Page 68 of Bound in Debt
“I don’t see what good they would do me when I’m facing you, princess.”
“How did you know I was up?”
“Your breathing.”
Oh.
Clever observation, killer husband.
Weirdly, nothing about him scares me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m put off when he glowers at me or scowls after I’ve done something he doesn’t approve of. He doesn’t like me and it’s obvious, but being the focus of his displeasure is becoming so routine that I almost don’t even register his irritation anymore.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper. I’m spiraling because my nerves are shot. My mother is going to kill me. That fear, imagining her finding out and unleashing all her wrath on me, turned into a horrific nightmare. Hence, me lying awake in a cold sweat.
Dante doesn’t need to hear all that. He doesn’t care.
“Rule number five, princess?—”
“Oh, hell no,” I chide with knitted brows, even though he can’t see them. But maybe he can sense them with all those inhuman superpowers of his. “You’ve reached your limit on rules, Mr. Moretti.”
“There is no limit.”
“There is. That’s my rule number one.”
I think I see a ghost of a smirk play along his lips, but it’s gone before I can be sure. “What’s rule number two?”
“Shutting up when I tell you to.”
Dante’s brows lift as if surprised by my reply but I’m fully aware that he’s not. “How wifely of you, princess. You’re really fitting into the role.”
“That’s my job, isn’t it?”
“Amongst other things.”
“Like?”
He slightly rocks his head back and forth against the pillow, probably weighing which fights with me are worth it. “Too late for all that.”
I bristle at his non-answer, but the avoidance gambit isn’t all that surprising. “Don’t tell me you’re a grumpy old man who has a strict bedtime and never fucks past eight.”
That comment has Dante’s eyes flying open and my whole body buzzes at the impact of those dark eyes as they slam into mine. The moment is suddenly far too intimate.
We’re alone.
In a bed.
I’m his wife.
He’s my husband.
This is all a sham.
But I think that makes it easier to tease him. There won’t be any lasting repercussions. This will end eventually. It has to. And we’ll both get to walk away.
“You’re pretty ballsy for a virgin.”
What the hell?
“What?” I shoot back, more than a little insulted that he thinks me that innocent and naive. He may have more than two decades of life experience on me, but I’m no nun. I’ve had boyfriends, hookups. “If you wanted to marry someone pure enough to pass muster in the nineteenth-century, you picked the wrong girl.”
