Chapter 23

Refer to prologue...

Roman shakes his head a lazy smile on his face. “You truly are just you, aren’t you?” he asked no one in particular.

She was so unapologetically her all the time. She didn’t care if no one liked her. He liked that about her.

Sometimes he wondered how Rosalie could be cute and innocent one second and match his freak the next second.

God, both turned him on. Before her cute side used to annoy him. But after seeing her threaten and nearly killed his former lover.

Rosalie was crawled deep under his skin. She affected him in ways he couldn’t quite explain. In a way no other woman has ever affected him.

His wife was batshit crazy and it’s what he liked about her.

Just then, Roman seemed to have remembered something. His eyes lowered slightly. Exerting more strength, he pulled Rosalie’s chin upwards. Lifting her face, he stared into her eyes. “Rosalie you’re playing with fire...” he warns.

He wanted to kill and kiss her all together. Rosalie was the most infuriating woman his ever come across. She’s always pushing his damn buttons. She’s spent the last week hauled up in her room. She only came out for his uncle and Selena’s wedding and to eat lunch and supper. She didn’t even come down to dinner.

Rosalie smiled sweetly she knew she was playing with fire. The two of them were playing cat and mouse for the week now. She couldn’t explain it. First she feared he figured out she was Nightshade, but he thought she was friends with nightshade.

He’d asked her to set up a meeting with Nightshade, she was stunned to silence. She was even more intrigued by his mistress’s marriage to his uncle.

Salvatore Moretti was a self obsessed man. She knew he would make the woman’s life a living hell. Death would have been better than being with a man who thirst for a life that wasn’t his.

She couldn’t figure him out at all. Selena had been with him for years and to punish her, instead of just killing her like she had planned, she was forced to marry a man twice her age.

Rosalie was disgusted by the thought of sharing a bed with the man, the same way Selena had been forced to the last three nights.

Roman remained expressionless, his expression held no heat or cold. Rosalie didn’t know what he was thinking, but from what she could see, he wasn’t angry.

She was pushing her luck, she was pushing his buttons. Roman wasn’t angry with her, them ending up naked together last night and her not being able to remember much of it. She thought she was dreaming last night, but the sobering thought of how she’d been so proactive. They’ve been married for four months and they’ve never been intimate.

Last night changed that for them.

A feeling unfamiliar to Rosalie. Just how easily that reckless, impetuous version of herself had been summoned by her drunken state, she was hungry to have Roman in a way she hadn’t before. She became someone she wasn’t in that short time.

Just like now, she was having thoughts of dragging a man that weighed double her to her bed.

Rosalie’s face heated at the thought.

Roman watched as Rosalie’s eyes darted to her bed to him as her faced turned bright red. Her pale skin made it very obvious she was blushing.

He quickly summized her thoughts, he slowly let go of her throat, he swallowed and lowered his face to hers, before he pressed his lips to her.

His kiss was hungry and hurried. Rosalie frowned at him and bit down hard on his lip.

Roman pulled away he wiped the blood from his lip with his finger. He looked at the blood on his finger and looked at what he thought of as his cat of a wife.

She reminded him of a wild cat. One he needed to tame. He didn’t say anything at first patiently watching her.

Rosalie’s heart began to tremble. She didn’t know why she bit him, she acted without thinking, she liked his kiss yet she still tried to stop it. He was taking control and she hated giving away the little control she had.

Her heart raced and just as she was about to say something, Roman spoke, breaking the silence, "You trying to seduce me with those puppy dog eyes? You hint at taking me to bed then when I respond in kind you bite me. Woman what do you want?” Roman asks.

Rosalie didn’t know what she wanted. She had no idea how she felt. Did she want to sleep with Roman again, this time sober? This time the two of them would be completely be in their tight minds.

Rosalie didn’t know if she wanted to grow closer to her husband. Roman let go of Selena when she fulfilled her usefulness. She wasn’t like Selena, she didn’t let a man run her life. She had enough money to run away, she had enough money to start over somewhere no one could find her.

She knew Roman would never let her unless she faked her own death she was never escaping the Moretti home.

Rosalie looked around the room and she knew this room, this place had began to feel like home to her. Her lab, her room everything felt familiar to her.

This place felt less like a cage than the Bianchi home did. There her every move was monitored. Being out of Elena’s clutches was comforting.

Her mother feared her, her father was disgusted by her. He called what she did, grunt work. Work that should be left to common thugs he told her.

Elena feared her too, but in a different way. She feared her because she didn’t need the Bianchi name to make a name for herself. She also knew if any of the elders in the Bianchi family found out Rosalie was Nightshade, they’d make Roman the next head of the Bianchi family.

“If I ran away would you remarry?” Rosalie asked on a whim.

Registering her words, Roman’s pupils shrunk sharply. As though trying to suppress his anger, the fingers returned around her neck. His hand trembled. “You can try to hide from me, but I’ll find you and when I do, you’ll be praying I never did.” he warns.

He lets out a laugh at the mere thought of her running. He didn’t even have to give it much thought. Rosalie was his, he wasn’t going to let her do something foolish as run away.

He looked at the diamond on her finger and smiled. He had a small microchip imbedded in the ring, after what happened to his brother, he’d become paranoid. Fearing what his enemies could do to Rosalie to get back at him, he never checked it because much to his surprise his wife wasn’t fond of leaving the compound.

Dinner parties wasn’t her scene, he did most of those on his own, he worried she’d do something or upset someone by saying the wrong thing or go off on them like she did Selena.

He had to re-evaluate his wife, she wasn’t as sweet and innocent as he first thought. No his wife hid her true self well. That curiosity he first saw in her when she looked at him came to mind, Rosalie never feared him, not when he had his hand on her throat threatening to kill her or when he kissed her. She didn’t even fear him when he was down in a basement interrogating a man. He didn’t know what to make of his wife, but he knew Rosalie was a puzzle he was eager to solve.

That thought stayed when Roman for weeks afterward. He couldn’t stop thinking about the moment him and Rosalie shared. She’s pretty much ignored him since then. She was avoiding him he knew that.

His parents were on his case about an heir. He wanted to bed his wife, but not for an heir. He couldn’t careless about a child. What he wanted was to bed his wife. He didn’t remember their first night so he wanted to relive it. He wanted to know how his wife felt around him. The kinds of sounds she made.

He wanted to know every little detail, to catalogue it deep within his mind, somewhere he can revisit over and over again. He was becoming obsessed with Rosalie and his wife was spending more and more time with that damned cousin of hers. He’d stopped himself multiple times from killing the man where he stands. He had no right spending so much time with his wife. He had his own wife and children to take care of why the hell was he spending so much time with Rosalie?

Roman is brought out of his thoughts when his phone rings. He frowns when he sees Selena’s name.

“What?” he asks.

Her sobbing, has his frown deepen. “His dead... I don’t know what happened his dead...” she says through sobs.

Roman’s eyes harden...