Page 8 of Desire and Revenge

My gaze drops down to my feet. “Oh. Thank you.”

“If you were planning to run, the least you could have done was wear shoes.”

I drop down onto the stone bench behind me, back straight, knees pressed together, and palms on my thighs. Even bare feet and less than put together, with the soreness burning between my legs, I’m still as conscious of appearances as ever.

The right thing to do is to turn around and go back the way I came. In no world am I supposed to be in a secluded green room with my husband’s mysterious friend long past my bedtime. Speaking of which...

“Are you and Sebastian really childhood friends? Well, that’s a silly question. I know you’re not his blood. What I’m driving at is what’s the relationship between the both of you?”

He leans against the wooden shelf to his side, one leg crossed over the other. “You should have asked that question during pillow talk, earlier.”

“Pillow talk? What’s that?”

His eyes narrow in disbelief, his gaze cutting into me. “You messing with me, right?”

“Why would I? I don’t know what you’re talking about, and that’s why I asked.”

He slants me an expressionless gaze. “Christ, are you a child?” His voice is laced with disgust, and I bristle at it.

I may be petite, but I’m not a child. In fact, I don’t remember a time when I was a child. “I’m an adult.” For good measure, I hold up my left hand with my wedding band on it.

The dark-haired man doesn’t even bother to glance at the ring—or me, for that matter.

“That just means ‘fuck off, she’s taken’. I bet he didn’t even wait for you to hit puberty before sliding it on your finger.”

“You have a dirty mouth,” I tell him, making a face. My father would call him a thug, and would have refused to do business with a man like him.

Nero snorts. “I’m not one of your little suit-wearing friends who think they’re the scariest thing out there.”

I don’t tell him that the joke’s on him because I don’t have friends. That’d be a bit too pathetic, even for me. “Then what are you?”

One corner of his mouth curls up, and then he goes back to puffing on his cigarette. I swing my legs, studying him. His arms are bare of tattoos, but I know he has one because it rises up from under his collar. I saw it earlier in the day, and it looked like vines.

“What does your tattoo mean?”

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” he responds, his voice laced with boredom.

“You’re changing the topic,” I accuse.

“I’m not,” he says. “I just don’t plan on satisfying your curiosity.”

“How about I answer one in turn? We can make it a game.”

He raises his head, and those dark orbs that seem to be absorbing and snuffing out all the light around him meet mine. “There’s nothing I want to know about you.”

I cock my head, mystified by his callous responses. Is he being particularly hostile to me or is being a grump his default setting?

“Smoking isn’t good for you,” I say, at a loss as to what to say, but not wanting to sit in silence either, or worse, left alone out here. I’m being distracted from the horrors of my wedding night, and that’s good enough for me.

A hum is his only response, but his lazy gaze shifts to me and stays there. I swallow to wet my suddenly parched throat.

“Why did you come back? I know there’s more to it than just the wedding.” My brain is screaming at me to backtrack.

The way his eyes narrow should terrify me, but instead my stomach swirls with something that feels suspiciously like excitement, and I know I’ve touched a nerve. It’s unsettling, but oddly intriguing.

“Alright, enlighten me,” he says with a hint of sarcasm. “Why do you think I came back, Sofia?”

CHAPTER 3

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