Page 82 of Bene

With his hands curving along her jaw, the warmth of his palms seeping into her skin as he kissed her with a hunger that promised good things were coming later, Vanna forgot about everything else. Her life. The world. Everything she was supposed to do, and the things she thought she wanted.

Bene came into play.

Everything changed.

Vanna hadn’t planned for this.

Never mind … fixing it.

“God, yeah,” he said, pulling away as his thumb roved over what she was sure were her smudged lips, now, “they’re gonna adore you.”

“You think?” she asked softly.

Bene smirked, lax and lazy. “I know.”

She had a strange feeling, then.

One she hadn’t expected.

Vanna wanted to meet them, too.

Not Gian, the man who apparently ruined her family’s life and legacy. But Gian, the father who raised the man in front of her. She wasn’t interested in meeting Cara, the woman who took her dead aunt’s place, and was handed the keys to a kingdom that should have been theirs, but rather … Cara, the mother who Bene talked about with love, and total adoration.

His brothers.

Their people.

She wanted to know them.

And not the people she thought she knew—not the stories she had been told, but theirs. The things she didn’t know. All of that, she wanted to know them.

That was a problem.

Did it need to be fixed, though?

That was the better question.

If he noticed her strange change in mood, Bene didn’t say. “And hey, we’ve got a little bit of time before we need to head out … and you need to fix your lipstick now, so.”

Vanna grinned, hearing the suggestive tone in his voice clearly. She started taking steps backward, and he was quick to follow, slamming the door behind him as he moved after her. “Oh, really?”

“Mmhmm.”

Her fingers curled into the fabric of her dress, pulling up the skirt just enough for the slit to give him a peek of that thong she wore underneath. His gaze flicked downward, his lips curling up at the edges in a satisfied grin before his attention was on her face once more when she asked, “And what do you think we should do with that time, Bene?”

“Find a place to let me bend you over, say my name like that again, and you’re going to find out.”

Yes.

Absolutely, yes.

They were late to the dinner party because the one round where Bene had Vanna bent over the couch just wasn’t enough, and somehow, they found themselves naked in her walk-in closet when she attempted to fix her makeup in front of her vanity.

Shocker.

No one said a thing about the fact they were late, though, and by the time they arrived at the Guzzi mansion, dinner had started to be served. She felt all eyes on them as Bene pulled her closer to his side when they came into view of the dining room entry. His fingers drifted through her loose waves, pushing the hair out of her eyes before he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. His lips were just drifting away from her skin, their gazes meeting, as they walked into the room still tightly together, and seemingly forgetting about the room around them.

Still, she felt those eyes.