Page 90 of For the Love of the Gods

Dominic was doing the same, looking somewhere right over my left shoulder. A waiter who was shaking so hard it looked like he had a permanent chill walked up a moment later, showing us a bottle of wine that Maria had picked out for us.

After Dominic looked at the label, the waiter awkwardly shoved the bottle toward me. It was a recent bottle from a Bacchus vineyard and a tart, dry white wine. I smiled, half at the wine and half at the idea that Jason would chastise me for preferring his Roman counterpart’s grapes.

At my nod, the waiter reached into his apron for a bottle opener. The second his hand slipped trying to cut off the top of the wax, Dominic grumbled, “I can do that.”

“No, I couldn’t let you,” the waiter said, terrified.

Dominic took the bottle out of his hand anyway. “Not a fan of other people serving my wife.”

The possessiveness sent my heart beating double time and the waiter running off. The second he was out of ear shot, I let out the giggle I’d been holding in.

Dominic’s eyes lit up, but kept his focus on the bottle. He peeled off the wax, uncorked the bottle, and poured me a taste with such skill and grace it was borderline erotic.

I barely tasted the wine he poured under the close scrutiny of Dominic’s eyes. The way he watched my neck as I swallowed.

My cheeks burned. He noticed. And fucking smirked.

“Asshole,” I grumbled at him, right as the poor waiter returned with a basket of bread and a plate of a creamy white spread.

Oh, Maria was a gem. It was one of my favorite dishes of hers—made of fish roe, onion, lemon, garlic, and olive oil.

I dug in a piece and moaned helplessly at the taste. Dominic raised an eyebrow and I narrowed my eyes, daring him to tell me that sounded familiar. He—very wisely—just grabbed a piece of bread and tried some himself.

He let out a groan in the back of his throat that clearly took him by surprise. Dominic’s eyes shot up to arrest mine and I let myself match the smirk he gave me.

The air around us grew tense, the soft candlelight adding to whatever electricity was cracking in the space between us. But we were in public, it was no time for tearing off his clothes.

To break it, I went back to looking around me as subtly as I could. That was something productive I could do, instead of figuring out how to talk to Dominic without it turning into a fight, lighthearted or otherwise, for the whole restaurant to see.

“There’s someone staring at you,” Dominic seethed, his hand curling on the table.

“Where?” I asked, cringing slightly at the panic in my voice.

Dominic looked at me under pinched brows, then jerked his chin over to the space behind my left shoulder. Under the guise of looking at the flowers and vines climbing up the side of the restaurant, I turned over my shoulder.

I knew who it was immediately. It was a man, about in his fifties, with a protruding belly and a graying beard, staring directly at me.

His eyes were narrowed, lips pulled into something of a sneer. But then when he locked me in a second of eye contact, he winked, the sneer transforming into a grin.

So an advance, then.

I turned back to Dominic who was a little paler throughout the middle of his face. “Can I use the knife, now? I’ll be subtle, I promise.”

I laughed softly. “No, I think that would defeat the purpose of coming here and keeping the peace.”

“Still want to,” Dominic grumbled, before tossing back his glass of wine.

“Why? Jealous?” I meant it as a joke, but the second the question left my lips, Dominic’s eyes went black.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if you’re allowed to be.” There were no feelings between us. Unless that’s what you wanted to call the urge to scrunch my nose in vexation around him.

Every time we were together—well, apart from when we weretogether—I constantly felt like I was frustrated. Like I was trying to remember a word that was on the tip of my tongue or couldn’t find a book I could haveswornI’d seen the day before.

“Allowed?” Dominic sounded offended. “You’re my wife. An old pig winks at you in front of me and I have every right to carve the wordnointo his forehead.”

My mouth fell open an inch. “That is a…colorful image.”

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