Page 37 of Marrying the Enemy

“You chose the location,” he reminded her.

She threw an aggrieved look at him. “I thought you were only mean when it was necessary.”

“This is,” he insisted. “You need to hear it. The few times I saw you before Australia, we were in public, but you were always with someone. At the wedding, you were sharing a suite with Logan. Of course, I assumed you were sleeping with him. When you told me you had your own room, I wondered for about half a second if those old rumors were true, but you’re twenty-five, Evie. And when I touch you—”

“Would you stop?” she hissed, glaring at him. “This is not necessary.”

“It is. There’s a septic little boil between us that needs to be lanced.”

“Your love poems need work.”

“I want you to understand, Evie.”

“Understand what?” Her mouth trembled and her eyes sheened with persecuted tears. “That you have the upper hand? That you can make me do things that are out of character and self-destructive? I know. That’s why I hate you.”

And that was it. “That’s why I hate you, too.”

She flinched.

He took no satisfaction in it. In fact, concern hit him at her words. It was a worry that had been rubbing like sandpaper in him even before he’d fully grasped that their night together had been her first time having sex with anyone.

“I didn’t really believe I was your first until right now,” he said gravely. “I wish you would have told me, Evie. If you felt like you couldn’t stop me—”

“I couldn’t stop myself. Okay? Is that what you need to hear?”

“I need to hear that I didn’t hurt you,” he said through his teeth, leaning in because they were talking so quietly. “I need to hear that, in future, you will tell me if I do.”

The gloss on her eyes thickened. “You’re hurting me now. This is awful,” she told him in a strained, angry voice. “You’re putting me on the spot for your own entertainment. How much humiliation do you need, Dom? Tell me the exact degree so I can get there and get it over with.”

God, he wanted to grab her and... Not talk. Not have to find words and admit to things that turned him inside out in the same way they were torturing her.

So he just said it.

“There was no one else for me, either. Not after we met in Budapest. No one interests me, not the way you do. And that made me very grumpy, Evie. Very.”

Eve’s heart swerved in her chest. Her stomach was already wobbling from his, “I need to hear that in future...”

After talking to her brother, her emotions had been all over the place and she’d gathered them all into blame and resentment toward this man because, well, who else would a Visconti target when life was not going right?

“You’re lying.” She realized they were both angled into the center of the table so they could spike their hot words across the candle at each other. She pressed back in her chair, body trembling as though coming off a wild ride at an amusement park.

“We do a lot of things to each other, Evie, but we don’t lie.” His mouth was a bitter line that he pressed to the rim of his glass, draining half the contents before he sat back and stared at her, seeming to say Your move.

The waiter seized his moment. He rushed in to drop their amuse-bouche before them. With a mumbled handful of words in Italian, he topped up their glasses and hurried away.

Eve took a shaken breath, wondering if the entire restaurant was watching the forks of lightning they were throwing at each other, counting as they waited for the roll of thunder.

“Our marriage will be an alliance that will benefit both our families,” Dom said grimly. “I will exploit it in every way I can. I’m not stupid. But that’s not why we’re marrying, Evie.”

She had come here believing she had no choice in this matter and her stomach dipped afresh at the resolve in his statement. At the way he talked about it like it was a done deal.

“We’re going to marry because we don’t want anyone else.” His pinning gaze was impossible to break. “Do we?”

It seemed laughable that he was asking her to speak for both of them, but there was too much acrimony in him for her to believe he was being anything but truthful.

“No,” she admitted with defeat. It didn’t make any sense, but, “We don’t.”

He signaled to their server and ordered, “Champagne, per favore.”

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