Page 118 of Reign

“It wasn’t.”

His thumb settles over the frantic pulse in my neck. “This says otherwise.”

The beat jumps beneath his touch, enthusiastically betraying me.

“My pulse doesn’t speak for me.”

“Your mouth barely manages it.”

I glare at him. My irritation entertains him.

“I’m not training you tonight,” he says. “Tonight, we’re going to talk through every curious on that list until I know exactly where your limits are.”

“What if I don’t know?”

His thumb brushes along the edge of my jaw. “Then we find out together. Slowly.”

My breath catches, and his gaze drops to my lips.

“But you’ll be honest with me,” he continues. “Even when the answer embarrasses you. Especially then.”

“You make that sound easy.”

“It will be once you stop arguing.”

“Then it’ll never be easy.”

His quiet laugh moves through me, warm and dark and entirely too attractive for a man this irritating.

“No more omissions,” he says. “Understood?”

I want to tell him he’s insufferable.

“Yes.”

The breathless answer escapes before I can sharpen it into anything safer.

“Perfect.”

The single word sinks directly into the ache between my thighs.

Luciano’s smile tells me he knows exactly where it landed.

***

By morning, I’ve decided last night was not a disaster.

Technically.

Fine, emotionally, it was a disaster. Luciano cornered me at dinner with my own questionnaire, made me say yes like my spine had signed itself over to him, then had the nerve to call me perfect like that word wasn’t going to haunt me until I died.

But the important thing is that I survived.

Mostly.

I sit at the vanity in my lavender bedroom, blending concealer beneath my eyes like makeup can cover poor decisions and sexual humiliation. It can’t, obviously, but I appreciate the effort.

The problem is that Luciano was right about the questionnaire.