I didn’t need a reminder to the fact that Kristen was gorgeous.

“Right. Thanks.”

Instead of feeling anger at his behavior, all I felt was strange hostility. Even that wasn’t toward Angelo—it was toward my own fiancé, who had humiliated me in front of my parents when my father threw a jab at him.

Now we were in the car, staring outside our windows as we always did, watching Chicago whooshing by in its majestic, grayer-than-Wolfe’s-eyes glory. I fiddled with the edges of my white dress, unsure what to say or do. Again, Wolfe arrived at the silly conclusion that I’d slept with Angelo. And again, I felt that defending myself was encouraging a pattern where I always had to make excuses for talking to a friend.

Did he really think so little of me? We had a verbal contract, and since striking it, time had passed. Time in which I kissed him and caressed him and opened my thighs for him to stroke me there through my clothes. I stroked him, too. Did that mean nothing to him? Did he really think I could do that with any man at any time?

“I will not marry a whore,” Wolfe said with dry resolute, still staring out the window. In the rearview mirror, I could see Smithy, his driver, cringing behind the wheel and shaking his head. I closed my eyes, willing myself not to cry.

“Let me go, then.”

“Am I hearing an admission, Miss Rossi?”

“I will not defend myself in front of a man who does not deserve my pleas,” I said, as calmly as I could.

“Is he worth my wrath?”

“You don’t scare me, Senator Keaton,” I lied, ignoring the tears clogging my throat. I liked him. I did. I liked that he defended me in front of my father, and that he offered me the freedom to study and work and leave the house unattended. I liked that he was at war with my family but didn’t put me in the middle of it.

I even liked that he didn’t want me to be his baby machine. Liked that he was agreeable whenever I decided to play nice with him. That the version of Wolfe I was going to get—the jerk or the sharp-tongued admirer—solely depended on my behavior toward him. I liked how his body enveloped mine like a shield, how his lips scorched my skin, how his tongue swirled over my needy flesh.

“Yet,” he corrected, his jaw as hard as granite. “You’re not scared of me yet.”

“You want me to be scared of you?”

“I want you to behave for once in your miserable, bratty life.”

“I did not sleep with Angelo Bandini,” I said for the first time that evening, and—I promised myself—also for the last time.

“Shut up, Francesca.”

My heart coiled in the corner of my chest, and I swallowed the bitterness bleeding in my mouth.

When we arrived at the house, he rounded the car and opened the door for me. I stepped out and ignored him, pushing the front door open. I was so mad I wanted to scream until my vocal cords tore. He had such little faith when it came to me. Who had made him so hardened and skeptical?

Probably my father. There was no other way to explain the bad blood between them.

Behind me, I heard Wolfe instruct his bodyguards to stay out of the house, which was against protocol. He never went against protocol.

I rushed to my room, desperate to gather my thoughts and think of a way to tackle this. I didn’t stop to think that running away from confrontation may look to him like an admittance. My only sin was sitting somewhere public with Angelo and telling him that he needed to stop texting me. That I wanted to give my future husband a fair chance.

“You can forget about college.” Wolfe slammed his phone and wallet against the marble mantel behind me. “The deal is off.”

I turned around sharply, my eyes flaring in disbelief.

“I didn’t sleep with Angelo!” I railed for the second time. God, he frustrated me to no end. He never once asked me for an explanation or voiced his concern. He just assumed.

Wolfe stared at me, placid. I ran toward him, pushing his chest. This time, unlike the first and second time I pushed him, he moved backward, just an inch. There was heat in my touch. I wanted to hurt him, I realized, more than he had hurt me.

Quantities.

“Are you sure you’re a lawyer? Because you sure suck at collecting evidence. I did not sleep with Angelo.” Third time.

“I saw you in the garden together.”

“So what?” I was so upset I couldn’t even explain myself properly. I clung to his dress shirt, tugging down and twining my arms around his neck to pull his head down. I pressed my lips to his, desperate to show him that what we had was real, at least for me, and that in my kiss, there was something unique—a potion—I could never give anyone else.

He didn’t move or reciprocate. For the first time since I’d met him, he did not demolish whatever stood between us the second I gave him permission to touch me. Normally, whenever I moved an inch toward him, he crossed an ocean, drowning me with kisses and caresses. He devoured me if I let him. This time, his body felt rigid and cold under my fingertips.

