I open the door.
She's on the bed, propped against the headboard with documents in her lap. One of my shirts hangs off her shoulder, too big, the collar slipping down to show the ridge of her collarbone. Her hair is down, loose and messy, curling against her neck. She's got a pen between her teeth and her brow is furrowed, so deep in concentration she doesn't hear me come in.
I stand in the doorway and watch her, and the wanting hits me so hard my vision blurs.
She glances up. The pen drops from her mouth.
"You're back late."
I close the door behind me. The lock clicks.
"Aurelio needed me," I say, but my voice comes out wrong. Rougher than it should be. Lower.
She notices. I see her register it, see the shift in her posture, the way her shoulders tighten and her chin lifts. She's reading me the way she reads those documents. Scanning for patterns. Looking for what doesn't fit.
"You okay?" she asks.
"No."
The honesty surprises us both. I watch her set the papers aside, slow, careful, her eyes never leaving my face. She swings her legs off the bed and stands, and that shirt rides up her thigh, and I make myself look at the wall.
"Leone."
"Don't."
"Don't what? Ask if you're okay? You JUST said you're not. What's going on?"
"Nothing. Go back to sleep."
"I wasn't sleeping. I was working." She takes a step toward me. "Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Bullshit." Another step. She's close now. Close enough that I can smell the soap she used. My soap, because that's all she has, and the thought of my scent on her skin makes my chest crack open. "You walk in here looking like someone gutted you, and you want me to roll over and ignore it?"
"Yes. That's exactly what I want."
"Too bad." She's right in front of me now. Looking up at me with those storm-grey eyes that see too much, always too much. "What happened?"
I stare at the ceiling. At the wall. At anything except her face.
"Claudio told me to either touch you or let you go," I say. The words come out flat, stripped of everything. "He said the middle ground is going to get me killed."
She's quiet . "And which one are you choosing?"
I look at her.
That's the mistake. That's the moment the leash snaps, the moment the last thread of control frays and gives and finally, finally breaks. Because she's standing there in my shirt with her hair in her face and her eyes wide and her lips parted, and she's not afraid of me. She's never been afraid of me. Not when I had her strung up by her wrists. Not when I put a gun in her face. Not when I dragged her through a firefight with bodies dropping around us.
She's not afraid. She's waiting.
And I'm done making her wait.
I cross the distance between us in one stride. My hands find her waist, her hips, pulling her against me so hard she gasps. I walk her backward until her shoulders hit the wall, and I press into her, pinning her there with my body, my hands braced on either side of her head.
Her breath catches. Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt.
"Tell me to stop," I say against her mouth. "Tell me to stop and I will. I'll sit in the chair, and I'll stay there and I won't—"
