For a second, neither of us moves. His eyes lock onto mine, and something passes between us. Heat. Memory. Confusion. He might not recognize me, but his body does.
His pupils dilate. His fingers flex around my hips. And I feel it, too. The magnetic pull of something I never wanted to feel again.
Desire. Longing. Need.
Then I feel something else. His cock thickens between my legs, sending fiery heat racing up my core.
No, no, no. I slap his hands away, scramble to my feet, and snatch the gun from the floor.
Matteo watches me stand, still flat on his back, chest rising and falling. A goddamn crooked grin spreads across his lips. The same damned grin I used to dream about for years…
“You always this hands-on with your enemies?” he drawls.
I glare down at him. “You don’t get to flirt with me.”
“Hard not to when you were straddling me like that.”
I cock the gun again. “Try me.”
His smile fades.
“Next time,” I hiss, voice steady despite the war raging inside me, “I won’t miss.”
And with that, I dart out the door leaving him stunned, breathless, and entirely in the dark.
Just like he left me.
The brisk early spring air hits me like a slap when I race out of The Velvet Vault. I don’t stop. Not until I’ve rounded two corners and slipped into the shadowed mouth of a narrow alleyway in the Meatpacking District tucked between a shuttered café and a graffiti-smeared garage door.
His scent is still on me. In my hair. Under my skin.
My heart is still jackhammering in my chest. My breaths are ragged. My hand aches from gripping the gun so tight. My skin still tingles where his body pressed against mine.
Damn him.
I lean back against the damp brick wall and let out a low, guttural sound of frustration. A sound that might’ve once beena scream if I hadn’t spent the last four years learning how to swallow those whole.
I should’ve pulled the trigger.
I had my chance. I hadhim.
Matteo Rossi, right there. Arrogant. Unarmed. Completely within my control. And I froze.
Not because I was scared. Not because I couldn’t do it. Because for one stupid second, my body remembered what it felt like to be under him and not in a fight.
Because even now, after all the blood he spilled and after everything he stole from me, he still smells like the Sicilian beaches, cedar and aged whiskey. My treacherous brain is too slow to separate that scent from safety.
God. I’m pathetic. I slam the back of my head against the wall. Hard. Darkness edges into my vision as I grit out a curse.
All these years of training, of steeling myself, of working so damned hard to lose my accent and honing my body into a weapon for nothing. One look at him, and I’m that stupid, weak eighteen-year-old girl again.
“You’ll never get that close again,” I whisper to myself, my fingers itching to reach for the locket tucked under my shirt. “Never.”
He doesn’t even know who I am. Who knew a sexy black mask and a dye job could work such wonders?
The fact that he doesn’t remember me should make it easier, right? It doesn’t. It just makes it worse.
I reach up to tear the mask from my face, itching to breathe free, to stop pretending, to just bemeagain for one fucking second, but a rustle behind me makes my blood run cold.
