It was the hardest thing I'd ever done.
We stood there in the dark hallway, both breathing hard, her back against her door and my forehead pressed to hers. Her lips were swollen. Her eyes were dazed. Her hands still gripped my shoulders like she was afraid I'd disappear.
"Gemma." Her name came out wrecked. "If we don't stop—"
"We don’t need to stop."
“We do. There’s something about me I can’t—”
“You can tell me.”
Tell her? That I was a Daddy Dom? That I wanted her to submit, to call me Daddy, to live as my Little?
No. I couldn’t say that.
“No. I can’t.”
I kissed her forehead. A soft press of lips against warm skin. A promise of something I couldn't name yet.
"Goodnight, Gemma."
"Goodnight."
She slipped through the door. I heard her lean against it—the soft thud of her body against wood—and stood in the hallway for a long moment.
My fingers found my lips. Touched where she'd kissed me back.
I was in trouble.
Serious, complicated, impossible trouble.
Chapter 8
Gemma
TheLanghamballroomglitteredlike a jewelry box.
My hand rested on Dante’s arm, light but steady, as we moved through the crowd. Emerald silk whispered against my legs with each step. Donatella had picked the dress—"You need something that says 'I will destroy you and look gorgeous doing it,'" she'd announced, shoving me toward the fitting room. She wasn't wrong.
The Chicago Children's Hospital gala drew the particular blend of old money and new power that made these events feel like a trumped-up chess match. Everyone was watching everyone else. Calculating. Measuring. Looking for weakness. Sniffing it out.
I'd learned the choreography faster than I expected.
The Gambettis required warmth—genuine smiles, inquiries about the new grandchild. The Rossinis got cool acknowledgment, a nod that respected their positionwithout promising anything more. The mayor's wife needed compliments on her dress. The federal judge in the corner needed to be avoided entirely until Dante had a chance to assess which way the winds were blowing.
"You're good at this," Dante murmured near my ear as we left a cluster of city councilmen.
"I was brought up to do it. My whole life was school for this."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. I was still learning to read him. The way his hand pressed firmer against the small of my back when he was pleased. The slight softening around his eyes when something surprised him. The heat that flickered through his gaze sometimes when he caught me looking at him—heat that made me remember a kiss in a darkened hallway, his forehead pressed to mine, words neither of us had finished saying.
We hadn't repeated that kiss. We'd circled around it instead, building something slower, more careful. Late-night tea in the kitchen. His hand brushing mine as we passed in doorways. The way he said my name sometimes, like it meant something.
I was starting to think it did.
"Mrs. Caruso."
The voice cut through my thoughts like a blade wrapped in silk. I turned to find a woman approaching—sixty, maybe, with the kind of preserved beauty that required an army of specialists and unlimited funds. Diamonds dripped from her ears, her throat, her wrists. Her smile was the most expensive thing she wore, and the most false.
