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He made a questioning noise in his throat, but when I tried to turn around, he kept me still with one hand clamped on my shoulder, the other massaging the base of my skull in a way that made my spine tingle.

“Why are you being . . . nice?” I asked suspiciously. “What happened yesterday, really? Is this Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”

A low chuckle against the side of my head. For a second, I thought I felt the press of his nose into my hair. “What does a young girl from Sicily know about a sci-fi flick from the seventies?”

“Finn and Elijah are big into old movies,” I admitted reluctantly. “I’ve found I like them too.”

Dario’s hand stilled. “You watch films with two men?”

“You make it sound as if I offered my body to two men for five bucks and a six pack of beer,” I drawled.

A long tense silence followed where Dario stopped massaging my head and stepped back to shampoo his own hair. I spun around, staying out of the spray, to watch him.

“The idea of you cuddling up to two men who are not your husband is not appealing to me,” Dario admitted without opening his eyes as he washed the bubbles out of his hair.

“The idea of you spending time with Aria and whomever else doesn’t exactly appeal to me, but we don’t have the kind of relationship where we dictate what each other can or cannot do,” I pointed out. “As long as you aren’t sleeping with other women, I don’t give a fuck, and neither should you.”

Wolfish pale eyes popped open and pinned me in place. “Don’t we? I seem to remember that the freedoms you have, I allow you. And if you fucked someone else, Fiammetta, I hope you understand you would be signing their death warrant.”

“So you’re still seeing Aria and other women, then?” I countered boldly.

He huffed in frustration. “I haven’t spoken to the woman in years. But what matters more, wife, is who you fraternize with.”

I snorted, ignoring the way his possessiveness tripped my heart up. “You don’t even know what I do with my time and don’t pretend to care.”

“Perhaps I didn’t,” he mused, brows two slashing black lines folded together over his nose, mouth a flat white-pink line. “But maybe I do now. Maybe spending a day lost to the world because of a bad storm and a terrible business meeting means that I have a desire to . . . voltare pagina.”

Turn the page.

“What’s the angle here, Dario?” I demanded, flattening a hand to his chest to push him against the wall. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Like?”

“A decent fucking human being,” I snapped. “I’m sick of your yo-yoing. Most of the time you are the cold bastardo you’ve seemed mostly happy to play for the entirety of our marriage, and then you do this.”

“This being . . . acting like a ‘decent fucking human being’?” he taunted, completely unfazed by my anger.

“Yes!”

Dario stared at me coolly for such a long moment that I gasped when he suddenly sprang into action, lunging forward to haul me into his arms, one hand under my ass as I instinctively wrapped my legs around his lean hips.

Secured, he spun us, pressing my spine against the wall he’d just occupied, his other hand collaring my throat, thumb over my suddenly pounding pulse point. The ridge of his erection pressed to the underside of my thigh, sliding wetly along the crease beside my pussy.

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

I loved when he got like this, animalistic and nearly terrifying. It made my heart travel into my stomach and between my thighs, pulsing like a strobe light.

“I will never be a ‘decent fucking human being,’” he growled, his face so close I could count the wet spikes of his eyelashes. “But you don’t care about all that. You like me feral. You like me dark and hungry. Don’t you, principessa?”

I licked my lips, catching the rough edge of his stubbled chin.

“You’re avoiding my questions,” I pointed out, annoyed by the breathless quality of my voice.

“You’re avoiding the truth,” he condemned before nipping at my bottom lip. “You don’t care that I’m a cold, ruthless bastard. You just want me. Don’t deny it, not when I can feel the greedy clench of your pussy against my shaft. You’d give anything for me to lift you up and impale you on my cock right now. No permission asked, none needed.”

Yes, my hindbrain hissed.

“How like a man to assume all a woman needs is a dick,” I countered, nails digging into his muscle-rounded shoulders. He had freckles I’d never noticed before dusting the tops, too much exposure to the sun. “We need quality time, a listening ear, a partner who is not only willing but happy to prioritize her needs over their own.”