CHAPTER 5: Enraged

Aria's Pov 

From where I rested in his arms, I could peer over his shoulder...directly into Milo's enraged glare across the room. The steel in his gaze had been replaced by granite, his jaw clenched so tightly it might break teeth. At this distance, the message was clear: deadly rage barely in check.

I needed to move quickly. "The bathroom?" I prompted Vincent, reluctantly pulling away but maintaining contact with my hand on his arm.

Before he could respond, I felt an iron grip on my shoulder, fingers digging into the sensitive junction of neck and collarbone. I was spun around with dizzying force, coming face to face with my husband's controlled fury.

"Excuse us," Milo said to Vincent, his voice soothingly level in the midst of the storm raging in his eyes. "I must speak with my wife."

He did not wait for permission but steered me away, his fingers wrapping around my upper arm like manacles. I nearly stumbled as I struggled to keep pace with his long strides as he pushed through the crowd, ignoring the interested glances and snatched comments that trailed behind us.

We passed through a double pair of doors, down a dark hall, and finally into what was clearly an unused study. No sooner had the door closed us in than Milo released me with such force that I bounced against the bookcase.

"What in the devil are you doing?" His voice was not raised but was worse than any scream could have been.

I stretched, smoothing my dress in careless nonchalance. "Socializing. Isn't this what these parties are for?"

"Socializing," he drawled, and the word had a flavor of contempt. "Is that what you've chosen to call throwing yourself on Vincent Caruso's mercy?"

"I tripped," I flashed back, setting my chin belligerently. "He caught me. Should I have fallen to the floor instead?"

Milo moved closer, pinning me back against the shelf of books. "You don't stumble. You strategize. Every step, every word, every breath—is all part of some game you're playing."

His body surrounded mine, the heat seeping through the smooth satin of my gown. His scent—sandalwood and spice, with something darker, more feral, underlying it—swirled around me, dissolving my senses.

"If I'm playing games," I whispered, "then perhaps it's because you leave me no choice."

His gaze narrowed, interpreting every micro-expression on my face. "What does Vincent Caruso have to do with your 'choices'? What are you planning?"

"Nothing," I protested, but even to my own ears, the denial was hollow.

"Liar," he panted, a hand coming up to cradle my jaw, thumb pressing against the pulse point of my heart where my heartbeat gave away my anger. "Your heart races when you lie, did you know that? A tiny tell, but unmistakable to someone who knows what to look for."

I tried to shift my face away, but his grip only tightened, holding me fast. "You're hurting me," I said to him, not exactly truthfully. His touch was firm but controlled, as always.

"No," he snapped, his eyes boring into mine. "I'm defending what belongs to me. Someone in my inner circle is betraying me, and tonight I intend to find out who."

A flash of genuine puzzlement had to have crossed my face, because his expression softened slightly.

"You really don't know, do you?" he breathed, almost to himself rather than to me. "Or you're a better actress than I gave you credit for."

"Know what?" I insisted, anger momentarily overpowering prudence. "You make these vague insinuations, and what am I supposed to have done?"

For a moment, doubt clouded his face—a momentary flash of vulnerability behind the mask of his control. Then it was followed by the calculating cold of the Don.

"Someone leaked information about a shipment coming in next week," he said, watching my reaction. "Very specific information known to only five people. You're one of them."

"And you'd risk everything to betray me?" I said, indignation coloring my voice. Whatever plans I had brewing against Milo were not about details of a spilled shipment.

"I think," he drawled, "that you married me for a reason, and that reason wasn't love."

His hand drifted from my jaw up to my throat, thumb tracing the rapid beat there with unnerving gentleness. "I believe you have secrets that would carry a death sentence if I were to discover them."

I trembled—half of it fear, half something murkier. "We all have secrets, Milo."

His pupils expanded to blackness, leaving only a thin rim of gray. "Then maybe it's time we started to trade them."

Before I had time to object, his mouth was crashing against mine—not a kiss but a seizure, an order, a chastisement. Inexplicably, my body responded like a stimulus, arching away from his hands as he snatched another clamped across my waist and hauled me forcefully against him.

When at last he released me, both of us gasped for breath, the stress between us moved over into something every bit as dangerous but vastly more complicated.

"Whatever game we're playing here at Caruso ends here," he snarled, his voice thick with hardly contained feeling. "You belong to me, Aria. Until death do us part. Don't forget it."

The assertion of ownership should have enraged me, should have doubled my resolve to shatter him. But all that moved me was turmoil—a clash of desire and intent, hate tangled up with something frightfully close to need.

"is that a threat?" I whispered.

His razor-sharp, predatory smile. "It's a vow. Now retouch your lipstick—we're going back out there, and you're remaining where I can see you for the rest of the night."

As he stepped back, clearing the way for me to collect myself, one thing became crystal clear: my task had just been made a thousand times more complicated. Lorenzo would expect results. Milo would accept nothing less than absolute devotion. 

And caught

in between these two supernatural men, my own life hung in the balance.