Page 61 of Ruthless Vow
He pulls back just enough to look at me. His thumb traces my temple, brushing hair from my face. Tender in a way that undoes me more than anything that came before.
I should be cataloging this. The press of him. The rhythm of his heartbeat against my chest. How his body relaxes into mine.
I’m not.
Somewhere between the boutique and now, between the first dress and the last stroke, the numbers went quiet.
14
DANTE
It’s just physical. That’s what I tell myself when she walks into the study at midnight, papers in hand, pretending she’s here to work.
That’s what I tell myself when my body responds to the sound of the door opening, to the soft click of her heels on hardwood, to how she doesn’t look at me when she sits down.
It’s just physical. Just bodies. Just release.
We’ve fallen into a rhythm. Days of careful distance. Professional conversations in the hallway, necessary interactions at meals, nothing that would make the staff whisper more than they already do. She calls me Dante in front of others now, but there’s a formality to it. A performance.
Nights are different.
Nights, she comes to my study after the compound goes quiet. Nights, we pretend to work until we don’t. Until one of us moves and the other responds and we end up tangled together on my desk, or the leather couch, or wherever the hunger catches us.
It’s just physical.
Except I’ve started noticing things.
How she takes her coffee. Oat milk creamer, two sugars, and she holds the cup with both palms like she’s warming herself even when it’s ninety degrees outside.
How she hums under her breath when she’s concentrating, some melody I don’t recognize, soft and unconscious.
How she tucks her hair behind her left ear when she’s found an anomaly in the numbers. Always the left. A tell she doesn’t know she has.
But my mind is a ledger that never stops recording, and she’s become the entry I can’t stop tracking.
Tonight, she’s not at the desk.
I come in from a late call with Renzo expecting to find her surrounded by papers, pen in hand, that little furrow between her brows.
Instead, the desk is empty. The lamp is off.
For a moment I think she didn’t come. That the pattern has been broken. That she’s decided this arrangement has become too complicated and she’s staying away.
Fuck.
But she’s here. Just not where I expected.
She’s on the leather couch, shoes kicked off, feet tucked beneath her. Her hair is down, loose waves spilling over her shoulder. She’s wearing a soft sweater instead of her usual silk blouse, sleeves pulled over her knuckles.
And she’s reading.
Not ledgers. Not contracts. A worn paperback with a cracked spine, held close to her face like she’s trying to climb inside the pages.
She’s so absorbed she doesn’t hear me enter. Doesn’t notice me standing there, watching her.
There’s a flush creeping up her neck. Her teeth are working her bottom lip. Every few seconds she shifts, pressing her thighs together, and my blood drops south.
My wife reads romance novels.
