"Bullshit."
The word comes out soft. An admonishment wrapped in belief. She shifts beside me, and her knee presses against my thigh, and the contact sends a jolt through my body that I feel in the base of my cock.
"It wasn't strategic," she says. "The lighter. You didn't give me a lighter because it served the mission. You gave it to me because I needed it and you noticed."
"Principessa..."
"You notice everything about me. You count my breathing. You know where I put my shoes. You knew I was lying before I opened my mouth." She's turned toward me now, her body angled, her face close enough that I can see the individual lashes framing those beautiful eyes. "That's not strategy, Claudio. That's something else."
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't make me into something I'm not."
"I'm not making you into anything. I'm telling you what I see." Her hand comes up and touches my jaw. Where she hit me. Her fingertips press into the spot, light, barely there, and my eyes close before I can stop them. "Does it hurt?"
"No."
"Liar." Her thumb traces the line of my face. My teeth clench under her touch. "You've got a bruise forming."
"I've had worse."
"I know. I've seen your scars."
Her hand stays on my face. Her thumb moves from my chin to the corner of my mouth, tracing the cut on my lip. The touch is so light it's barely contact, and my whole body is vibrating like a string pulled too tight.
"I shouldn't have hit you," she says.
"I shouldn't have walked in."
"I'm glad you did."
I open my eyes. She's right there. Inches away. Close enough to count the freckles on the bridge of her nose, three of them, faint, hidden under the patchy makeup she stopped using four days ago. Close enough to see the pulse in her throat jumping fast and hard. Close enough to smell the shampoo in her hair and the faded tobacco on her skin and the warmth underneath that's just her, just Charlotte, just the woman she is when she stops being the woman she built.
"If you kiss me again," I say, "I'm not going to stop at just kissing."
"I know."
"I need you to be sure."
"I am."
"Say it."
"Claudio." She says my name the way she does everything. Clean. Direct. No decoration. "I haven't been sure about anything in three years. I'm sure about this."
She kisses me.
Not like the kitchen. The kitchen was anger and collision and two people crashing into each other because the alternative was combustion. This is different. This is slow. Her mouth finds mine and stays, and her hand slides from my jaw into my hair, and she pulls me toward her with a pressure that's not urgent but absolute.
I let her lead. For ten seconds, maybe fifteen, I let her set the pace, because she needs to know she's driving this. She needs to know that the second she stops, I stop, despite the raging need that courses through me. That the power is hers even when my hands are on her body and my mouth is on her skin.
She pulls back just enough to breathe. Her forehead against mine. Her fingers in my hair.
"Touch me," she says. "Please."
Thepleaseundoes me.
