“Making sure the music gets made.” He glanced toward the courtyard. “Everything else—the donors and the board—it all exists for that one reason. Once I understood that, I was never confused about my priorities.”
Luca had admirable clarity about his purpose.
“How long do your assignments usually run?” he asked.
“Depends on the threat level. I’ve been with The Guardians for two years, and most resolve within a month.”
“And what happens after?”
“I go back to New York and wait for the next one.”
He’d led me into a statement twice as weighty as what I intended when it formed in my head. I imagined what it sounded like from his point of view and didn’t look up.
From upstairs, we heard a familiar creak. Luca looked up. “He just climbed into bed.”
Luca set his water glass down with a small, decisive click and crossed the room to me. He reached out for my shirt, curling two fingers inside, between the top two buttons. I gazed into his eyes at close range. The hazel color looked distinctly green in the kitchen light.
“You still want this?” I asked.
“I’ve wanted it since we bought you that suit on Magazine Street. Nothing has changed that.”
“I—“
“It’s a risk. I understand,” he said.
Luca kissed me. His free hand reached out for the back of my neck and held on. His mouth tasted of Odette’s wine, and the kitchen smelled of the jasmine drifting in from the courtyard wall.
He unbuttoned the first two buttons of my shirt and pulled the tails free of my black dress pants. “You clean up well,” he said, grinning against my mouth.
“You picked the shirt.”
“I have good instincts.”
“You’re humble about it, too.”
Luca flashed a full, devastating smile. “It’s one of my finest qualities.” He unbuttoned another of my buttons. “I have several.”
The stairs were narrow, and with the wine still working through both of us, we stumbled on them. He found it funnier than I did, though by the time we reached the top, I’d conceded his point.
Reaching for my hand, he led me into his room, and he sat on the edge of his bed. He stared at me like we were in an art museum, and I was a Grecian statue on display, shirt half undone.
“Join me,” he said.
I sat beside him. He turned my face toward his with one hand and kissed me, tongue sliding between my lips. He smelled of citrus, lime specifically, a cologne he’d worn once before when we went shopping for clothes.
Luca finished unbuttoning my shirt and pushed it off my shoulders. His hand moved across my chest, thumb rubbing a nipple, before it settled at my waist.
“Sometimes you act like you’ve forgotten you have a body,” he said.
“Occupational habit.”
He pressed his lips to my shoulder, collarbone, and then the curve of my neck. “We’ll work on that.”
I pulled his shirt over his head. With his torso bare, I looked at him in the amber light, gazing at the warm honey color of his skin and the long line of his lean muscles. He wore a silver chain at his throat.
I pressed my thumb against a scar on his left shoulder, healed enough that only a faint discoloration remained.
“Bar fight,” he said. “Tulane. Second year.”
