I want to see her again. Touch her again.
I want to finish what we started on that dining room table.
And that desire is the most dangerous thing of all.
I toss back another scotch wishing it would burn away my memory. Instead, I replay every moment with Olivia.
Every touch, every sound, every goddamn word.
Fuck. I'm going to miss our dance. Those moments in my office when she'd stride in with her search warrants and that determined look in her eyes.
The way she'd roll her eyes at my innuendos but couldn't quite hide her smile. The verbal sparring that made my day more interesting.
I run a hand over my face.
In all my years, with all the women who've passed through my life, Olivia Ricci is the only one who's ever made me consider what it might be like to want something more.
Something real. Something I can't have.
I shake my head, trying to rid it of Olivia Ricci. I'm Don Vitale. She's an FBI agent. We exist in worlds designed to destroy each other.
What happened last night was inevitable, the culmination of tension that's been building for nearly a year.
But she’s right, it can't happen again.
Not if I want to keep my family safe.
And not if I want to protect her career, her life.
The truth is that being with me would destroy her. Either professionally or literally when my enemies decide she's a weakness they can exploit.
This thing with Olivia, whatever it is, needs to end.
I need to maintain my distance, return to our professional antagonism.
It's safer that way. For both of us.
Time to be Don Vitale again. Time to remember who I am and what's at stake.
Time to let her go.
OLIVIA
What the hell did I just do? I’m paralyzed as I stand in my living area long after Dom leaves.
I glance toward my dining table where I eat my sad microwaved dinners, now forever tainted with the memory of what we just did. What I just did. With Dominic Vitale.
A man I'm supposed to put in prison. A man whose family may have killed my father.
I press my palms against my eyes, as if I could physically push the memories away.
My body still feels the echo of his touch. This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm supposed to be smarter than this.
What kind of FBI agent sleeps with her target?
Not as part of some honey trap, but because she wanted him. Burned for him.
How did his coming by to confront me over failed justice for Rocco end in my being naked on my dining table. Because asmuch as I’m unsettled by how my lust overtook me, I’m also rattled by his accusations.
