But it wasn’t long until Steph was rocking her hips, fast, impatient.
“Please,” she begged again, grinding harder against me.
And, well, I owed her exactly what she wanted, didn’t I?
I fucked her harder, faster, driving her up within just a few short moments.
“Come for me,” I demanded, feeling her tighten around me.
Then she did, crying out my name as she did.
This time, she took me with her.
I held her for a long couple of minutes afterward before slowly slipping away.
“Where are you going?”
“To draw you a bath.”
She shot me a curious look, but said nothing.
Alone in the bathroom, I cleaned up, then ran the water to get warm, and leaned against the closed door, taking a slow, deep breath.
Because in those moments after we both came, there’d been a strange-as-fuck warm feeling moving through my chest.
And I needed a moment or two to try to figure out what the fuck that was about.
But when the water ran hot and I put the stopper in, I was no closer to understanding it.
It wasn’t until I went back into the bedroom to get Steph that the sensation intensified.
I had a feeling as I helped her into the bath and then carefully cleaned her hands that there might be a different kind of danger that night.
One that didn’t involve bullets and bad guys.
But my own fucking heart.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Stephanie
Once Venezio cleaned up my hands and treated the cut on my cheek from scraping the picture frame back in my apartment, he ducked out of the bathroom under the premise of looking for clothes.
But he was gone way too long for that.
Maybe he just needed a minute.
As soon as I was alone, I realized I did too.
I found that some parts of the night had grown sharper while others faded around the edges.
I distinctly remembered running into the park, the sharpness of the cold, and the coiled sensation of fear.
But other parts, like falling, like Venezio getting me in a cab, like the whole bit about getting to and inside the safe house, that was all really fuzzy.
I knew more about hypothermia than the average person. People who had spent cold winter nights on the street had to be aware of the risks, of the progression of symptoms.
It was entirely possible that I’d been in and out of consciousness between the cab ride and the safe house.
