Page 68 of Bitter Poetry
My eyes swing to the door and then back again. He doesn’t do or say anything. Just stands there staring down at me.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
The darkened room doesn’t give me much, but I can make out the flash of his white teeth as he grins.
“Whatever I want.”
“I swear to God you’re not right in the head.”
He chuckles, fucking chuckles.
“Get out of my room!” I’m furious. Maybe I should be more frightened, but Christian does a lot of things to me and none of them are exactly fear.
“No can do, babe.”
“Babe! Really? Are you trying to get killed? Get out of my room!”
“Don’t think I will.”
I growl—like he reduces me to being an animal. Sleep is hard to come by since the wedding, and it wasn’t great before. I’m irrationally irritated that he woke me up for whatever fresh round of Christian bullshit this is. Was he bored? Not hit the pissing off Carmela quota this week? Grabbing the nearest pillow, I throw it at him.
He catches it.
But of course he does… And drops it to the floor next to him.
He nods at the bed. “There are a few more. Might as well exhaust the supply.”
I heave out of the bed, plant my hands on his stomach, and shove.
He has the constitution of a brick wall and doesn’t move an inch. Only now I’m standing in front of him, barefoot and wearing nothing but my negligee. And he’s just standing there, a towering wall of male flesh with a smug grin on his face.
My fingers are curled into his shirt over his abdomen. Distantly, I know I should let go, but I don’t.
A heavy pulse of arousal sweeps through me, coming out of nowhere. This is dangerous in more ways than one.
“Christian.” I try inserting a measure of authority but only deliver confused.
His fingers close over mine, carefully uncurling them and flattening them against his body. At that faint movement, I feel the ripple of abdominal muscles underneath my palms.
I don’t want to notice him. My mental plate is pretty full right now. I don’t need Christian with hisslap me whenever you need tomandate, taking greater bandwidth than it already does.
“Get out.” There’s still no conviction in my tone.
“Why would I do that?” His tone drops to a low, intimate one.
“I don’t know… maybe because my jealous, vengeful husband could return at any moment.”
“He could,” he agrees.
Still, he doesn’t release me. And something in the way he says that makes me think he’s not worried about this possibility. Maybe he knows Ettore is far away or busy.
Maybe he likes to live dangerously and doesn’t care.
His jacket is open, and his dress shirt is buttery soft under my fingertips. The material does little to shield him from me.
This is a really bad idea… I try to tug my hands away. He tightens his grip, pressing them deeper against his tight stomach.
“Please don’t.”
