“It felt like worlds away to me.”
“Damn.” I bit into my lower lip, shaking my head. “When you say stuff like that to me, I feel like I’m fifteen all over again.”
“I won’t complain about that. I fell in love with that boy.”
My heart thundered as his eyes trailed down over my black shirt and jeans, his appreciative once-over a new development. The naked desire was something I’d seen the other night in the bedroom, but not out in the open like now, where it felt free and honest, unrestrained by vows and priesthood.
He was looking at me like he wanted me, and for the first time in a long time, he was allowed to.
“If you want to, um…” I swallowed, and Rafael smirked. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No.” But his grin grew wider.
“You are. You’re laughing at me.”
“No, it’s just…” He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. “You’re really cute when you’re nervous.”
“I—”
Rafael’s brows rose as if he were daring me to deny it, and I clicked my mouth shut, because what could I say? Iwasnervous.
The man I’d loved my entire life, the man I never thought I had a hope in hell of calling my own because he’d made vows toHim, was sitting on my couch looking at me like I was his entire world.
But the pressure of that, of knowing what he’d given up, what he’d walked away from, made me fucking nervous.
So sue me.
I couldn’t stop from touching him then, needing reassurance he was really here. I’d dreamed of him for so long that this felt impossible. Rafael choosingmefelt impossible.
I settled back against the plush cushion and reached up to run my fingers through his short hair. Trace the line of his jaw. Leaned in to kiss him softly before pulling back so I could look at him again.
A faint line formed between Rafael’s brows. “If this is too much, I can?—”
“Don’t you fuckingdarefinish that sentence,” I said, cutting him off swiftly with another kiss. “I want you. So much I think I’d die if you?—”
He covered my mouth with his hand and shook his head. “Don’t even think it.”
I searched his eyes, looking for any bit of doubt or regret or fear, anything that would tell me not to get my hopes up about this. But those grey-blue eyes were clear, a tranquil sea after a storm, and it eased the nerves in my stomach.
I kissed his palm that still covered my mouth, and then each of his fingers. I wanted to kiss each and every inch of him, and I would, but I still had to ask…
“What if you regret it?” I said, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “What if you realize you made a mistake and that I piss you off on the regular? Or you hate the way I’m glued to a computer screen all the time, or how much I have to do with my brothers? I know you don’t approve of the shit we get into at Libertine. Do you really want to be with such a fucking delinquent?”
Rafael listened, an almost-amused tilt to his lips, but he didn’t interrupt me. All those years of listening to confession after confession had given him more patience than I’d possessed my entire life.
Then again, I had waited for him, hadn’t I? That had to count for something.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“I’m sure I can think of a few hundred other reasons why this is a bad idea for you.”
He chuckled, a stark contrast to what I was feeling.
“I’m glad you find this hilarious.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.” He propped his arm on the cushion and rested his head on his fist, then laced our fingers together. “Do you really believe there’s anything you could say or do that would make me love you any less? I know who you are, Alessio, then and now. And I don’t love you in spite of it—I love youbecauseof it.”
Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
