Page 80 of Cage of Thorns and Blood

“One.” I hold up one finger. “We have a long-ish engagement.”

“How long?” he demands.

“A year.”

“Six months.”

I sigh.

“You’ll know if this is going to work or not in six months,” he says.

He’s right, so I shrug. I know how to negotiate, and my second ask is the bigger one, or I think he’ll see it that way. “Okay, six months.”

“Fine. Demand number two?” He wraps a fluffy robe around me and kisses my forehead.

“I don’t want you to hurt David. The man from the auction.”

“Ah, baby. I can’t do that.”

“No. It’s non-negotiable. I won’t have that on my conscience. He had no idea about you and me.”

“Baby,” he warns.

I hold my hand out. “Break mine.”

“What the fuck?” His face pales. “Jesus, Renata. No.”

“It’s either breaking mine, if you truly think that is a fitting punishment, or doing nothing because if you break his I will walk away. I will.”

He stares at me, his jaw gritting in annoyance, and then he sighs and rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

“No, swear it to me. Promise me.”

“I promise I won’t touch a hair on his head. Or a finger on his hand.”

“Good. Then we have a deal.”

“A deal? You see our marriage as a deal?”

“No.” I smile at him. “Although, so far it hasn’t been the most traditional or romantic of ways we’ve gone about this.”

“You’re not wrong,” he says. “That will be fixed.”

What the hell does he mean by that?

* * *

That evening, I find out what Matteo meant. I’d given his men a list of things to retrieve from my apartment, then went to have a long soak when I received a text from Matteo asking me to meet him in the formal dining room at seven pm.

Now I’m nervous, wondering what this could be about. Is he going to make me sign some sort of pre-nup? That really would ruin the romance.

I get ready, wearing a loose linen dress and no jewelry except for a pair of diamond earrings. Heading down the stairs, I hear something and pause on the last step. Is that music?

I follow the sound, and it draws me to the formal dining room. I round the corner and step inside the room and gasp.

My hands come up to my mouth as I stare into the room. The shutters are drawn, making the room dark, and it is lit entirely by hundreds of flickering candles. A chamber orchestra is playing in one corner of the room, and there is a harpist. Rose petals cover the polished wood floor, and the table is filled with food.

Matteo stands at the head of it and comes to take my hand and lead me to my seat. I sit, and we eat. The meal is wonderful, the music beautiful, the ambience breathtaking, but the entire time, I have a fizz of excitement in my belly.

---