Page 50 of The Mad Don
He bends and brings his mouth to my ear.
“You have been tempting me a lot lately.”
His teeth find my earlobe. A small bite. It hurts enough to send a tremor through me that I cannot hide.
“Is this how you negotiate?” he murmurs. “Hmm? You have decided to seduce me into giving you what you want. Is that the strategy? Get me to want you badly enough that I open the door for you. You are softer than you look,Lupa.”
I swallow. My throat is doing something it should not be doing.
I have to keep my voice steady. “Your sister,” I say. “If you tell me how she got sick. The original injury. If you tell me what you know, I can help.”
His hand on my wrist tightens.
I feel the change in his body and then in his face. He does not pull back. He stays where he is, his mouth at my ear, his other hand at the side of my throat, but everything in him has gone hard underneath the closeness. His smile is still in place when I tilt my head to look at him.
The eyes are not smiling.
“I see your game.”
“It’s not a game.”
“You think you can pull on my sister to get the upper hand. To learn the thing nobody is supposed to learn about me. To carry it home in your pocket. So that Kirill knows. So that the next time we sit across a table, you have something to put on it.”
“Giovanni —”
“That’s not very smart,lupa. Truly. I expected better from you.”
He pulls back enough to look at me.
There is a small smile playing under his mouth, the worst version of his smile, the one in his face and not in his eyes, the one I have learned to recognize as the moment before he does something.
“I would not want,” he says softly, “to have to use Christov.”
I go very still.
For a half second, my mouth is dry.
I let myself feel half a second. I let it pass. Then I bring my eyes up, I meet his, and I let the corner of my mouth lift in a small smile of my own.
“Use him,” I say.
His face does not change.
“Use him. Go ahead. I dare you.” I keep the small smile in place.
I let the smile widen by a fraction. He looks at me. His eyes have gone darker. The small smile is gone.
I shove him in the chest. I step back into the space I have made.
“I am not playing games with you,” I say. “Leave my brother out of your mouth.”
He laughs. “Sore spot?” he asks.
“Yes, it is.”
I am not pretending otherwise. We both know what is in each other’s chests.
I take a breath.
