Chapter 22 RóISE

My face hurts from smiling by the time most of the guests have arrived.

"That's enough." Miceli leads me away from the elevator, his arm still firmly in possession of my waist. "Any latecomers can find us."

"Don't you mean me?" It is my party after all.

"I'm the host. You're my girlfriend." His mouth twists on the last word.

My tummy tightens when he says it. "Your girlfriend? Really?"

"Get used to it. You'll be my fiancée soon enough."

"So romantic," I jeer.

"If you're looking for romance, you signed a contract with the wrong guy."

I believe him. Even that night in Portland, he wasn't romantic. Passionate and intense? Yes. Mr. Romance? Not even close.

"The fact we signed a contract says it all, doesn't it?" Even if Miceli didn't belong to a syndicate I despise, this kind of marriage is the last thing I want.

We veer toward the bar. "You know how this goes. You grew up in the mob."

"I grew up believing I would get to choose my own spouse." Or if I would marry at all.

He stops at the bar. "What do you want to drink?"

"I'll have my birthday cocktail," I tell the bartender.

Miceli orders a whiskey, neat.

A few seconds later, the bartender puts Miceli's rock glass on the bar and presents me with a pink concoction served with a maraschino cherry in a martini glass .

And it doesn't contain an ounce of alcohol. I can't afford to get drunk in this crowd.

The real celebration happened already anyway, and I got pleasantly tipsy then.

"More pink," Miceli mutters.

I smile. "It's good. Do you want to try it?"

I expect him to say he'll stick with his whiskey.

But he takes my glass and sips while I gape.

Snapping my mouth shut, I take my drink back. "Isn't it yummy?"

"So yummy you can't even taste the alcohol." He gives me a sardonic look.

"Because there isn't any."

"On your 21 st birthday?"

I shrug, feeling no need to explain and move away from the bar, expecting Miceli to go off and do his own thing.

He doesn't. He follows me, his hand once again on my waist.

I try to step out of his hold, but his grip on my waist tightens.

"Do you mind?" I'm trying to hide my hostility from the partygoers around us, but it's getting harder by the second. "You don't need to act all possessive."

"I'm not acting."

That I believe. This man will keep what is his. But I'm not his. Not yet.

"Our relationship might be drowning in contracts, but you didn't buy me."

"Agreed."

I don't trust his easy agreement. "So, let me go."

"You drank that night in Portland."

"It was safer to drink there." No way am I going to admit to needing liquid courage to follow through on my plan to have sex for the first time.

"You thought it was safer to have your thought processes impaired when you were trolling for a stranger to have sex with than it is here among our families?" His tone is a mix of judgmental disbelief.

"Absolutely."

"You don't deny that is what you were doing?" he asks, something flickering in his dark eyes.

"Why should I? I did have sex with a stranger." Hard to deny that reality when he'd been the stranger in question.

"What I want to know is why?"

"Not your business." Besides, I already explained. If he didn't believe my explanation, that's his problem.

It's the only one he's getting from me.

"You planned to give your virginity to a man who was not me. That is my business. "

"No, it is not. We hadn't signed contracts. I didn't even know you were the man I was supposed to marry. But you knew it was going to be me, didn't you?"

"Of course I knew, but I hadn't agreed to it yet."

"So, neither of us did anything wrong."

"You were a virgin."

"And you weren't. Your point?"

"My point is that if you had succeeded in fucking a stranger, I would have tracked him down and killed him."

"That's such a big double-standard, I'm surprised it fits in the club." I gulp down my drink, but it doesn't cool my anger even a little.

This guy makes other made men look like the evolved species.

Rather than reply, Miceli guides me onto the dance floor. Because this is the way my luck is running these days, it's a slow song.

He hands his now empty glass to a passing server and does the same to mine.

"I wasn't done with that."

"You can get another one. Slow dancing requires two hands." He flips me around and suddenly I'm in the same position I was in Portland.

Vulnerable with my back to his front, the music a soft, seductive thrum inside my body.

Everything in me rebels and I jerk around to face him, putting my hands on his shoulders to keep some distance between us.

It doesn't work. Miceli wraps me up securely, his hands pressed to the center and the small of my back. I'm not going anywhere.

He starts swaying to the music.

"Stop it," I hiss.

"Stop what? I'm dancing with my girlfriend."

"I'm not your girlfriend," I practically growl.

"That's not what all these people think."

"It's a business arrangement."

"It's a marriage."

"Not yet, it's not." I force myself not to squirm in his hold and draw the attention of our guests.

"It will be. You signed your life away, just like I did."

It shouldn't sting that he puts it that way. "Anyway, this boyfriend thing is already sold from you hosting my birthday party. Standing next to me to greet everyone shoved it in every face that might have been oblivious."

Can you say overkill?

"Do you like to dance?" he asks in a non sequitur .

"You know I do." Every minute of memory from that night galls me now, but I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen.

"From this point on, I am your only dance partner."

"I will, yeah." Translated for those without an Irish gran: I definitely will not . "If I want to dance with someone else, then I will."

Miceli shrugs. "Don't dance with anyone you don't want to see hurt. Or dead."

"Are you kidding me?" He doesn't sound like he's teasing.

"Men like me don't joke about violence."

That I believe. "You can't hurt someone for dancing with me."

"I can."

"Does that mean I get to kneecap every woman you dance with?" I demand incredulously.

Does he even hear himself?

"The only other women I will dance with are family."

I assume he means his family, but he could be referring to Kara and Fiona too. "I don't believe you."

"De Lucas don't break their marriage vows."

"Dancing isn't infidelity." I speak slowly, trying to get through his thick skull. "And we are not married ."

"A wedding is just a formality. The deal is done."

The sound of steel bars slamming down clangs through my head. He means it. Regardless of when the wedding happens, as far as Miceli De Luca is concerned, we are committed to each other.

"We're not even engaged."

"It may be secret for now, but you are definitely my fiancée."

Secret? But real. That's definitely a different twist on our situation.

"Whatever. That doesn't mean you can go around pounding on other men for dancing with me. I assume women are safe from your murderous tendencies."

"If a woman hits on you, my cousin Nerissa will sort it."

"No. Just no. I don't want that kind of life." The walls are closing. Pretty soon I'll be locked in a box too small to even turn around.

"It's not a kind of life. It is your life and it's time you accept that. Do what I say and no one gets hurt." He thinks he's being reasonable.

His tone and expression aren't even a little upset, while my temper slips its leash and runs pell-mell through my body.

"That's not how it works in the real world," I grit out, not even trying to pretend to be the happy birthday girl anymore, much less this violent Neanderthal's girlfriend.

"It's how it works in our world. "

"Yours maybe, not mine." I shove at his chest, hard.

"In my world any man who touches you dies. Remember that while you're pretending to live in a different one." Then he lets me go.