Page 11 of Beautiful & Dirty

“Who better than me to know what women can be like?”

“You don’t seem terrible,” he whispers to me. His eyes are heated and dancing with mischief and lust; it’s a heady mix.

I huff a pathetic laugh and shake my head. “I wish I had it in me to be, but I don’t.”

“Good.”

“Not good. I’m a pushover.”

His eyes search my face, and he nods. “And men take advantage of that.”

“Everyone takes advantage of that,” I admit in a rushed, embarrassed whisper. “I should learn to be harder.”

“No, no, no,” he tsks immediately. I feel just the tip of his thumb caressing the side of my left hand on the table. It makes me feel hot again, burning away the food coma I’d been sinking into. “It would break my heart to know that you’d changed just because men are terrible.”

His other hand moves to my face and cups my cheek.

I suck in a sharp breath at his hands on me again, as amazing as before; warm, dry, and gentle, but sure.

“When you catch your train today, I want to think of you as soft and pure as you are right now.”

I’m not bold, like ever. People-pleaser. I don’t do things I want; I do things other people want me to do, but I feel bold right now. Maybe it’s all the dough and cheese and wine egging me on because in this moment I feel like I can do anything, I can say anything, and I can have anyone I want. I lick my lips and sit up straight in my chair, scooting to the edge of my seat, inching closer to his mouth and that beard. “What if I don’t want to be so soft and pure when I get on that train today?”

His mouth curves into the sexiest smile. “How would you like to feel when you board that train, bella?”

“Dirty. Beautiful. Used,” I whisper.

“You are already beautiful,” he says. His hand caresses my jaw and then skims over my bottom lip. “But I can help you with the other two. Gladly.”

Chapter 6

I’m sittingin my fake office, listening to the sounds of the kitchen and the bar, wondering if Flavia knows what’s coming and waiting for Giulio’s text message confirming that they’ve collected my wife. They’ll drive her to our home in the countryside, just a couple of hours’ drive from the city, and if I wanted, I could be in my car right now and meet them there, but I don’t want to.

Flavia might not know what’s coming when Giulio shuffles her into my car, but once she sees Alfonso in the car with him, and they begin to drive her out of the city, she’ll know then. She’ll know she’s been found out, and she’ll be afraid. And I don’t want to rush her through that realization. I want her to sit with it and let the fear tear through her like wildfire. This night has been twenty years in the making, and it’ll be made all the sweeter by prolonging these moments of anticipation. Besides, she’ll hate that I’m making her wait. As the minutes and hours tick by, her fear will mix with anger at my disrespect.

Good, I think. She deserves more than that, and soon enough, she’ll get it.

I spend the next fifteen or twenty minutes — I hardly know — thinking about Shae. I’m not proud of it. Even though I’ve hated Flavia every day we were together, I’ve been faithful to her, not because she deserved it but because I know better than anyone that an affair is a liability. It’s what my mother was to my father, and I vowed never to put myself in the same situation.

And what has it gotten me besides blue balls, pent-up rage, and a need for a complete stranger that I can hardly contain? Because I want Shae more than I care about the promises I made to my younger self. I want her more than I want to be faithful to a woman who more than likely supported an assassination attempt against me. I force myself to make peace with that desire before I return to the dining room; Shae doesn’t deserve my guilt. It takes me much less time than I would have imagined.

I know there’s a chance she could be long gone by the time I return, but there she is with a wistful smile on her face. She looks happy, sated, and still so fucking pure my balls ache.

But she’s not, I discover.

Dirty. Beautiful. Used.

She doesn’t see it, but even that nervous, whispered request for me to defile her is more innocent than I’ve ever felt, and I want to bask in the glow of her for the bit of time I have even if I don’t deserve one second of it.

Dirty. Beautiful. Used.

I can give her that, and I want her to give me just a taste of her innocence to hold close as I walk back into hell.

I take her hand and lead her past the kitchen to my real office. I could take her anywhere — even the apartment that will be mine again after tonight — but I don’t. There’s not enough time, and more importantly, I want her here. I want the brightest thing in my day to invade the darkest room in my life. I want to replace the metallic scent of blood and disinfectant with the bright citrusy scent of the perfume I smelled on her body when I kissed her hand. When she’s long gone, back to Rome and then America, I want to call the memory of her in this room to mind, and I want to let myself drift away.

“Where are we?” she asks when I open the door for her.

“An extra storeroom,” I say. A lie. I feel more regret about that than what I’m about to do once she’s gone.

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