And it stops exactly where I expect it to stop.
Despite the empty seat between us, I become more aware than ever just how close he feels. The heat of his body rolls into mine, and he shifts until the breadth of his shoulders fills the edge of my vision.
I can touch him if I want to.
My hands remain still. Slowly, I force myself to break the silence and resent the sure knowledge in my heart that somehow, I’ve just lost a game of sorts.
"Why do you keep looking at this necklace?"
He leans in close, and I hate that I instinctively back up until my hair and back is pressed against the cool glass of the window. There's nowhere for me to go. The car door is at my back, the leather seat beneath me, and his body is closing the distance between us with the steady inevitability of gravity.
"Why don’t you tell me?" he purrs my name. “After all, you’re my PR agent and you should know everything about me.”
The words vibrate with an unmistakable hunger, and he continues to invade my space until we’re close enough to kiss.
My eyes dart to his lips for just a moment. A split-second surrender before my brain yanks back control. But it’s already too late. He’s seen it all.
My body is hot and my skin tingles with awareness—at the complete absence of space between us, at the thin piece of fabric separating my flesh from him, and at the racing pulse hammering away the final remnants of reason in my brain.
“Because this necklace is yours,” I whisper.
A dark smile appears. I can see the promises of things I’m not supposed to imagine written across his beautiful face.
“Good girl.”
A familiar forbidden heat jolts across the nape of my neck, a thumb strokes the point where my jaw connects to my neck, and I forget how to breathe.
How the hell did he just touch me without me noticing?
He moves his hand down my neck along the length of the chain, fingers dancing across my collarbone. My vision turns hazy at the touch. A slow current of electricity thrums through my body and refuses to dissipate as long as his skin is on mine.
His hand continues to move along the chain until finally, he takes the seven-pointed-star pendant between his fingers. Rough knuckles send ripples of fire spreading into my chest.
"And this is the part where you ask me just how is it thatyoucame into possession of what belongs to me.” His voice drips with every word. “Ms. Farnassi."
A storm of emotions crashes through me. Thrill and fear and excitement and dread fight for control in my mind. None of them are winning. All of them are screaming.
I shudder without meaning to, and know I’ve lost for good.
His voice drops to a deep gravelly tone. “You already know the answer, don’t you?”
"My brother wasn't a thief,” I answer with my chin lifted and defiant.
His other hand presses against my thigh through the slit of my dress, hot and insistent. A whimper falls out of my mouth at the contact, and I hate that he can do this to me. I hate that I’m letting him do this to me. A finger slips under the slit and starts to travel up, exposing my skin as he does so.
“I knew your brother better than you ever did.”
My breath quickens as he approaches that forbidden crook where my leg meets my hips. I clench my jaws tight to keepmy teeth from chattering. And despite the urge to close my eyes and let him continue, I keep them open and focused on his gray irises.
“You don’t know shit about Luca,” I seethe. “You murderer.”
"Murderer,” he repeats.
His hand on my thigh stops, but his hand holding the pendant moves back to its original position behind my nape, and then higher up until his fingers are threading through my hair from the base of my skull. Slowly, he winds my hair around his fist. Once. Twice. Three times.
Until every single strand is under his command.
When I tilt my head back from the pressure to expose my throat, he gives it a firm and insistent tug. There’s pain, yes, but it’s the kind of pain that I’ve been craving ever since Luca died.
