I should move back. I should close the first aid kit and put a reasonable amount of space between us because this room is small and it's late and we've already established tonight that neither of us is very good at stopping once we start.
I don't move back.
Neither does he.
He reaches up and his fingers brush the side of my face, light and careful, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone the way he did once in a dark hallway and once in a jacuzzi and apparently the feeling it produces in me doesn't diminish with repetition, it just gets more specific, more concentrated, like my body has been cataloging exactly what his touch feels like and keeps updating the record.
"Isabella," he says quietly.
"I know," I say, because I do know, I know all the reasons, I've known them all along.
His hand curves around my jaw and he tilts my face up and he kisses me.
It's nothing like the jacuzzi.
That was heat and frustration and four years of everything finally breaking the surface all at once. This is slow. His mouth is soft against mine and he takes his time with it, learning the shape of my lips with a patience that makes my chest ache, his thumb moving gently against my jaw, his other hand finding my waist and settling there without pulling me closer, just resting, just anchoring.
I kiss him back slowly, matching the pace he's set, and it feels like something I've been waiting for without knowing I was waiting, the specific quality of this, the gentleness of it, which should not be as devastating as it is.
He pulls back just slightly.
Close enough that I can feel him breathing.
A low moan of protest leaves my lips as he rests his forehead against mine and we stay there, eyes closed, breathing the same air in the amber lamplight of this small anonymous room.
I shiver and it’s not from cold. Not from anything except the way his mouth felt and the way he's looking at me now and the particular tenderness of his hand still curved against my jaw.
He pulls back immediately, his hand moving to my arm. "Are you cold?"
I open my eyes. He's looking at me with concern, reading it wrong, already reaching for the blanket at the foot of the bed.
"I'm not cold," I say.
He looks at me.
"I'm not cold, Enzo."
Understanding moves across his face slowly, and with it something else, something that makes his jaw tighten and his hand still on my arm and his eyes drop briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes.
He exhales slowly. His hand moves from my arm to my hand and he holds it, loose and warm, and we sit on the edge of the bed in the lamplight and don't say anything else for a long moment.
"You should sleep," he says finally.
"You should too."
"I'll rest.
I know he won't sleep. He means he'll sit in that chair by the window with his gun and watch the door all night.
"Enzo."
"I'll rest," he says again, firmly but not unkindly. "Sleep, Isabella."
I lie back and pull the blanket up and watch him cross to the chair by the window and settle into it, his gun resting on his knee, his eyes on the door.
The lamp stays on low.
I watch him for longer than I should and I'm aware of him there, solid and present in the amber light, and the room feels safe.
