It lights a thrill under my skin—triumph and power. Like a drug. She’s like a drug I can’t get enough of.
When I pull away, her eyes look wrecked in the best way. She drags the pad of her thumb across my lower lip. “Your dinner is getting cold,” she whispers.
“It’ll reheat well,” I say.
She laughs, a real one, and it changes the room. She picks up her knife like we didn’t almost lose the plot and cuts the next slice of lamb. I take a small step back and take the carving fork from her hand and do it for her, quieter now, laying meat on the plate like an apology for the parts of me that will never be gentle.
“Say it again,” I tell her when we’ve eaten enough to make the world feel safe.
“What,” she asks.
“My name.”
“Giovanni.”
I shake my head.
She tilts her head, studies me, then finally says, “Gio.” Her voice is low and breathless.
It does something to me I’m not prepared to talk about. “Brava,” I say, because praise is the only language I can trust right now.
She shakes her head like she can’t quite believe who we are in this kitchen, in this country, with everything waiting outside. “We should be careful,” she says, not moving away, not closing up.
“We will be,” I say, and mean it. “But not careful enough to pretend we don’t want this.”
Her eyes soften but don’t turn sentimental. “Eat,” she throws back, and I obey because I like her when she’s bossy. In the kitchen, anyway.
The lamb gives up under the knife. The beans take in more juice and give back depth. The radicchio isn’t sweet, and I like it for that. The puntarelle stay sharp because she made them that way. The wine does what wine should do: it carries the whole table.
“Tell me something true,” she says after a while, elbow on the wood, glass in her hand. “Not business. Not the posture. A true thing.”
“You’re dangerous,” I say without letting myself soften the word, “not because of your mouth, not because of your hands. Because you make me want to sit down. I don’t sit down.”
She considers that, considers me. “Your turn,” she says. “Ask me.”
“What did you think the first time you walked into my kitchen?”
“That you had your spices ordered wrong.” Her mouth curves. “And that you were trouble.”
I laugh into my glass. “The spices were wrong?”
“I fixed it,” she says and takes another bite of radicchio and then leaves her fork where it is. Her toes brush my calf under the island, once. Not a mistake.
“Dessert,” I say. “We don’t have any.”
She tips her head back on a laugh. “We do,” she says and stands to walk to the fridge. She pulls out a basket and walks back to the island with it. With delicate fingers, she picks up a deep red cherry and slides it toward me over the wood.
I pick it up, split it, pit it, and feed her half. She takes it from my fingers with her mouth, and I feel that everywhere, zinging straight to my cock.
She touches my wrist, a point of heat that makes me forget every promise I’ve ever made to myself.
“Gio,” she says again, voice low now.
“Mia,” I say before I can stop it.
Her eyes flare and then narrow.
She slides off the stool and meets me at the corner of the island. For a breath, we just stand there, close enough that the collar of the shirt grazes the skin of my chest. Then she lifts her chin a fraction, and I take what she’s offering.
