"I think about you, too," she whispered. "When I'm alone. I think about what your hands would feel like on my skin. What your mouth would feel like between my?—"
I kissed her.
It was hard and hungry. There was nothing gentle about it.
Her mouth opened for me. She tasted like coffee and sweet vanilla and I licked my way inside, claiming every inch, swallowing the moan that vibrated in her throat. My hands slid down to her ass and squeezed, hauling her up against me, grinding my cock against her stomach.
She bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
I growled at the pain and fisted her soft hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat. My teeth scraped down the column of her neck, and she shuddered—a full-body tremor that made my vision blur.
"Milo—"
God. The sound of my name on her lips nearly broke me.
The effort it took not to hike up her dress, shove her panties aside, and bury myself inside her against this wall and fuck her until she forgot her own name was so much worse than it was the other night in the alley.
But not here. Not like this. Not in a hallway where anyone could walk by, where Viktor could appear at any moment, where the risk was too high and the consequences were death.
With great effort, I pulled away, moving her arm back down to her side when she reached for me.
Our ragged breaths filled the empty hall. Her lips were red and swollen and her hair was wrecked where my fist had tangled in it.
She looked ruined.
She looked perfect.
"Milo—" she started.
"That was a mistake." I forced myself to say the words that would save both of our lives.
Her chin lifted, eyes blazing even without sight. I'd always thought they were blue, but now I could see specks of brown too. "Bullshit," she gritted out.
"Raven—"
"Don't." She straightened, smoothing her dress with hands that weren't quite steady. "Don't kiss me like that and then pretend it didn't fucking mean anything."
I ran a hand through my hair, gripping the strands tight enough to hurt. Something to ground me. Something to stop the subtle tremor in my fingers that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with restraint.
Mean anything.
Fucking Christ.
If it had lived in the realm ofnothing, I wouldn't be standing here feeling like my chest had been cracked open with a rib spreader. The emptiness I’d cultivated for decades—the cold, safe detachment that made me excellent at erasing sins and keeping secrets to myself—was gone. Replaced by a fire that would burn the whole fucking building and all of the bodies inside of it just to keep her warm.
That kiss wasn't a mistake because I didn't care. It was a mistake because I cared enough to get sloppy. And in my line of work, sloppy meant dead.
"It wasn't nothing," I gritted out, the confession scraping my throat like broken glass. "It was too much. And that's the problem."
She went perfectly still.
"Go back to work," I said. "Take the front exit tonight. Don't come to the alley."
"And if I do?"
"I won't be there."
I turned and walked away before she could respond. Before I could change my mind. Before I could drag her into the nearest closet and finish what I'd started.
