane.”
He slides his hands over my arms, my shoulders, my back, methodical, slow, washing salt and sand from my skin.
His touch is reverent, controlled but oh so devastating. And sweet heaven, I can feel his arousal pressed against my stomach, unashamed, unmistakable.
And he does nothing about it.
Nothing.
He soaps my hair. Rinses it gently. Then he washes my face with his thumbs like he’s handling something fragile.
“You’re cruel,” I whisper hoarsely.
