“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he agrees. “But it is true.”
He steps closer.
“I reminded you last night,” he continues quietly, “that we planned a family.”
The memory hits like a sucker punch.
Late nights tangled in sheets. Careless conversations that turned serious when neither of us was looking. The way he’d said when, not if, like the future was already decided.
My throat tightens.
“But your uncles are my family now too,” Giovanni says. “Which means I protect them. And if they betray me, I deal with that.”
I shake my head, overwhelmed.
“You’re asking me to accept violence as… care?” I’m not sure why I stop myself from saying the L-word. Maybe because right in this moment, it feels too heavy. Or no… it feels too fragile.
“I’m telling you,” he says, voice low, “that care without protection is a foolish, careless fantasy.”
Before I can step back, he pins me against the wall, one hand braced beside my head, the other gripping my hip with possession that makes my pulse race despite myself.
“Now are we done fighting?”
“Giovanni—”
“Because I’ve missed your mouth,” he interrupts with a voice as smooth and deadly as bladed silk. “I’ve missed your body. I’ve missed you. Haven’t stopped thinking about breakfast.”
My heart flips, then melts into a puddle I fight my way through.
“No… we have things to?—”
He kisses me quiet, and it’s not gentle or forgiving.
It’s savage, it’s desperate and intimate and infuriatingly familiar, and my body betrays me instantly, melting into his as though the last eighteen months never happened.
I hate myself for the sound I make, and oh yes, I hate myself more when I kiss him back.
Every day we go further.
Every day the line moves.
And I know, desperately, helplessly, that it’s only a matter of time before I fall all the way back into him.
I pull away first, breathless and shaking.
“We can’t.”
“We already are,” he replies softly.
A knock interrupts us and reality snaps back into place like a slap.
Giovanni exhales, his forehead resting briefly against mine before he steps away, adjusting his jacket with infuriating composure.
“Stay,” he says. “We’ll spend the rest of the afternoon together.”
I want to refuse.
