“He touched you,” Valerio rasps. “No onefucking touches you.”
“Valerio, look at me. Stop.”
“He touched you,” he repeats. It’s a mantra.
“I’m not into him, Valerio. I’m not attracted to him.” I reach up, ignoring the way my own hands are shaking, and cup his face. “He’s a colleague. He was only going to drive me home.”
“No one drives you home,” he snarls, leaning into my touch even as he gnashes his teeth. “No one touches the skin I’ve touched. I’ll rip it off them first.”
He’s completely lost it.
“Okay. Fine.” I sigh. I can hear sirens in the distance—we need to get out of here. “Please. Just leave him. We need to go.”
Valerio shakes his head, his eyes fixed on Josh’s terrified, swelling face. He looks like he’s debating which organ to rupture next.
“Please. For me.”
He closes his eyes for a second. “I hate that I can’t say no to you,” he spits.
This man is hot and cold. One moment, I’m the center of his universe. Other times, I feel like grime under his expensive shoes.
He grabs Josh by the front of his shirt one last time, hauling his limp body up until they’re eye-to-eye.
“Not a word of this,” Valerio growls. “Not to the police. Not to your board. If a whisper of my name or hers leaves your mouth, I won’t just take your license. I’ll take your tongue. Do you understand?”
Josh nods frantically… Ialmostfeel bad for him.
“Get in the car,” Valerio orders.
I don’t argue or look back at Josh. As Valerio floors it away from the diner, I wonder what the fuck I got myself into.
Chapter Fifteen
Valerio
Ionly lasted three hours.
Three hours of staring at the walls and wanting to rip my own throat out. I told myself I was done. I told her she was nothing special, a body, a biological release. I said it to push her back into the light where she belongs.
I was wrong.
Every word I spat at her felt like I was swallowing glass. I wanted to burn my own tongue off. I’ve killed forty men in a single night and felt nothing. I said five sentences to Charlotte, and I’m bleeding out from the inside.
I tracked her like a dog. I sat outside her apartment, then followed her to that diner, watching through the glass while that pathetic, soft-faced prick put his hands on her. My hands—the ones that touched her skin yesterday—were shaking harder than they ever had. I wanted to kill him. To kill any man who had the privilege of touching her.
Now, she’s in my car. I pull into a dark side street and kill the engine. I can’t do it anymore. The distance is a physical agony.
I peel the gloves off and drop them on the floorboards. I reach across the console and haul her over the center, pinning her into my lap. She’s stiff. Tense. A wall of ice between us that I built with my own hands.
“Don't,” she whispers.
I slide my bare hands under her shirt, my palms hitting her waist. Skin to skin. I touch her everywhere.
“I didn’t mean it,” I rasp. “You know that, right?”
She shakes her head. Her eyes are wet. “No. I’m not sure of anything with you, Valerio.”
The apology feels like dirt on my tongue. I don’t do this. Morellis don’t beg. But I’m not a Morelli right now; I’m just a starving man.
