“Husband and wife aren’t supposed to try to kill each other,” I reply.
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you made me your wife.”
I narrow my eyes. “Is that what you were planning to do to Lucio?”
“I would’ve if you hadn’t intervened.”
I curl a strand of her hair around my finger. “Should I have let you marry him instead, then?” I play with her hair, and her eyes follow my every move. “So you could’ve poisoned him instead?”
Her nostrils flare. “Maybe.”
“And you think he would even let you try?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she mutters, looking away.
I grab her chin. “It does to me.”
“You only married me out of spite,” she answers.
“And you only married me to save yourself.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
I tap her chest. “You only tell yourself that to make you feel better about trying to kill me.”
She rolls her eyes and looks away again, but I deserve her full attention after what she just tried to do.
I slowly bring my finger up to her chin so she’s forced to look at me. “I’m not angry.”
She scowls. “So?”
I know she’s disappointed because she wanted me to die, and her plan backfired. She feels trapped, and it’s all my fault. But poisoning me is not the answer to her problems, and she knows that.
“I’ll forget you tried to poison me.If...”
“If?”
I smirk. “You give me a kiss.”
Her lip trembles, but then she says, “Fine.”
She places the most sickly sweet kiss on my cheeks shecould ever give. The kind a woman would give her husband after forty years of marriage. But I know there’s more hiding behind that kiss. Her lips shudder as they leave my skin, almost as if she has the greatest trouble holding herself back from taking more than she can chew. And my God, it makes me want to slam my lips on hers immediately. But I have to keep myself in check. A promise is a promise after all. I won’t force myself on her because I’m a goddamn gentleman.
“Good girl,” I say.
Her cheeks turn rosy red. And I like the look on her.
“Are you going to let me off the hook now?” she asks stoically. “Can I go?”
I throw her a glance. “You haven’t even eaten breakfast yet.”
“I’ve had a Danish and a slice of apple,” she replies.
“That’s not enough.”
“That’s not for you to ...”
I put my finger on her lips to silence her. Then I grab the fork she tried to stab me with and puncture a piece of melon instead. I slowly bring it to her mouth. “Open up, Tesoro.”