I took a step back, the dull pain in my chest spreading all over my body.

“I like you, Wolfe. I don’t know why, but I do, okay? You make my body feel different. It’s confusing, but it’s true.”

And boy, was it ever. The truest thing I’d ever said. My blush was back in full force, ready to obliterate my face.

“That’s very kind of you.” He smiled at me sardonically, standing taller and bigger and more frightening than I’d ever seen him before. “Tell me, Nemesis, do you think allowing me to fuck him out of you would help your chances at attending Northwestern?”

“Wh…what?” I pulled back, blinking. He still didn’t believe me. There was nothing I could do or say to change his mind.

He lifted his hand, stroking my cheek. Usually, I basked in his attention as though it were a glorious sunray on a December day. Tonight, his touch made me shiver and not with excitement. I was still wet because he was there, because he was present, and because his eyes were on me. But it felt all wrong. My desire for him felt dirty and desperate. Doomed, somehow.

“I’m not lying to you,” I said, biting my lower lip to keep it from trembling. “Why do you always think the worst of me?”

He lowered his lips to mine, and whispered, “Because you’re a Rossi.”

I closed my eyes, inhaling venom, exhaling hope. I felt like I was drowning even though I was standing in the middle of the foyer in the arms of the man I was going to marry. I knew what I had to do just then to save him from hating me. I just wasn’t sure if, by the end of it, I would still be able not to loathe him.

Wolfe was not going to believe me, and it was too late and too convenient to tell him that I was a virgin now.

No. He had to learn that himself.

“Take me,” I whispered brokenly. “Sleep with me. Compromise me.” I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling my pride leaving my body, evaporating like mist. “Fuck Angelo out of me.”

He took a step back, and I could see the war raging inside of him.

Too proud to accept my offering, and too angry to turn it down.

“Please,” I clung to the collar of his shirt, rising on my toes and plastering my body against his. His erection dug into my stomach and gave me false, stupid hope.

“I want you.”

“You want Angelo more.”

I shook my head fiercely, kissing his jaw, the corner of his lips, his Cupid’s Bow.

“You,” I breathed. “Just you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and stepped away from me. I clung harder to the fabric of his shirt, clutching him in a vise grip.

“You’re turning me down? Really?” I whispered against his neck, feeling his Adam’s apple bob against my lips, his stubble, and his tight muscles. Every inch of his body tried to fight it. Us.

“Get on your knees,” he rasped, “and beg for me to fuck you.”

I drew away from him, my eyes widening.

“What?”

“You fucked another man at our engagement party. The second time you have fucked him since we got engaged. I want you to kneel and beg for me to fuck him out of you. And I am afraid that there is no other way around it, Nemesis,” he said coldly, raising a thick, dark eyebrow, his jaw locked with rage.

I was speechless.

I cupped my mouth, stifling an agonized moan that had threatened to tear past my lips. His face remained indifferent, unaffected; I wondered how he could be so cruel to the woman he was going to promise his forever. There was no going back from what I was about to do, if, indeed, I was to do it. I wanted to turn around and walk away. But I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I did that, we would be over.

He needed to know that I didn’t sleep with Angelo. And, after lying to him that I had, multiple times, there was only one way to prove my innocence.

The logic behind the idea was twisted, but so was Wolfe. Our whole relationship was crazy.

With an unsteady inhale, I began to lower myself to my knees in front of him. I pressed my eyes shut, determined not to see what was on his face as I stripped off my dignity for him. Mama used to say that pride was the most exquisite jewelry a woman could wear even when you’re naked. But Wolfe had just ripped it from my neck, every pearl of confidence rolling on the floor. I bowed my head down, and when my knees touched the marble, a groan of pain and self-hatred escaped my mouth.

I hate you.

I like you.

I wish I could quit you.

If I didn’t show Wolfe the truth, he’d make my life hell or worse—throw me back to my parents, cancel our engagement, and make me the talk of the entire city of Chicago. He would use whatever he had against my father, and we would be poor, powerless, and defenseless without my father to protect my mama and me from poverty, the Irish, or The Outfit’s cutthroat society.

I would lose everything.

The choice not to kneel was never truly mine. I couldn’t afford for this wedding not to happen. And I couldn’t afford for my future husband not to believe me as I knew it would make both of us miserable and hateful toward one another.