Instantly, I bristled, ready to don the armor I’d honed over the years of having to prove my worth in the legal profession as both a woman and an immigrant.
Dante held up one large, deeply tanned hand before I could protest, laughter dancing in his eyes. It annoyed me beyond measure that he seemed to find hilarity in every single thing I did.
“I did not mean to imply you aren’t technically a fine choice,” he allowed with great generosity. “Only that I need a specific type of person on my legal team, and even though you recovered well enough from the shock of the drive-by shooter today, I get a sense you are the type of woman who prefers the straight and narrow.” When I continued to glare at him, he cocked an eyebrow and made an innocent gesture, hands open to the ceiling. “Am I wrong in assuming this?”
I ground my teeth together. “You know what they say about assumptions.”
His head tilted to the right, strong brow furrowed. “Actually, I don’t.”
I shrugged tensely. “They make an ass out of you and me.”
He blinked, then slapped a hand on the counter and positively roared with laughter. The robust sound swelled and ebbed in my narrow kitchen, too big and bright to be contained.
“The lady can be coarse,” he said finally, still speaking through his chuckles. “Oh, the sound of a curse on your lips is sinful, Elena. You should swear more often.”
I tipped my chin slightly in the air as my only answer. I certainly would not. If anything, his remark only served to remind me that “coarse” wasn’t an adjective I ever wanted to hear in conjunction with me.
I’d worked too hard to move past the roughness of my upbringing. To be the kind of woman who worked at a top-ten law firm in the city and the type of paramour a man like Daniel might take for his partner.
Dante studied me too keenly, bracing himself on his forearms to lean familiarly over the counter as if we were two close friends having a tête-à-tête. “You know, it is the contrast between two opposites that heightens them both to keener glory. You shouldn’t be afraid to be coarse, just as I shouldn’t be afraid to be gentle. Too much of one thing is boring, Elena.”
“I’ve been accused of much worse,” I retorted acerbically.
I’d never been good at the unflappable act. It was one of the qualities I’d admired most about Daniel, his ability to remain physically unfazed even in the face of utter chaos. There was too much Latin in my blood, no matter how I tried to curb it, to rid myself of the wild extremity of my emotions.
Dante could have very well been teasing me in the way I knew many people did to build a rapport, but however well-intentioned, I wasn’t good at taking criticism.
I felt red-faced and slightly ashamed, then angry with myself for feeling that way. The complicated knot of my own raw emotions was too difficult for me to unravel. Suddenly, I was tired of myself. So exhausted by the simple act of being me.
It wasn’t an unusual sensation these days, but it made me weary to the bone.
Dante seemed to sense the shift in me, his ink-dark eyes tracing the softening line of my shoulders and the swell of my chest beneath the silk blouse as I let out a deep breath and raked in a new one.
“There,” he said, almost gently, averting his eyes as if to give me privacy while he collected my plates, glasses, and the food to move to my small round dining room table. “It is the end of a long day, Elena. Why don’t you sit down and help me eat all this food, hmm?”
I blinked as the large Made Man folded himself almost comically into a chair at my tiny table and then spread his thick thighs until barely any space remained for me to pull out the other chair. He proceeded to dish out food from various containers onto his plate, humming a vaguely familiar song under his breath as he did.
I blinked again.
It perturbed me how easily he could throw me off even though I reminded myself this was extremely bizarre behavior. The man had broken into my house to invite himself to dinner he’d bought, and somehow, he made me feel unhospitable and ungracious.
“Seduta,” Dante ordered mildly.
Instantly and without thought, I sat.
Anger spiked through me, chased by humiliation.
It had been a long time since I’d accepted any orders from any man in any language, let alone one I’d banished from my mind.
When I went to stand again, vibrating with anger, Dante lashed out and grabbed my wrist in a light but unyielding hold, making me flinch. Our eyes caught, snagged on each other for a long, disquieting moment where he looked too deep inside me.