Page 27 of Skin Deep

“She’ll get jealous.”

“Did you see the way she was looking at us tonight?” I continued when he nodded. “We have gotten her attention.”

He set his cards down. “He would look better with someone like you. You fit with him. She fits with me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why? Because she is…different?”

“Different? How?”

“Sì,” I said. “Different. Not on his level.”

“She’s not,” he said, his voice heated. “She’s so much better than him.”

“How so?”

“She’s not only beautiful, but she has depth. She has a soul. Someone like him—even his looks are dangerous. She can’t see past it. The money, too. He’s going to kill her, one way or another.”

“If she is so deep,” I said, my voice turning cold, “why would she care about his looks? His money?”

“She’s been starving her entire life. He’s poisonous food.”

“If she is as deep as you claim,” I said, picking up the cards, dealing them again. “She knows what she is eating. She is taking a chance on him knowingly—at her own risk. Not all apples are poisonous if we are immune.”

Any fool could see that Mariposa was in love, and how in love with her my cousin was. I did not take this man as a fool, but he was blinded by his feelings for her. I wondered how deep they ran and what sort of feelings they truly were.

Glancing up as I was dealing the cards, I caught the unguarded look on his face. The passion in those eyes raged, as hot as the candle between us. He did not like me talking about her like this, challenging what he believed of her.

“Have you ever fucked her?”

He almost choked on the drink he’d just taken. “What kind of question is that?”

“An honest one.”

“Have you fucked him?”

I almost laughed out loud but smiled instead. He had no clue who I was to Amadeo. Even better. “No,” I said and left it at that. I almost made a face thinking about it—we shared blood and memories.

“No,” he said, taking his cards, looking them over. “I told you of my plan?”

“Sì.” I set a card down.

“I told you that I had a—”

“List.”

“Yeah, a list,” he slurred a little. “I wanted to be good enough for her. I wanted everything I was going to give her to be good enough. She’s never had that before.”

“Good enough,” I murmured, looking him straight in the eye. “That does not sound like the kind of love I would want. Good enough is…settling for less when more is out there.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.

“Sounded that way to me.” I looked back down at my cards. “Have you ever kissed her?”

“No.”

“She has been forbidden to you. I am sure you think of her, then, when you touch yourself.” My eyes lifted to find his staring at me. “When your hand is wrapped around your cock, and you are so hard that it hurts—to find that relief, imagining she is the one doing it to you…” My words drifted because I could see the truth in his eyes.

He’d never made himself come by thinking of her, even wanting her for as long as he claimed he had.

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