The thought hits me with startling clarity, and heat floods my face.
Then he looks up and sees me.
Everything in his expression shifts—surprise, then hope, then hunger so naked it steals my breath.
“Hi.” I haven’t heard my voice sound this young and shy for years.
“Hi.” He sets down the brush, his full attention on me now. Apollo snorts, displeased at the interruption, but Flavius doesn’t look away from my face. His gaze tracks over me—my face, my hair, down to my mouth where it lingers before coming back up to meet my gaze.
My heart is hammering so hard I’m sure he can hear it. “I finished. The last of the documentation. Everything’s submitted. Officially, my work with you is collaborative literacy education and healing methodology documentation. No more research extraction. No more power imbalance.”
“So we are…” He searches for the word. “Equal now?”
“We’re partners,” I say. “Equals.”
“And raincheck?”
I step closer. Close enough to catch his scent. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. “I’m here to collect it.”
The smile that breaks across his face is bright and unguarded and absolutely devastating. “About time, little scholar.”
“It’s been three days.”
“Felt longer.” He closes the distance between us in two strides, and suddenly we’re close enough that I have to tilt my head backto meet his eyes, close enough that my breasts brush his chest with each breath, close enough that if I just rose up on my toes…
Except this time, there’s nothing stopping us. No ethical shadow. No power differential. Just him and me and three days of pent-up wanting that’s about to find its release.
“So,” I breathe. “Where were we?”
His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone exactly the way I’ve been replaying in my mind for three days straight. The touch sends electricity racing through my nervous system, but this time there’s no guilt attached to the sensation. Just pure, overwhelming need.
“I believe,” he says, voice dropping low and rough, “you were going to ask me for kiss.”
“I was.” My voice comes out breathy, wanting. “Am. I am asking you to kiss me.”
I draw a shaky breath, the space between us suddenly too small.
“Please,” I add, and the word comes out almost desperate. “Flavius, please—”
“You are certain?” His thumb strokes across my cheek, and I lean into the touch without thinking. “Because if I kiss you now, I will not want to stop. Have been thinking about this for three days. Dreaming. Will not be able to keep it… quick. Or gentle. Or—”
“Good.” My hands come up to fist in his shirt, pulling him closer. “I don’t want brief. I don’t want gentle. I want—”
His eyes go dark. “Sophia—”
“Kiss me,” I demand. “Now. Please. I’ve been so good, I’ve waited, I did everything right, and now I just need—”
“Bene,” he breathes, and there’s so much feeling in that one word—relief and want and barely restrained hunger. Then, rougher, in Latin: “Di immortales, I have wanted—”
And then he kisses me.
The first brush of his mouth is soft for maybe half a second. Then, as if three days of restraint breaks all at once, the kiss turns hungry.
His hand slides from my jaw into my hair, angling my head exactly where he wants it. His other arm wraps around my waist, hauling me against him until there’s no space left between us. And his mouth—God, his mouth moves over mine like he’s been starving for this.
Heat flares low and bright. I sigh against his mouth, and the sound seems to shatter whatever control he had left.
The kiss deepens into something that borders on desperate. His hand threads through my hair possessively while his other hand splays across my lower back, pressing me so tightly against him I can feel every hard plane of his body. Every. Single. One. When his tongue sweeps into my mouth, my toes curl in my boots.
