“Then I’m about to make you ecstatic,” she raged at him.
He couldn’t see anyone, but he knew there were likely a dozen or more pairs of eyes on them at the moment. Everyone in Santa Biago knew of the Orsinos and what they truly were. There weren’t any secrets. Especially how much she hated him.
He met her eyes after surveying the quiet walls around them. “The gossips will make plenty of hay about this for weeks,” he grinned.
She held up her hands and they looked like claws… they were claws.
And he wanted to wear her mark the same way she wore his.
“Just go home, Uberto. We can handle this… without you.”
He shook his head, a resolute shake that had her growling from deep in her throat.
Uberto took a step forward and then another one when she didn’t eviscerate him for the insult. “Emiliana, you are, and always have been, a magnificent creature, but the Orsinos always have a representative at the meeting.”
“Why you?” Instead of angry, she sounded confused and almost lost. Not that he’d say that since he liked his parts where they were. “Since you left, it’s always been Salvatore. And last year, it was Valerio. Why did it have to be you? Now?”
He didn’t have anything left but the truth. “Salvatore is busy, his cub is young, and he has his hands full as the head of our security firm in New York. Valerio’s mate is heavy with their cub.” He swallowed and steadied his breath. “And even if Salvatore hadn’t asked me to come, I would have wanted to be here. Because you’re my mate, Ana. You’re the center of my soul. I let you send me away once before. That was my mistake.”
“You? The ‘Great’ Uberto Orsino admit to making a mistake?”
His growl silenced her for a moment and he wasn’t going to squander it. “You wear my mark, and you matter to me. You and this valley matter to me. And this meeting is one of our responsibilities.”
“Our?” she questioned with a stubborn tilt to her chin.
He shook his head again. “No. Yes,” he corrected, “since you’re one of us.”
Jet lag. That’s what he told himself. Jet lag was the reason he didn’t see the left hook she leveled at his jaw… and the reason he was on the ground, those ridiculous cobble stones likely bruising his hip and shoulder.
She stood over him for a moment, those incredible heels making her legs look like his personal erotic dream. “Who are you? I told you to stay away from me, ‘Berto, and I mean it. Take this as my invitation to go back to New York. If you’re still here tomorrow, I’m going to take your nose and tear it off, before I stuff it down your throat.”
She stomped away in a huff. Those heels, those legs, that luscious behind.
He may have been born in a town named for a saint, but the insatiable thirst he felt for her rode him like a demon. As he was most certainly in hell.
And he loved every damn minute of it.