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Taste him. Take a bite out of his perfectly muscled, towering frame and then savor him deep in my stomach.

For a frozen moment I’m deliriously drowning in the inky void of his eyes and the sheer proximity of his skin and his scent. Then it all shatters when he opens that pretty mouth.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he hisses through clenched teeth, his eyes sparking with black fire and flickering flecks of gold.

Mostly about taking a bite out of you and savoring the taste?

“I was thinking you’re a married man,” I hiss.

There's a subtle shift in his expression.

One thing I’ve realized about Damiano is that he rarely does “big, grand, displays of emotion”. But the smallest movements and faintest flickers in his gaze can somehow shift an entire mood or cut deeper than a blade.

He scowls slightly. “Vivienne wasn’t my fucking date.”

I roll my eyes as I turn to the two empty glasses on the bar: a rocks glass with the last drops of whiskey still at the bottom, and an empty wine glass with cunt-face’s lipstick on the rim.

“Oh, please.”

“Bella.” His fingers tighten on my knees, sending an aching throb of need teasing through my center. “We attend a university filled with heirs to some of the biggest, most connected criminal organizations on earth. Sometimes when two of those heirs are sitting down for a drink together, shocking though that might be to you, they’re discussing business.”

My mouth closes.

“I’m trying to put something together between my father and hers.”

Well, fuck.

That takes a little wind out of my righteous-indignation sails.

Not all of it, obviously. I mean, I still have principles.

But enough that I’m starting to feel like a bit of a psycho right now for, well…

I guess this is me gesturing broadly at the last five minutes.

“She really wasn’t your date.”

“Like you said… I’m a married man,” he says with the faintest hint of sarcasm.

My throat bobs as my gaze drops for a breathless second to where his hands are still wrapped around my bare thighs, then drifts back up to his dark eyes.

Heat twists low in my stomach.

“Well,” I murmur, suddenly much less interested in discussing Vivienne than I was thirty seconds ago. “That does…complicate my argument.”

His glare deepens. I hate how attractive that is.

“However,” he says slowly, “even if she had been, you don’t get to set women on fucking fire because you’re annoyed.”

“I mean, it worked for the Spanish Inquisition?”

Damiano gives me a look.

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” I announce in a weirdly loud voice and not-that-impressive English accent, quoting the Monty Python movie Dad and I watched all the time when I was growing up.

My glowering husband’s brow furrows. “Actually, the Council of the Supreme Inquisition issued public proclamations called edicts of faith, which gave communities a thirty-day notice that they would be arriving to investigate them.” He lifts a shoulder. “Everyone expected the Spanish Inquisition.”

I glare at him. He glares back. Then I roll my eyes and make a face at him. “You’ve actually slept with a woman before, yes?”