I brushed my fingertips over my lips, watching the way her furious gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered before snapping back to my eyes. “Have you ever considered it may be dangerous for a woman living alone in a house with a security system? A woman who has become a known associate of a very dangerous man with enemies who will stop at nothing to hurt him.”
“Don’t pretend you made this move because you have a bleeding heart,” she scoffed. “You did this just because you could.”
“There may have been that as well,” I agreed easily with a wide, slow grin that dominated my entire face.
She blinked at the sight dispassionately. “I am your lawyer, Mr. Salvatore, not your slave and not your soldier.”
Oh, if only she knew the truth about my family and its history of taking female slaves. If only she knew that Cosima had paid that price in servitude to my brother before they’d actually fallen in love.
I wondered how the cool Elena would react, knowing the extent of the sacrifice her sister had made for her? If she’d be broken by the weight of it, knowing there was no hope to repay her. She seemed like the type of woman who could not abide a debt remaining unpaid.
I stood then, unraveling from the low couch to my full height. She was discomforted by my proximity, only a thin wedge of vibrating space between our two bodies, but she didn’t stand down. Instead, she cocked her chin high in order to look me dead in the eye, her brows arched with haughty disdain, her lush red mouth a contrast to the tightness in her jaw.
There was such a thin line between love and hate, just as there was between heroism and villainy. It all depended on the circumstance and perspective.
At that moment, I wanted to crush her to my body and ravish that prim mouth, dishevel that perfectly curled hair, tear open the silk bow on her blouse with my teeth, then rip apart the bra barely visible beneath that so I could suck on her breasts. I wanted to make her shake for me, quake for me, fucking break for me.
Because I knew no one had ever broken Elena Lombardi.
That fucker Daniel Sinclair hadn’t even come close.
I’d grown up around horses in England, learned to ride about the same time I learned to walk, and I knew all about the wild, willful beasts. Elena reminded me of an Arabian, she had all the raw power and majesty of the stead, but someone had mistreated her, taught her to bite and shy away from the rider.
I knew with the right training and a patient master, she would be glorious.
It was the worst idea I’d ever had, and I’d had my fair share, but suddenly, irrevocably, I wanted to be the one who earned that hard-won trust. The man who would be rewarded with the glory of those spoils.
Eyes locked on her, jaw clenched against the lust surging inside me, I lifted my hand and cupped her long throat easily in my palm, curling my fingers around the side over the mad thrum of her pulse.
“No,” I agreed in a low purr. “You aren’t a soldier or a slave. You are a fighter, my fighter until you’ve won this war with me. But I am the general, Elena, and the sooner you get used to taking orders from me, the better.”
“I don’t take orders from any man,” she snapped, teeth clicking together with the force of her delivery.
Ah, I’d hit a nerve.
“Ah, but I am not just a man,” I promised her, gentling her the way I would a nervous mare, my thumb stroking down her throat. “I am capo dei capi of the New York City Camorra. If you do not know how to obey, I will teach you.”
She seemed to have forgotten I was holding her so intimately, but my movement made her swallow hard against my hand. I was close enough to see the way her pupils expanded, shadows eating up the silvered gray.
For one uninhabited second, I thought she might let me kiss that mouth.
And for one vivid breath, I wondered if that might become one of the biggest accomplishments in my already storied life.
And then Marco coughed.
It echoed like a bomb in the silent room and tore Elena from my grip. She stepped back immediately, and then, before I could blink, she struck out with her right hand and slapped me right across the cheek.
Heat blasted over the side of my face, a spike of pain on the side of my cheekbone where one long, red fingernail tore my skin.
We stared at each other for a long interminable moment, her breath a harsh rattle, her eyes wide and pewter, brushed with fear for the first time that night.