Page 30 of Their UnBearable Destiny

She shrugged, and the sheet dropped lower showing him a tantalizing view of the side of her breast. Heaven.

“It’s the same thing,” she mumbled back at him. “You were just standing there,” she swallowed a breath as if she was in desperate need of air, “naked.”

“Was it because of your fa-”

“No!” She very nearly spat the word at him. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before she opened them again. “It’s not about him.”

“Then what, Ana?”

“You’re a distraction.”

“I was naked.” He shrugged. “Shifters don’t worry that much about baring skin-”

“Shifters, you mean the rest of you. The men…”

She shook her head and got up. The sheets were almost tugged free of her hands, likely a heel in the wrong place, but she didn’t let it go.

And he really wished she’d let it go, but this conversation was more important.

“What about men?”

She opened her mouth to talk and then snapped it shut again, waving her free hand in dismissal. She finally mumbled something out of the corner of her mouth. “Never mind.”

“Oh.” He gave her a grimace and held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry.”

She took a few steps and stopped. “Wait a minute.”

He tried to make his expression as neutral as possible, hoping to keep her claws out of his hide.

“Why did you apologize?”

He spoke the truth, there was no sense in trying to sneak one past her. Especially when her bear was glaring out through her eyes. “I did it because you said ’never mind.’”

That seemed to hit a glancing blow on her curiosity. “And?”

“And?” He shook his head. “There’s no and. You said never mind, and I knew I was in trouble. I wasn’t going to fight it. I was just going to honestly tell you that I was sorry.”

“For what?” Her eyes narrowed on him.

“For making you upset. I don’t know exactly what it was that I did.”

“Then why apologize?”

She apparently didn’t want to let things go as much as he did. Taking a calming breath, Uberto tried to explain. “While Natale was pregnant, she was more often than not her normal happy self, and even when she had moments when things felt over whelming or if she was upset, Salvatore seemed to understand just what to say and do to help her.” He sat on the bed so he could tell the story without looming over her. “Personally, I was more than a little over my brother’s innate ability with his mate. Not all of the Orsinos seemed to have that skill.”

If she caught on to the little bit of self-depreciating humor, she didn’t let on.

“But one day he had apparently failed to understand his mate’s intended meaning. By the time they left for her workroom, my darling sister-in-law was ready to skin my brother. He was confused to say the least.”

He looked at Emiliana and saw her hesitant expression. “Salvatore?”

He shrugged. “It was hard to believe, but when they came home it was like night and day. They were as sickeningly loving as they had been the day before.”

“What happened?” Emiliana had moved closer to him, leaning her thigh against his as she listened to his story.

“Natale’s assistant had pulled him aside less than an hour into the workday. Apparently, the entire staff were so afraid that their gentle and loving boss was about to kill her husband that they decided to intervene.”

He felt Ana’s hand on his shoulder and tried to settle his nerves, but it was hard enough when it was just her leg against his. Now, with two points of contacts they’d all but created an electric circuit that had a direct line to his cock. His luscious mate was likely to kill him with some kind of aneurysm, or a clot thrown from his groin to his brain.

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