Caterina’s hair, that intoxicating mass of blonde and bronze ringlets, is loose around her face, strands sticking to her forehead damply. Brown eyes, so deep it’s difficult to see where her irises end and her pupils begin, watch me closely, still very much assessing despite her inebriation.
Even as I stand there, I can see her putting her building blocks back up, those damn fucking walls of hers sliding into place. For a moment, I despise myself for pulling her away from her evening.
“It won’t take long,” I say quietly. She purses her lips, but she stands back, letting me in. Amie is sprawled across the couch, very much the worse for wear as she blinks at me blearily. Bottles and glasses are scattered everywhere, and the thumping music dies as Cat flicks it off.
I frown at Amie. “She needs to go home. She’s wasted.”
“Domenico,” she slurs. “Always so commanding.”
When I turn back to Cat, there’s a look on her face I haven’t seen before. She wipes it too quickly for me to identify it, but she sighs as she looks at her friend. “Have Drew and Nic take her.”
Like hell am I letting another man past her front door, so I carefully scoop Amie up. She curls her arms around my neck, snuggling her face into my chest as I carry her past Caterina. “Can you get the door?”
Silently, Cat yanks it open as I whistle. After an awkward transfer to Nicolo where Amie hangs onto my neck and Drew has to help peel her fingers off, they set off, and I close the door behind them.
Cat is perched on the end of the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. “What is it?”
For a single moment, she looks small. Fragile. Heartbreakingly so. But then she looks up at me with that damn Corvo fire blazing in her eyes, and I realize that I’ve made a miscalculation.
Because she’slivid.
“What?” I ask, instead of answering her. “What did I do?”
She looks away from me. “Just tell me why you’re here, Dom.”
“Not until you tell me why you’re pissed off at me.”
She almost flies off the couch, advancing towards me. “I’m not pissed off at you.”
“Yes, you are,” I grit out. She stops a bare inch from my chest, her head just reaching my chin as I look down. “And I need to know why. So get your little tantrum over with and tell me what thefuckis the matter with you, so we can get back to business.”
She chokes, and I almost smile before her finger jabs into my chest.
“You,” she snarls. “You turn up to my apartment, ruin my damn evening, make me turn off my music, get allprotectiveovermybest friend and then have the fucking audacity to tell me toget over myself?”
I can tell the moment she realizes her mistake. Her mouth snaps shut, cheeks coloring in a way I haven’t seen for a long, long time. I haven’t seen Cat this loose, this undone, in… too long.
She tries to turn, then, but my hand shoots out, sliding into that perfect bronze mass of curls and cupping the back of herhead. My fingers massage her skull as she fights to regain her composure. “You jealous, baby?”
Baby.The endearment slips out, but it feels fucking perfect on my tongue. Nowhere near as perfect as Cat would feel, though. If she’d only fucking admit it, let down those walls for a single damn minute so she can see what’s straight in front of her face.
But her face changes, tightening up, the heat fading away. “Don’t fuck around with me tonight, Dom,” she says quietly. I trace the dark circles beneath her eyes, the exhaustion tightening her face. “Please.”
I could push. She knows it, and I know it, and she’d crumble.
For a minute, or maybe even for an hour. A single, blissful hour. And then those walls would be back up, solid as fucking titanium and twice as hard to break down next time.
I need her to see that I’m not just here for a damn good time. I’m in this for the long haul.
But tonight isn’t the night. Not when she’s drunk, and a little sad, and so fucking tired she’s swaying on her feet. So instead, I carefully withdraw my hand, brushing the curls away from her face as she watches me. Instead of yanking her into me, breathing her in, slamming my lips to hers, I gently cup her cheek. “Bed?”
She nods, and I nudge her towards her room. “Go on then. I’ll clean up here.”
Her feet pause. “What did you want to talk about?”
“It can wait.”
The Crow business can hold off until the morning. And the rest of what I have to say can wait as long as it needs to. I take my time clearing the table, washing out the glasses in the kitchen, putting the bottles into her trash outside. By the time I’m done and stick my head around her door, she’s in bed, curled up under soft-looking cream blankets.
