“Hey.” I feel suddenly awkward and nervous, greeting him in his own apartment. “I wasn’t trying to snoop. I was just hoping it wasn’t a Russian mobster at the door.”
He gives me a look I can’t decipher. “Different kind of mobster.”
For a heartbeat, I wonder what had his expression so strained when he first showed up, but then I tell myself it doesn’t matter. He’s not my problem to worry about.
“Right. Well, I’ll just get back to reading with Cid.”
“How was today?” he asks, taking me by surprise.
“It was fine. Uneventful.” I make a face at him. “I stayed inside like a good girl.”
The minute the words leave me, I realize they were a mistake. I intended them to be sassy and sarcastic. I didn’t mean for them to take on a sexual undertone, but they so clearly have. Now they’re hanging between us. They’re the same words he said to me before, taunting me, but they have a new life after last night.
The air turns heavy and thick.
“Did you?”
He takes his phone out of his pocket, along with his keys and wallet, and lays them slowly on the marble kitchen counter. Then he shrugs out of his coat and hangs it over a stool. All the while, he never takes his eyes from mine.
Alessio tugs at his tie, loosening it.
Anddamn. New kink unlocked. The way his eyes devour me, the intensity, the energy rolling off him in palpable waves, is unbelievably hot. The contrast between his inked fingers and the bespoke business suit turns me on in a way that feels wrong but oh-so right.
“Yes,” I manage to say in a somewhat collected voice, which is a small miracle in itself.
I’m anything but collected right now.
He tugs harder and shrugs out of his suit jacket too, until he’s down to crisp white shirt sleeves that cling to his muscled biceps. “Did you eat dinner?”
He’s asking me more than whether I ate dinner. It’s like he’s slowly, methodically undressing in front of me. Daring me to say something. To stop him. But I’m hypnotized by his gaze, his every action, his deep voice.
“I did,” I confirm. “Did you?”
“No.”
He toes off his Italian leather loafers next, leaving them neatly lined up by the edge of the kitchen. He has a gorgeous closet with custom built-ins for all his shoes near the door. I know because I may have drooled over it when I arrived yesterday. But he’s not bothering with it now.
“Is something wrong?” I ask him.
He plucks out gold cuff links and plinks them onto the marble counter, one by one. “It’s been a day, and I’m in a mood.”
“I can see that.”
He cocks his head at me, his eyes searching. “Can you?”
I don’t know what he’s asking me. I mean, IthinkI know what he’s asking me. And I think I know my answer to his question. All my ability to resist Alessio Andriani is about to go right out the damn window.
I swallow hard. “Yes.”
He bites his lower lip and saunters toward me slowly, bridging the gap between us. My inner instincts for self-preservation scream at me to back up a few steps. To retreat into the living room. To head back to my guest room and lock the door for the rest of the night. Because nothing good can possibly come from what’s about to happen.
But I don’t move. I stay right where I am as he stops close enough to me that I can feel the heat emanating off him. His cologne hits me, and with it comes a tidal wave of desire.
“I’m not going to be good company tonight,” he says, his voice low with a combined threat and silken promise. “You should probably go to your room and lock the door until morning.”
I just had the same thought, but I’m not any more motivated to move at his warning than I was at the one I issued to myself.
I have to tilt my head back because he’s towering over me. “Or what?”
