Slowly, deliberately, he sweeps his gaze over me, from my lips to the neckline of the dress then lower, lingering where the fabric clings to my breasts, the very place his hand had been earlier.“Prisoners don’t get pretty dresses.”
Heat floods my face, equal parts fury and something darker.The memory of his fingers inside the bodice of my wedding gown is still far too vivid.My nipples tighten again, betraying me, pressing against the thin material.
But I don’t panic.Not yet.I have access to his closet.
As if reading my mind again, he glances in that direction.Then he smiles.“I installed a lock.”
I blink.“You…”
“You’ll earn your privileges.”
Stunned, though I’m not sure why, I gape.“You’re seriously going to keep me as your prisoner, naked?”
His expression stays hard, carved from the same stone as his will.
His unspoken answer hangs thick in the supercharged air.Then he takes one step forward, closing so much of the distance between us that I can feel the heat that rolls off him.“Take off the dress.”Another step, until his shoes brush mine and his presence fills every inch of my space.“Unless you want me to do it for you?”
The air between us crackles, my emotions a storm—rage at the control, the humiliation, the way my body still aches for the very hands that stripped me of everything else.
Yet beneath it pulses that reluctant thread of intimacy from lunch, the glimpse of his grief, the way he’d listened when I spoke of my mother.
I stand before him, my chest rising fast, my insides knotted so completely by him that I don’t know where fury ends and need begins.
And the worst part—the part that makes my fingers twitch toward the hem of my dress despite myself—is that some treacherous corner of me wonders what it would feel like to give in, just this once, and let him see all of me the way he saw the woman in the wedding gown.
But I hold my ground, breath shallow, the silk suddenly too heavy, too revealing, every heartbeat a reminder that Dante Moretti doesn’t just consume my waking moments.
He’s rewriting the very shape of my desire, one merciless command at a time.
Then he’s done waiting.
He takes another slow, purposeful step toward me.
“Your time is up, Valentina.”
ChapterThirteen
Dante
Ifucking can’t take my eyes off her.
And I so desperately want her to refuse to obey me so I can follow through on my threat…my promise.
Earlier at the bridal shop, I betrayed myself, giving into my baser impulses by kissing her, by cupping her breast and tweaking her nipple.
She responded.
So damn perfectly.
I can’t get enough of her.
And the only thing I can think of is getting my hands back on her delectable body.
As she hesitates, her fingers flirt with the hem of her dress.
Her dress clings to her curves like a second skin, like it has all day, but now in my bedroom, it feels different.More intimate.More dangerous.
“Do you need me to repeat myself?”
