Well, that was a lie. Those sheets were actually great, but I wasn’t about to admit that to him.
His expression grew harder still, and I sucked in a breath, keeping the half smile on my face. Was he close to his breaking point?
If he wasn’t, then the man was a saint. I had all but insulted his room, his accommodations, and his hearing.
“Pick up those dishes.”
I eyed him, seeing how tight his body had grown. It was a shame that he was so gorgeous, honestly. “Or what?”
Valentino grew very still, and I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room as his eyes glittered. “Excuse me?”
“What are you going to do about it if I don’t pick up those dishes?” I challenged.
My insides twisted in turmoil. Truth be told, he could do a number of things. He might pick up the dishes himself and bash me in the head with it if he really wanted to. He might push my face into the pasta on the carpet like an unruly dog. Different scenarios flashed through my mind. Each one ending with the same scene: me, dead, dead, dead.
Fuck, had I gone too far?
But it was too late, I couldn’t back out now. To do so would be to admit that I was afraid of him. I had to keep going.
“Well? I’m waiting.” I said sweetly, doing my best to keep the tremor out of my voice. “And besides, are you really a Don to begin with? I’ve never heard of you.”
The moment the corner of his mouth lifted, I knew I had gone too far. There was no inch of softness in him, and the last of my bravado fled.
This wasn’thisbreaking point, Leda. This wasyours.
He stepped over the food and I backed up against the bed, torn between telling him that I was sorry and wanting to find out what he was going to do next.
He looked at me like a wolf looked at a wounded sheep. I was suddenly very aware of the fact that before me stood a dangerous man, a man who didn’t like being told what to do and who didn’t care for the woman I was portraying at all.
Oh no.
His body pushed into mine, and a whimper escaped through my lips when I felt the evidence of what my little taunting had done to him. He was hard as a rock, his erection pressed against my belly, and I fought the urge to lick my lips.
“Do you know?” He leaned closer until his face was the only thing I could see. His arms flanked me on both sides. I was trapped. “What I do to girls that don’t listen?”
Heaven help me. “N-No?”
His grin became feral, and I felt every nerve ending stand at attention. My own body was flushed with heat, the wetness starting to leak through the thin material that was between my legs. The monster inside of me was dancing in happiness.
He flipped my plan onto its head with a single simple gesture.
I wanted him; I wanted him far too badly. This wasn’t the sort of response I had wanted for myself. I wanted him to suffer, to figure out what in the heck he was going to do with me acting up like this.
Instead, I had turned on the floodgates to my own arousal, desperate to know what he was going to do to me next. What I wanted him to do to me next. Would he fuck me now? Would he throw me on this bed and have his way with me like he had planned on all along?
If he walked away, I might be partial to begging this time around. Valentino had left me wanting more last time, and my body hadn’t forgotten the fact.
His hand came up, and I gasped as a finger trailed down my cheek lightly, his blue eyes never changing color.
“So, you’re a bad girl now,” he whispered, the barest hint of mint tickling my nose. “And bad girls get punished, Leda.”
My knees weakened as his finger slid down the column of my throat, over the frantic beat of my pulse under my skin before he grasped ahold of the neckline to the teddy. I squeaked as he tore it down the middle—much like he had done with the chemise hours before—and as the sheer material fell to the floor, he pushed me onto the bed.
I overstepped.
And now he was going to make me pay.
Chapter 22