He had the satisfaction of seeing Luisa look as ifherjaw wanted to hit the floor.
A little too much time passed before she composed herself, lifted her chin back up, and airily said, “If you were human,you’d have recognised that I’ve spent the past two years thinking you’re an unfeeling arsehole and hating you for putting me through a marriage that neither of us wanted when you had more than enough money to walk away from that business deal and more than enough cash to help my parents if you’d really wanted to. But hey, congratulations on working out that I’m angry with you by the end of it, and so soon after recognising that your shitty attitude towards me might have made me unhappy too. Maybe your secret creators did update you past the prototype stage… but only to basic beginner level.”
His compliant little wife…
He’d always known her compliance was a front, that the real Luisa had kept herself hidden in the shadows. He’d caught glimpses of the real Luisa, but they’d only been flashes, like unexpected streaks of lightning in the sky, and he could only thank the Lord that she’d waited until their dying days to step fully into the light and demand her voice be heard.
God, she was majestic.
Unthinkingly, he traced a finger over a high cheekbone.
His touch on skin that was softer than butter made them both jolt from the shock of electricity that fired between them.
His blood pumping thick and hard, he roughly said, “Believe me, Luisa, where you’re concerned, my creators gave me someveryhuman feelings and functions.”
Her eyes widened, the pulse in them now burning with a different kind of fire, and there was a moment, barely the breath of a second, when all he could see was the plumpness of her tantalising lips, when it could have been just the two of them in the whole world; the two of them locked in a battle of wills with their selves.
Whether he would have taken the step needed to close the distance between them and haul her into his arms to kiss hersenseless if voices and footsteps hadn’t suddenly rung out in the still air was something he would never know.
Dropping his finger from her cheek, he took a step back and rolled his neck, swallowing control back into himself.
No one entering the casino would guess it was actually a ballroom. Luisa walked into it on legs that were still trembling. It felt like the entirety of her body, inside and out, was trembling.
That shock of sexual attraction she’d suffered on the yacht had nothing on what was happening to her now. She could feel the mark Gennaro’s finger had made on her skin like a scald.
All around them, betting chips were being placed, card sharks trying their luck against the house, but it was to the roulette table that Gennaro steered her.
“Want to play?” he asked.
She shook her head. She didn’t like roulette. All gambling was a game of chance but the outcome of a spin of the roulette wheel was out of everyone’s hands.
He shrugged, unconcerned, and handed the croupier a thick wedge of cash to exchange for a pile of playing chips. By Luisa’s estimation, he’d just handed over ten thousand euros.
“I’m going to play blackjack,” she said impulsively, sliding away before he could respond.
She didn’t care that she was technically breaking their agreement that she cling to his side like a limpet unless otherwise instructed. She needed to breathe air that wasn’t polluted with Gennaro.
The first blackjack table with empty seats was three tables away, and she sank onto the stool with relief and handed over her bank card, exchanging one hundred euros for chips. She’dworked too hard in not killing Gennaro these last two years to waste the money she did have. She’d saved virtually every cent of the allowance he transferred into her account each month for her ‘living expenses’; money doled out in the same way her parents had paid her allowance when she’d been an adolescent, a reminder of who was in charge and who held the purse strings.
It was one thing being entirely reliant on your parents as a minor – that was the natural order of the world – but quite another to be a fully grown woman and entirely reliant on your husband. As part of their contract she’d been forbidden to work lest, heaven forfend, it made her too busy to ask how high when he told her to jump. Her stomach curdled every time her allowance landed in her account.
And now her stomach was curdling for a whole different reason, and she studiously looked at the two cards she’d been dealt and fought the compulsion to turn her head to the roulette table.
Gennaro didn’t see the ball land in its final pocket of the spinning wheel. His gaze was on Luisa playing blackjack with a body language so stiff she should be playing poker. He watched her indicate for her croupier to twist at the same moment his croupier pushed the pile of chips Gennaro had just won to him.
“Cash them in,” he ordered. He’d made a killing on the roulette table and beaten the casino which meant he’d beaten the Espositos and so made his killing taste even sweeter, but his head wasn’t on the gamble of the roulette wheel.
His head was on the gamble of his wife.
Stick or twist…?
Although Luisa’s outward attention was focused on the game she was playing… she was down to her last two playing chips; enough for only one more hand… inwardly, everything was Gennaro. The rapid increase of her heartbeats and the sensation of her skin lifting told her he was nearing her even before his hand landed on her shoulder and the scent of his cologne invaded her airwaves.
His deep voice was low. “Come. We have socialising to do.”
She didn’t even pretend to bark like a disobedient dog in her head at this. Her heart wasn’t just thumping in her chest but in the whole of her body, the beats a torpid echo through her veins and skin and a roar in her ears.
Was it any wonder she’d lost every hand she’d played when she’d spent the whole time on tenterhooks for the moment she was required to join herself back to his hip?