She ate one of the candies but couldn’t taste it. The image of Archer’s face interchanged with the ones on the screen.
Around her, the room erupted with laughter at a line Ellory missed. Sensing her distraction, Angelo turned his head and looked at her. He closed his hand around hers, drawing tiny circles over her wrist.
Leaning close, he placed his lips to her ear. “I can get your mind off it for a little while.”
A shiver ran through her. She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
The corner of his mouth moved in that almost-smile. Then he stood and held out his hand.
She took it and let him lead her out.
His bedroom was dark when she stepped inside. Before she could turn toward him, his hands were on her, and the patient Angelo was gone.
He walked her back until her shoulders met the wall. Bracing his forearm above her head, he looked at her with a dark heat in his eyes that sent a spike of desire straight to her core.
Her breaths came fast and shallow as he moved his other hand to her hip. When he closed his fingers on her, applying the sort of pressure that made her arch into him, she gave uptrying to control her body—for weeks now, it had been making decisions about the SEAL without consulting her.
She gasped as his mouth hit the corner of hers. She twisted into the kiss, all tongues and heat and pent-up need.
When he trailed the kiss down her jaw to her throat, she tipped her head back and fisted her hands in his shirt.
In maddening increments, he edged her top up her body, skimming his fingers with it. By the time he divested her of her shirt, she was panting and her mind was finally, finally quiet, leaving only the dark and her lover’s hands and mouth and the way he grated out her name when they were alone.
She turned her face into his neck. “I love you, Angelo.”
He went still for a heartbeat.
His hands tightened on her.
Then there was no more talking.
FOURTEEN
She murmured the words against his neck, just above his pulse, so quiet he might have missed it if every part of him hadn’t been tuned to her frequency.
I love you, Angelo.
He stood there for one suspended second while those four words rearranged everything he knew about himself.
He pulled back just enough to look at her face. Really look, the way he hadn’t let himself do in a room full of people. What he found there wrecked him.
No guard up. No careful distance. Just Ellory, her eyes dark and steady, looking at him like she’d already decided to give her heart to him and wasn’t afraid of it.
He kissed her once. Slow and deliberate.
Then he walked her backward until they stood beside the bed. He reached for the lamp on the nightstand.
“I want to see you.”
He wasn’t disappointed. The glow highlighted her beautiful face and turned her skin to gold. Her eyes were a dark blue sea, and her chest rose and fell in quick breaths.
He reached for her again but there was no urgency. He wanted to unravel her slowly.
She reached for the hem of his shirt, and he caught her wrists.
“Not yet.”
Her breath hitched.
