Chapter 2 - The Flaw in the Calculation
He expected her to fight back with practiced grace. He expected her to try and seduce her way out of his anger, to use her body as a weapon the way women in his world often did.
Instead, Cassie squeezed her eyes shut, turned her head away, and flinched.
It was a small, involuntary movement. A violent, full-body flinch of a woman who was entirely unaccustomed to the harsh hands of a man. Her breath hitched in her throat, a tiny, terrified sound of absolute, physical surrender.
Damiano froze.
The bruising grip his hands had on her shoulders instantly loosened. The lethal, calculated anger in his eyes shattered, replaced in a microsecond by a profound, staggering confusion. He looked at her trembling frame, her white knuckles clutching the dress so tightly her fingers were losing circulation, and the rigid, paralyzing terror locking her spine.
"You're shaking," Damiano whispered, the realization hitting him with the force of a physical blow.
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He pulled back immediately, putting a foot of space between them, the breath leaving his lungs in a sharp hiss.
"My father didn't send a spy," Cassie gasped, opening her eyes, tears of sheer frustration and fear finally spilling over her dark lashes. "My father sent a twenty-three-year-old law student who was studying for a constitutional exam forty-eight hours ago. I have never been in a man's bed, Damiano. I have never belonged to anyone. I was just the final, desperate asset he had left to sell to save his own skin."
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