Angelina tried to steel herself against him as she moved through the murky depths of the house, certain that he would try to speak to her the moment they were alone. Charm her into unwariness or attempt to disarm her with casual conversation.
But instead, he walked in silence.
And that was much, much worse.
She was so aware of him it made her bones ache. And it took only a few steps to understand that her awareness of him was not based on fear. Her breasts and her belly were tight, and grew tighter the farther away they moved from the dining room. Deep between her legs she felt swollen, pulsing in time with her heart as it beat and beat.
Helpless. Hopeless.
Red hot and needy.
The house brought it all into sharp relief. It was dimly lit and echoing, so that their footsteps became another pulse, following them. Chasing them on. Angelina was certain that if she looked at the shadow he cast behind them, she would see not a man, but a wolf.
Fangs at the ready, prepared to attack.
She could not have said why that notion made her whole body seem to boil over, liquid and hot.
She walked on and on through a house that seemed suddenly cavernous, her mind racing and spinning. Yet she couldn’t seem to grasp on to a single thought, because she was entirely too focused on the man beside her and slightly behind her, matching his stride to hers in a way that made her feel dirty, somehow.
It felt like a harbinger. A warning.
She was relieved when they reached the conservatory at last, and for once didn’t care that it was more properly an abandoned sunroom. She rushed inside, shocked to see that her hands trembled in the light from the hall as she picked up the matches from the piano bench, then set about lighting the candles on the candelabra that sat atop her piano.
Because her parents only lit a portion of the house, and this room only Angelina used did not qualify.
But then it was only the two of them in the candlelight, and that made the pulse in her quicken. Then drum deep.
Especially when, overhead through the old glass, she could see the moon behind the clouds—a press of light that did not distinguish itself enough for her to determine its shape. Or fullness.
Angelina settled herself on the piano bench. And it took her a moment to understand that it wasn’t her pulse that she could hear, seeming to fill the room, but her own breathing.
Meanwhile, Benedetto stood half in shadow, half out. She found herself desperately trying to see where the edges of his body ended and the shadows began, because it seemed to her for a panicked moment there that there was no difference between the two. That he was made of shadows and inky dark spaces, and only partly of flesh and bone.
“We have electricity,” she felt compelled to say, though her voice felt like a lie on her tongue. Too loud, too strange, when his eyes were black as sin and lush with invitation. Everything in her quivered, but she pushed on. “My parents encourage us to keep things more…atmospheric.”
“If you say so.”
His voice was another dark, depthless shadow. It moved in her, swirling around and around, making all the places where she pulsed seem brighter and darker at once.
She sat, breathing too heavily, her hands curved above the smooth, worn keys of this instrument that—some years—had been her only friend.
“What do you want me to play?”
“Whatever you like.”
She did not understand how he could say something so innocuous and leave her feeling as if that mouth of his was moving against her skin, leaving trails all over her body, finding those places where she already glowed with a need she hardly recognized.
You recognize it, something in her chided her. You only wish you didn’t.
Angelina felt misshapen. Powerful sensations washed over her, beating into her until she felt as if she might explode.
Or perhaps the truth was that she wanted to explode.
She spread her hands over the keys, waiting for that usual feeling of rightness. Of coming home again. Usually this was the moment where everything felt right again. Where she found her hope, believed in her future, and could put her dreary life aside. But tonight, even the feel of the ivory beneath her fingers was a sensual act.
And somehow his doing.
“Are you afraid of me, little one?” Benedetto asked, and his voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. From inside her. From deep between her legs. From that aching hunger that grew more and more intense with every second.
She shifted on the bench. Then she stared at him, lost almost instantly in his fathomless gaze. In the dark of the room with the night pressing down outside. In the flickering candlelight that exposed and concealed them both in turn.
Angelina felt as if she was free falling, tumbling from some great height, fully aware that when she hit the ground it would break her—but she couldn’t look away.
She didn’t want to look away.
He was the most marvelous thing that had ever happened to her, even if he really was a murderer.
She didn’t know where to put that.
And again, she could hear her own breath. He leaned against the side of the piano, stretching a hand out across the folded back lid, and her eyes followed the movement. Compulsively. As if she had no choice in the matter.
She would have expected a man so wealthy and arrogant to have hands soft and tender like the belly of a small dog. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a careful manicure. Or a set of garish rings.
But his hand was bare of any accoutrement. And it was no tender, soft thing. It looked tough, which struck her as incongruous even as the notion moved in her like heat. His fingers
