I reach for an oblong plate I suspect is the one she requested and lift the lid without responding to her teasing. Yup. Sure enough, an assortment of decadent chocolate desserts sits atop fluted papers on the tray—a layered chocolate cake with thick icing, petit fours, chocolate-covered strawberries and cherries, a Nutella cheesecake, a mocha torte, and a chocolate lava cake dusted in powdered sugar.
“Oh my God,” she breathes, reaching her fork out to stab one of them. I pull it out of her reach just in time.
“What did I say about behaving yourself?” I slide the platter away from her. “If you touch that without my permission, you’ll be a very sorry girl.”
“Salvatore,” she says in a shocked whisper. “Youwouldn’t.”
“Deny you dessert? Of course I would. I expect obedience from my wife. Submission. You took your vows, and I’ll uphold them.” Light glints off the top of the tray as if shining in front of her just to taunt her.
I cluck my tongue at her. “Now, are you going to taunt me and force my hand, or will you behave yourself?”
I manage to keep a straight face while she chews thoughtfully on another shrimp. “Denying me those desserts would be worse than a spanking.”
“I can arrange both,” I say casually, taking a bite of risotto.
“No doubt.” The way her lips curve downward in a frown tells me I’m getting through. Part of me is teasing her because she’s so cute when she doesn’t get her way, but another part of me is totally serious. Things will go much better for her if she obeys me, and the sooner we establish that the better.
I decide it’s time to test her a little. When she reaches for a slice of the pizza, I shake my head at her. “Not yet.”
Watching me curiously, she removes her hand and lays it in her lap. I take a slice and eat it in front of her. Watching.
“Is it good?”
“Delicious. I’m hard to please when it comes to pizza, too.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Let me guess. It has to be a good authentic Italian sauce, a crust that crisps well in a wood-burning oven, just the right amount of cheese, and few toppings. None of that meat lovers whatever or pineapple for you.”
“Pineapple on pizza’s a sacrilege.”
“On that, we can agree.”
“I thought you loved everything?”
“Mosteverything. But this is what I wonder. If I truly loved everything, would I really loveanything?”
I swallow a bite of crust. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
“What came first, the chicken or the egg?” she quips.
My mind is still on what she said about love. She does love everything. But does she love everyone?
I slide a slice of pizza onto her plate and let her feast. “You behaved yourself,” I say with an approving nod. “You’ve earned your dessert.”
This earns me a squeal when she claps her hands. “Oooh, my favorite part,” she says in a breathy whisper. “Are you going to, like, feed it to me or something?”
“I’ve got a beautiful wife in a robe in front of me. What do you think?”
“I think you want me to strip,” she says, her eyes on mine. Her voice drops to a seductive register. I swallow hard. “I think you want my hands in my lap. And I think you want to feed me that chocolate bite by bite and maybe do some other wicked things with it while we’re at it.”
My heart soars at her words, at the knowledge that she understands me, while at the same time, a warning bell clangs in my mind.
I don’t know how I’ll keep myself aloof and unattached from Marialena.
I don’t know how I’ll listen to her siren song and not crash my ship upon the rocks.
“And I think you’re a fast learner, sweetheart.”
* * *