Page 28 of Auctioned to the Mafia Don
“You sent the dress,” I say, putting my arms out and twirling to display it.
“I did.”
“Then what were you expecting?”
“For you to make it more difficult to get you in it.”
“I considered setting it on fire.”
“I assumed.”
“I left the lingerie upstairs.”
“I assumed that too.”
“Then you’re not as disappointed as you should be.”
His gaze drops briefly to the place at my throat where his thumb had rested the night before. My skin remembers before I can stop it. Heat. Pressure. That small, damning shiver I still want to blame on the drug.
His mouth curves into the same grin he wore in the study this morning.
Bastard.
A servant appears to pull out a chair for me. I sit. Stefano takes the seat at the head of the table, close enough that our elbows could touch if either of us were careless. Neither of us is. Food arrives in courses I do not have the patience to appreciate. Soup. Bread. Fish. Roasted vegetables arranged like someone believed garnish could absolve crime. Stefano eats as if this is a normal dinner and not a negotiation between a mafia don and the federal agent he bought, drugged, and threatened into cooperation.
I pick up my spoon. “Do you do this often?”
“Eat?”
“Collect federal agents.”
“Occasionally, but only the interesting ones,” he teases.
“One day, someone is going to find your confidence exhausting.”
“People find many things about me exhausting.”
“Do they survive long enough to tell you that?”
“Depends on how fond I am of them.”
I look at him over the spoon. “And me?”
His eyes hold mine. “I haven’t decided.”
It shouldn’t feel like flirtation. But somehow, coming from him, it does.
I set the spoon down. “Let’s discuss some rules.”
“Let’s discuss your performance.”
“I’m not performing anything until I know exactly what you want from me.”
“Tonight is practice,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “If we are seen in public, you do not look like a woman waiting to stab me. You look like a woman who understands her position.”
“My position.”
“At my side.”
