Page 32 of Entangled

“I don’t want to be the other woman.”

He swept her wild curls off her shoulder, giving him soft skin to kiss. He felt Cara’s shiver work its way through her body, and so he kissed her again, just to feel it once more.

“I know,” he murmured, his lips still pressed to her body.

“But here I am.”

“Those are details, and I know they’re the kind of details that matter to some, but they are only details, bella mia. You’re not the other woman for me. You’ve always just been mine. There is no other here. There’s one man and one woman. One man who loves one woman—I love you, Cara. That’s it.”

“One man with a wife,” Cara said softly.

“She’s certainly not mine, not in that sense,” Gian said dryly. “On paper, maybe, but the rest … no.”

“I’m not sure if that makes it better, but I want it to. I wish it did, and I’m pretty sure that makes me a horrible person.”

He pulled her closer still, letting her legs tuck in around his under the sheets, while his arm tightened around her midsection to keep her in place.

“Do you want to know anything about her or the—”

“No,” Cara interjected swiftly, shutting him down.

Gian kissed her shoulder again. “All right.”

“Do you have to go?”

“In a while, yes. I have to go to the mansion and grab some things for the week. I missed church, too, so my mother needs a visit now, to be sure I’m not dead.”

“So, the mansion. Is that where … Elena, right?”

“Mmm.”

“Is that where she lives?”

Gian let out a slow breath. “Yeah.”

At his quiet confirmation of her suspicions, Cara stiffened in his arms.

“Would you stay, though?” Gian asked.

“For what?”

“I’ll be back later today or tonight sometime. I’d like to come back to see you. We should talk, or something. Just talk, Cara. Without yelling or slapping, or fighting and fucking. Just talk.”

“I don’t want to be that woman, Gian,” she repeated.

She hadn’t refused his request, though.

Gian took that as a win. “But?”

“But I love you, too. I love you, and I want to hate you.”

Yeah, that was the hard part.

It was every single reason why she was in his bed, instead of in her own. Because had he loved her even a little bit less, or perhaps in a better way, he would have left her alone to her business and life the night before.

Except he couldn’t.

Because love.