He means what he said, every word of it. And I—selfish bastard that I am—want to answer his pain with my own, like that somehow balances the scale.
“You don’t get to use her like that just to see if I still bleed,” I say.
His face twists, shame there now under everything else. “Do you?”
“You know who my heart beats for, Vincenzo,” I answer. “You’ve already got me by the throat in every way that matters.”
That breaks whatever last, careful distance he was trying to hold. His hand comes up, catches my wrist where it rests against his neck, and he presses into the touch instead of away from it. The movement is small and devastating.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” he says. “I saw you react and I…” His mouth flattens. “I wanted to see if I still affected you.”
I bark a short, disbelieving laugh. “You really are shameless.”
“Yes,” he says. “Usually only with you.”
The answer should infuriate me, but it makes something in my chest go painfully soft and violent at the same time.
“You pout, you provoke, and you throw little rich-boy tantrums in public because you know exactly what it does to me, and you want me stupid with wanting you.”
His face flushes darker, which tells me I’m right.
“And then you stand there, looking all offended when I decide to remind you where that gets you.”
His eyes go molten for one sharp second—there.That.The reaction is immediate and brutal enough to satisfy something vicious in me.
He tries to glare at me through it, and only manages to look more dangerous, more beautiful, and more like the exact sort of trouble I was built to fall into.
“You are not calling me a brat at my wife’s charity gala,” he says, and the fact that his voice goes a little hoarse only makes me more satisfied.
“I’m not?” I ask. “That’s strange. It sounded exactly like what I just did.”
His lips part as he prepares another smart answer, but I cut it off by tightening my hand enough to make him swallow the first syllable.
“There you are,” I murmur. “Pretty King of the Five Families, all dressed up and still pouting because I caught you misbehaving.”
I know I should stop, but I don’t. The words come easier now that I’ve found the old pattern again. Easier, because I know what they do to him.
“You put on a lovely show out there,” I say, thumb brushing once against the side of his throat. “Very convincing. Kissing foreheads, draping hands, smiling like some polished husband from a magazine spread. And then the second I react, you come apart enough to try this?” My mouth curves, mean and private. “You’re spoiled when you want attention.”
He inhales sharply. “You left me alone,” he says, and there it is beneath all the sharpness, the actual wound. “What the hell did you expect?”
The anger goes out of me in one strange rush, and I loosen my grip slightly.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
That gets his full attention faster than anything else tonight.
His startled eyes lock with mine, and I don’t blame him. Nikolaj Dragovich doesn’t apologize easily. He apologizes even less to the people who matter most because those are the ones who can make the admission hurt.
“I’m sorry, Vincenzo,” I say again, running my thumb over his pulse. “It was never my intention to break your heart for eight years. None of that was by design.”
He stares at me like I’ve switched languages, but I force myself to keep going.
“I needed time because everything they buried came back wrong—too much at once, and not enough in order. I was angry at you, at them, at myself, at the whole fucking world and what it had done with our lives. None of that changes what it costs you.” My jaw tightens because this part is harder. “I know what I asked of you in my kitchen. I know what obeying me did.”
His eyes shine briefly, and he laughs once under his breath, wrecked and disbelieving all over again. “You really do remember me.”
“Unfortunately,” I say with a scoff.
