“Matteo!” Sierra yanks at my arm again, harder this time. “You’re acting like a caveman.”
She’s right.
But she makes me crazy.
I turn to look at her, and that’s when I see it. The annoyance in her expression, yeah. But something else too. Something she probably doesn’t want me to notice.
Her pupils are dilated. She’s flushed.
She likes this.
I take her hand.
There’s a storeroom behind the bar. I’ve seen her disappear back there a couple of times during her shifts, coming back with napkins or those little umbrellas she sticks in the fruity drinks. I pull her toward it now, needing her away from the crowd. Away from Travis and his wandering eyes.
“What are you doing here?” she demands as I drag her down a short hallway.
I don’t answer. I find the door, shove it open, and pull her inside.
The space is small. Metal shelves line the walls. Boxes stacked on a stainless steel table in the center. The fluorescent light overhead flickers when I hit the switch, then steadies into a harsh white glow.
I close the door and back her against it.
“Matteo—”
I kiss her before she can finish.
It’s not soft. It’s not gentle. It’s tongue and teeth and desperation that feels like drowning. My hand fists in her hair, tilting her head back. The other grips her hip, fingers digging in, possessive in a way I’ve never been with anyone.
She tastes like cherry lip gloss and the mint she must have popped before her shift.
Sierra arches into me, her breasts pressing against my chest, and I’m hard in an instant. Every inch of my body is on fire. I want to devour her. Want to push inside her and remind us both that this is real. That we’re real. That I didn’t destroy everything with my bullshit.
My hand moves to the button of her jeans, and that’s when she breaks the kiss.
Her palm flattens against my chest, and I freeze. A tremor runs through me. Need, barely leashed.
“No. We need to talk,” she says.
Her voice is steady, but I can hear the crack beneath it. The hurt I put there.
I press my forehead to hers, forcing myself to breathe. To slow down. “I know.”
“You can’t just—” She stops. Starts again. “You can’t shut me out for days and then show up and think a kiss fixes everything.”
I close my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
The question cuts deep because she’s not sure. Because I gave her a reason to doubt me.
“Yes.” I pull back just enough to look at her. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. Any of it.”
“Then why did you say it?”
Because I don’t know how to do this. Because no one has ever wanted to hold me together the way you tried to, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
But the words won’t come. They never do.
