“So this is goodbye,” he says quietly, those eyes fixed on my face like he’s memorizing every detail.
“This is goodbye,” I confirm, feeling tears spill over my eyelids. My hand aches to rest on my belly, but I keep this secret to myself too. “Even—even if we live through the next few hours, whatever we had is over.” Agony rips through me as I say those words. “We’ve destroyed each other too much.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. Then all that careful control shatters like glass.
“Fuck that,” he growls. Suddenly he’s moving, his hands reaching for me with desperate urgency. “If this is goodbye, if we’re both going to die in the next hour…” His fingers tangle in my hair, pulling my face toward his. “Then I’m not wasting our last moments on regret.”
His mouth crashes onto mine, and it’s nothing like the tender kisses we’ve shared before. This is desperate and raw, tasting of grief and rage and the terrible knowledge that we’re about to die. His tongue demands entry, and I give it, opening for him as his hands tighten almost painfully in my hair.
When he pulls back, we’re both breathing hard. His eyes are wild, pupils blown wide with need and desperation.
“I need you,” he says roughly. “One last time. I need—” His voice cracks. “I need to feel you, to remember what it was like before everything went to hell.”
I should say no. We need to maintain the distance I just claimed we needed. But I can’t. Not when this might be the last time I ever see him alive. Not when my body is already responding to his proximity, heat pooling low in my belly despite everything broken between us.
“Yes,” I whisper, heart thumping.
He moves fast, climbing over the console to the back seat with surprising agility, pulling me with him. I follow awkwardly, my knee catching on the gearshift, but then his hands are on me and nothing else matters.
“Tell me,” he demands, his fingers already working at the button of my jeans. “Tell me your feelings were real. That I wasn’t imagining it.”
“They were real.” I help him with my jeans, both of us fumbling in the cramped space. “God, Luca, they were so real. I fell in love with you. I let myself believe—I let myself believe we could have a future.”
“We could have,” he says, and there’s such grief in his voice it makes me want to cry. His hands frame my face again, forcing me to meet his eyes. “If I hadn’t been such a coward. If I’d told you sooner that the plan changed, thatyouchanged everything?—”
“No.” I silence him with a kiss, not wanting to hear about what could have been. Not when we’re sitting in a car about to drive to our deaths. “Don’t think about what we could have had. Just…” Ipull at his belt, desperate to feel him. “Just give me this. Give me one last moment when it’s just us.”
He helps me with his belt, his pants, both of us moving with frantic urgency. There’s no finesse to it, no practiced seduction. Just desperate need and the terrible knowledge that this might be goodbye.
When he finally pulls me onto his lap, positioning me over him, we both freeze for a heartbeat. His hands span my waist, his eyes locked on mine with such intensity it steals my breath.
“I love you,” he says.
The raw honesty in his voice makes more tears spill down my cheeks.
“I know you don’t believe me. I know I’ve given you every reason not to. But it’s the truth, Gigi. You became everything.”
“I love you too,” I whisper, even though it hurts to admit. Even though I know this love is poisoned by everything we’ve done to each other. “I hate you and I love you and I?—”
He pulls me down onto him, and the rest of my words dissolve into a gasp. The stretch is almost painful after days apart, but it’s exactly what I need. What webothneed.
His hands tighten on my hips, holding me still for a moment as we both adjust. “Move,” he growls against my neck. “Please, Gigi, I need?—”
I move.
It’s desperate and almost violent, both of us channeling too many weeks of rage and grief and betrayal into something physical. His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise, guidingmy movements. I cling to his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin through his shirt hard enough that I’m probably drawing blood.
“You destroyed me,” I sob against his neck, even as I move faster, chasing something I can’t name. “You made me love you and then?—”
“I know.” His voice is wrecked, broken. “I know, and I’m sorry. God, Gigi, I’m so fucking sorry?—”
One hand slides between us, finding my clit and swirling his thumb and forefinger around it, making me cry out and arch my back. He expertly works me, knowing exactly how to make me fall apart, and I hate that he knows my body this well. I hate that even now, even furious and heartbroken and terrified, I respond to his touch like I was made for it.
“I hate you,” I gasp, even as pleasure builds low in my spine. “I hate you for what you planned. I hate you for making me fall in love with you. I hate?—”
“I know.” His lips find mine again, swallowing my words. “Hate me. Hate me all you want. Just don’t—” His voice cracks. “Just don’t leave me. Not yet. Not when this is all we have left.”
The orgasm hits me like a freight train, stealing my breath and making my vision white out. I feel him follow moments later, his grip on my hips tightening to the point of pain as he buries himself deep and comes with a sound that’s half-sob, half-groan.
