Instead I lay there feeling his breath against my neck and thinking about how good last night had been. How thoroughly he'd taken me apart. How I'd begged for it and meant every desperate word.
"You're thinking too loudly." Sandro's voice was rough with sleep. "I can practically hear your ethical crisis from here."
"I'm not having an ethical crisis."
"Liar." His arm tightened around my waist. Pulled me closer against him. "You're cataloguing all the ways you've compromised yourself and trying to figure out how to minimize the damage."
He wasn't wrong. I'd spent the last five minutes mentally reviewing the ethics rules about attorney-client relationships and coming up empty on justifications for what we'd done.
"I should go," I said.
"You should. But you won't. Not yet." He kissed my shoulder. "Stay for breakfast. Then I'll have Thomas take you home."
"Sandro—"
"Just breakfast, Emilio. We can have our ethical crisis over coffee and something more substantial than regret." He released me and sat up. Completely unselfconscious in his nudity, looking devastating even with sleep-mussed hair. "Come on. I make excellent pancakes."
"You make pancakes." I couldn't picture it. Sandro Vitale in a kitchen, cooking breakfast like a normal person instead of the dangerous criminal he actually was.
"I'm full of surprises." He pulled on pajama pants that probably cost more than my rent and tossed me a t-shirt. "Wear this. Your clothes from last night are... not wearable."
I looked at where our clothes were scattered across the floor. My button-down was missing several buttons. My jeans were inside-out. Evidence of how frantically we'd undressed each other.
Heat crawled up my neck. I pulled on the t-shirt—his, smelling like cedar and expensive detergent—and followed him downstairs to a kitchen that belonged in a design magazine.
He wasn't lying about the pancakes. I sat at the island watching him move around the kitchen with surprising competence, mixing batter and heating a griddle while coffee brewed in a machine that probably cost more than the repairs on my car.
"Where did you learn to cook?" I asked.
"My father's housekeeper. She thought I should know how to do at least one normal thing." He poured batter onto the griddlewith practiced efficiency. "She was probably the only person who ever cared whether I ate properly."
There was something sad in that statement. A glimpse of the man beneath the carefully constructed persona. I wanted to ask more, but he changed the subject before I could.
"The fundraiser is tomorrow night," he said. "For the DA's office. Sterling bought a table. You'll be there."
"How do you know about that?"
"I know everything, Emilio. We've established this." He flipped the pancakes with more skill than I'd expected. "Roberto Green will be there. Your ex-husband. Various people who'll judge you for representing me. It's going to be unpleasant."
"I can handle unpleasant."
"I know you can. But I want you to understand something." He plated the pancakes and set them in front of me. "People are going to say things about you. About us. About your choices. Some of it will be true. Most of it won't matter. But it will hurt."
"I knew that when I took the case."
"You knew it intellectually. Experiencing it is different." He poured coffee into mugs. "When Green makes his comments tomorrow—and he will—remember that his opinion is irrelevant. You're brilliant at your job. You're building an excellent defense. What anyone else thinks about who you're defending doesn't change that."
I took a bite of pancake to avoid responding. It was perfect. Of course it was. Sandro probably excelled at everything he decided to do, including domestic tasks I wouldn't have expected from him.
"You're trying to prepare me," I said finally. "Make sure I don't crack under social pressure."
"I'm trying to protect what's mine." He sat across from me with his own coffee. "Last night changed things between us. You're not just my attorney anymore. You're—"
"What?" I interrupted. "What am I now?"
He was quiet for a moment. "I don't have a word for it yet. But you're important to me. In ways I wasn't expecting. And I protect what's important."
My chest felt tight. "This is moving very fast."
