"Mm?"
"Fuck me like we have forever. I don't want to think tonight. I don't want to plan or strategize or be afraid." I pulled back enough to meet his eyes. "I just want you."
His hands came up to frame my face, thumbs tracing my cheekbones with a gentleness that still caught me off guard from a man who'd killed someone twelve hours ago.
"You have me," he said. "You've had me since you shot at me and missed."
"I didn't miss. I aimed for the wall."
"Liar."
I kissed him again, and this time there was nothing gentle about it. I fisted his shirt and pulled him toward me, needing the weight of him, the reality. He walked me backward until my shoulders hit the door, and then his mouth was on my neck, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat where my pulse hammered.
I tugged his shirt over his head. The bruises from Marco's men had gone deep purple and yellow across his ribs, his shoulders. I traced them with my fingertips—the cost of choosing me. He caught my hand, pressed it flat against his chest.
"Don't," he said quietly. "They don't matter."
"They matter to me."
He answered by peeling my shirt off, then unhooking my bra with one hand like he'd been doing it his whole life. Probably had. I didn't care. His mouth found my breast, and I stopped thinking about his history or mine or anything except his hands sliding down to the button of my jeans.
He dropped to his knees on that ugly carpet and looked up at me, and something about the image—this powerful, dangerous man kneeling at my feet in a $40 motel room—broke me open in a way his tenderness never could.
"For me," he said. Not a question.
"For you. Only you."
He took his time. I'd asked him not to think, but my body was doing it for me—cataloging every detail. The scrape of stubble against my thighs. His hands gripping my hips hard enough tobruise. The sound I made when his tongue found me, something raw that I'd never heard from my own mouth before.
When my legs started shaking, he stood and lifted me. I wrapped around him—legs at his waist, arms at his neck—and he carried me to the bed like I weighed nothing.
"Slow," I whispered against his mouth. "Like we have forever."
"We do have forever,principessa."
"Prove it."
He did. Slow and deep and devastating, his eyes locked on mine the entire time, refusing to let me hide. I'd had sex before—careful, performative, the kind where you're always half-aware of how you look. This wasn't that. This was Alessio watching my face like it was the only thing in the world worth seeing, adjusting every movement to the sounds I made, learning me like a language he intended to speak fluently.
I came apart with his name in my mouth and his hand tangled in my hair. He followed a moment later, forehead pressed to mine, breath ragged, whispering something in Italian I didn't understand but felt in my bones.
Afterward, we lay tangled in cheap sheets. His heartbeat slowed against my ear. I traced idle patterns on his chest and felt the tension I'd been carrying for days—weeks—months—finally, finally ease.
"What did you say?" I asked. "At the end. In Italian."
He was quiet for a moment. "That I'd burn the world down for you. But more poetic."
"Naturally."
His chest rumbled with a laugh. I closed my eyes.
Tomorrow, Arizona. Tomorrow, my mother. But tonight was ours, and I held it the way you hold something precious—carefully, knowing it couldn't last, grateful for every second.
Three days of driving brought us into Arizona, where the landscape transformed from green hills to red desert. Ancient rock formations jutted toward a cloudless sky, and the air tasted different—dry and dusty. Nothing like Boston.
"Nervous?" Alessio asked as Scottsdale city limits appeared.
"Terrified." I twisted my hands in my lap. "What if she doesn't want to see me? What if I can't forgive her for leaving?"
