Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“Oh, yeah.” He’s all teeth as he grins at me. “That’s a lot cooler.”
Tatiana’s tone holds a bite. “We’re learning about birds.”
Ignoring her hostility, I adopt an amiable tone. “We should go to the bird park.”
Noah is quick to jump on the offer. “Can we?”
Tatiana pushes to her feet, refusing the hand I offer her. “We’ll see.” She puts the mirror on the vanity. “Two more minutes, Noah.”
He pouts. “But I want to stay longer.”
“Bedtime is at eight. If you want me to read you a story, you better finish your bath.”
His shoulders sag in a dramatic way, making me smile, but he doesn’t argue.
“Can Dante read the story?” he asks.
“We’ll see,” Tatiana says again, turning away from me to pick his clothes up from the floor.
She carries the garments to the basin, which is filled with soapy water, and dunks them inside.
I come up behind her. “The hotel has a laundry service.”
She shrugs, keeping her back turned to me. “I’m used to washing our clothes by hand.”
I don’t like it. “You don’t have to.”
“It’s just a T-shirt and underpants.”
“Tatiana.”
At my stern tone, she spins around, soap bubbles dripping from her hands. “What?”
And there it is, that feisty nature of hers. She could never contain her anger or irritation.
I take in her beautiful face, a face of which every line is drawn in my mind. Yet there are new lines now, lines I don’t know, and I’m both curious about and jealous of them.
She flinches when I reach out to trace the small scar on her cheek. Leaning away, she avoids my touch. I still with my hand in the air, making it clear I’m not going to hurt her.
She freezes like a bird caught in a trap, watching me with trepidation dancing in her green eyes as I cup her face and rub my thumb over the silky skin of her cheek. The scar is bumpy under my pad. Her throat bobs as she swallows. She remains dead still as I learn the shape of the silvery mark that sits like a seal on her cheekbone, somehow enhancing instead of diminishing her beauty.
I move my thumb aside to study the small, embossed circle while keeping my hand on her face. “How did that happen?”
She purses her lips and tries to turn her head away. “It was nothing.”
Narrowing my eyes, I hold fast. “That doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
That infamous impatience of hers rears its head again. “What does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“Why?” She frowns. “What do you care?”
That little circle looks suspiciously like the mark of a ring. At the thought alone, that someone dared to plant a fist in her face, red-hot violence bubbles up inside me.
I go with that theory first, painfully aware that the clock is ticking to the two-minute mark, and I only have a few seconds to get the answer I want. “Whose ring was it?”
Her pink lips part.
Fuck. I’m right. God knows, I didn’t want to be.
My fingers tighten of their own accord around her jaw. “Whose ring?”
The brutality of the intentions flowing through my veins is meant for the person who did this to her, the one who marked her for life, but her eyes flare as if the unspoken threat is aimed at her.
“I won’t ask again, Tatiana.”
That threat, she can’t misinterpret. She knows how I work. She knows who I am. She knows what I do to make people talk. I’ve never hidden my true nature from her.
With her pale skin and golden hair, she looks so much like her mother. Yet those wide eyes she got from her father. They have the same upturned outer corners. Only, her color is different. Unique. Dark with fear now. Because whatever she sees in my face scares her.
“Dante,” she whispers in protest.
“His name, Tatiana.”
Because I know it was a man. To have left such a mark, a mark deep enough to scar, the blow would’ve had to carry considerable force.
When she finally speaks, her voice comes out breathless. “I don’t know.”
“What did he look like?”
She wants to shake her head, but I don’t let her. I hold her in the steely vise of my fingers, not giving her the option to say she doesn’t remember.
She wets her lips with her tongue. “Tall. Muscled, like a body builder.”
Good girl. “What else?”
“Long hair—brown. Leather pants.”
That gives me something but not enough. “Can you describe his face?”
A visible shudder runs through her. “He had very dark eyes, almost black, and bad skin.”
“Bad skin?”
“Sores, I think. Some were old and healed. Others were fresh.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “Did you get a look at the ring?”
“Not a very good one.” She bites her lip. “I won’t be able to describe it in detail.”
I caress the line of her jaw with my thumb. “Try.”
“Why do want to know, Dante?”