Page 130 of When She Tempts (The Fallen)
Go find him.
Growling in frustration, I throw off the blanket and climb out of bed.
On the other side of the door to my room, the house appears to be quiet. I press my ear against its smooth surface just to be sure. When I don’t hear anything, I slip outside.
The lights are off except for a small courtesy light near the landing and another one in the living room below. It’s possible Dem’s still working in his office, but he might be there for hours, and I’m not waiting that long.
The soles of my feet press gently against the floor as I make my way to the bedroom Vale pointed out. When I get there, a rapid clicking sound filters through the door.
Giorgio’s working on his laptop.
Anger narrows my vision. I’m spending my evening thinking about him, and he’sworking?
Without bothering to knock, I step inside and pin my gaze on to the man himself.
Giorgio’s at a desk, a glass of liquor by his laptop. He looks up, and when he realizes it’s me, his azure eyes darken to a midnight blue. A weariness flickers through them, as if he knew I might show up but was hoping I wouldn’t.
Too bad.
I lock the door behind me and try my best to dull the ache growing inside my chest. “We need to talk.”
CHAPTER33
MARTINA
His gaze slidesdown my body. Closing his laptop, he sinks deeper into his chair and takes a generous swig from the glass. “You shouldn’t have come,” he says, his voice a rasp.
“You’re a fucking asshole.”
He doesn’t even try to defend himself. He just stares at me with a foreign expression, his lips drawn into a line, and his eyes dimmed.
“What the hell was that, Giorgio?” I demand, growing more and more irritated by his silence with each passing second. “I thought you sounded worried about me on the phone, but clearly, I must have been confused, what with being on the run for my life and all that. I can see now you don’t give a damn.”
His nostrils flare with an exhale. “You’re angry right now, but don’t you dare imply for one fucking second that I don’t care about you. The first real breath I took since you called me was after I saw you sitting in that living room, alive and unhurt.”
“Huh. So you decided to hurt me yourself, is that right? Did you look at me and think, ‘she can take it’?”
He takes another sip of his drink. Another deep breath. “There was no other option. In a perfect world, we could say our goodbyes in private, but that’s not the world we live in. What did you want me to do? Kiss you in front of your brother? Take you into my arms? You know I can’t do that, Mari. There was no other choice.”
I give my head an indignant shake. “Why are you so afraid of my brother finding out about us anyway? I know that when he asked you to take me, he probably didn’t envision us sleeping with each other, but so what? Life happens. Shit happens. You didn’t force me into anything. I wanted to be with you.”
He huffs a laugh. “That is not how he’ll see it.”
I clench my fists. “You assume my brother thinks I can’t make my own decisions.”
His eyes narrow with frustration. “You’re nineteen, Martina. I’m thirty-three and—”
“Who cares! We’re the Casalesi, Giorgio! Look at any clan marriage in the past five decades, and you’d be hard pressed to find one where the age difference isn’t that or worse.”
“And what do you think your future husband will say when he finds out you’re not a virgin?”
My jaw drops. “Nothing. The man I marry better not give a crap about things like that.”
“Every time you open your mouth, you expose your naiveté.” He tosses back the rest of his glass and stands.
“What naiveté?”
“Tell your brother you’re not a virgin and see how he reacts.”
