My throat goes dry. “You’re wicked.”
“Maybe,” he murmurs, lips brushing the shell of my ear, “but you like me this way.”
I hate how right he is.
He smells like cigarette smoke and whiskey and something coppery from the blood he hasn’t yet washed off, but when his hand slides to the back of my neck, my whole body responds. I can’t help it—he has this gravity that pulls me in every time.
Still, I try to hold onto the moment, to the concern that’s clawing at my chest. “Sandro, I’m serious. You come home hurt every night?—”
“Every night, I come home,” he interrupts gently. “That’s what matters.”
I start to argue, but his thumb traces my lower lip, silencing me. The touch makes my pulse skip a beat.
“I’ve told you before,” he says quietly, “a little blood never bothered me.”
It’s the same line he used weeks ago, when he found me crying in the bathroom. Somehow, it still hits me like a spark to dry tinder.
His gaze lingers on my face, dark and unreadable, then he dips his head, capturing my mouth in a kiss that’s nowhere near gentle. It’s hungry, claiming, like he’s proving something.
The taste of salt and metal from his split lip that he never gives enough time to heal mixes with my own breath, and my hands find his shoulders, the muscle beneath his shirt tense and hot.
He presses me back against the edge of the table, his palm splayed at my hip. The movement is slow, deliberate, but there’s tension in it, a coiled restraint I’ve come to recognize. This is how Sandro says what he can’t with words.
I pull back enough to whisper, “You’re hurt.”
He smiles faintly, eyes glinting. “You keep saying that like it matters.”
“It does matter.”
“Then fix me after,” he says. “You always do.”
My breath catches. I should protest again—he’s bleeding, exhausted—but he’s already kissing me, and the world narrows to the feel of his mouth and the solid weight of his body.
It’s not that I don’t want him. I always want him. But there’s something different tonight, a heat that feels edged with fear and longing. Because I love him. I love this dangerous, brooding man who walked into my life and turned everything upside down.
It still terrifies me, because I’m keeping a secret that could destroy everything between us. When he finds out the truth—that I can’t give him a family—he’ll never look at me this way again. And it’s agony to know this moment is fleeting. A brief glimpse of heaven that I will have to lock into my memory and cherish after the day he lets me go.
I push the thought down, bury it under the heat of his kiss.
His hands slide to my waist, and I feel the bruises along his knuckles, rough and raw against my skin. I reach up, curling my fingers around his wrists. “You’re going to ruin your hands,” I murmur.
“They’ll heal.”
“You say that every time.”
He grins. “Have I been wrong?”
That wicked smile does something strange to me—it softens the dark edges of him, makes me see the man underneath the fighter. The one who, despite everything, still cares.
“I hate that you do this to yourself,” I say quietly.
He brushes a strand of hair from my face. “And I hate that you worry so much.”
“Someone has to.”
“Then keep doing it,” he murmurs, his voice dropping. “I like that you care.”
I swallow hard, heart pounding as his hand slides up my back, guiding me closer. The air between us changes, thickening until I can barely breathe.
