Page 92 of Forsaking All Others

“Off,” I croaked, squirming desperately.

He immediately complied, a frown between his brows as he leaned up to leverage the dagger out of the wood, letting my hands drop. Even though I brought the rope hastily to my teeth to undo, he pulled them away from my mouth and gently undid the complex knots himself. I practically dove off the bed, legs shaking like a newborn colt, cum trailing down my leg. The bathroom was my oasis, and I gasped when I successfully made it inside and closed the door behind me.

My reflection in the mirror above the sink was almost feral. Flushed cheeks and chest, wild hair curled around my head and shoulder, sticking to the cooling sweat on my still-heaving chest.

I looked how I felt.

Undone.

I sucked in a panicked breath and then forced myself to take another and then another.

“You cannot afford to fall in love with your husband,” I told myself sternly. “He wouldn’t want it, and he doesn’t deserve it. Four days of attentiveness doesn’t eradicate six years of loneliness.”

The math didn’t hold up.

Unhappily, emotions could rarely be parsed out and added up into neat equations.

I stayed in the bathroom until my sweat dried and my heart rate lowered and then I stayed even longer, staring at myself in the mirror in judgment and dread.

This is not the happily ever after I’d wanted for myself, and there was no way I could force my foot into a shoe that didn’t fit. Cinderella had proven that.

“Fiammetta.” Dario’s voice broke through the door. “Come to bed.”

I bit my lip, my eyes straying to the hickey he kept refreshing on the right side of my throat. If I hid in there any longer, Dario would just take the door off the hinges and come get me. Of that I had no doubt.

I didn’t want him to sense my turmoil over my burgeoning emotional chaos or the suspicion I still harbored about his capture.

So I forced myself to stand up, wrap myself in a black silk robe, and go into the bedroom.

Dario had fixed the covers and taken up a comfortable position on his side of the bed. He looked absurdly masculine amid the dark-red-and-orange sheets, a setup that was suddenly befitting his devilish good looks.

Instead of saying anything, he flipped back the sheets to beckon me within.

I sucked in a little breath and did as bidden.

The moment I slipped beneath the silk, his arm was hooked around my waist, tucking my back into his front where he pushed so that I was partially on my belly and he was partially draped over me.

“Buonanotte, fiamma,” he said in drowsy Italian, already partially asleep.

Good night, little flame.

“Sognami,” he added on a sleepy exhale just before his limbs grew heavier, and I knew he had passed out.

Dream of me, he’d ordered.

My heart ached, bruised under the turmoil it had been put through in the last week.

I lay there for a long time, making sure he was deeply asleep before I stretched out to grab my phone. The screen illuminated my face as I opened it to my inbox.

A new message waited . . . from the capo dei capi of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra.

Fiammetta,

It is good to hear from you after so long. I tried to reach out many times when you first moved to America, but I was turned away or left with no response. I think your husband was monitoring your correspondence. I want to assure you, Dario Ferretti has not, to my knowledge, set foot on Sicilian soil in over a year. If he was here at all, I know not why. Perhaps I will look into this myself. Allies should keep each other informed, no?

I too think of a future where you would have married my Niccolo. Would we have each been happier? Perhaps happiness is not meant for our kind.

Felipe