Something more than just desire. Something that feels a lot like love.
I push the thought away. It's too soon. It's too complicated. And I'm not sure she's ready to hear it. I'm not sure I'm ready to say it.
Instead, I lean in and kiss her, a soft, sweet kiss that's full of all the things I can't say.
She deepens it, her tongue sliding against mine, and I can feel myself start to harden again.
She feels it too, and she pulls back with a little gasp.
"Again?" she asks, her eyes wide with surprise.
I grin, slow and wolfish. "For you? Always."
She laughs and shakes her head, but she's already shifting, straddling my hips, her hands braced on my chest.
"You're insatiable," she says, but there's no censure in her tone, only a breathy excitement that makes my blood run hot.
"You're complaining?"
"God, no," she says, and she sinks down onto me, taking me in one smooth, fluid motion.
Chapter Thirty Two
Elsa
Much, much later, I’m half sunk into my bed like it’s a cloud cradling me for the night.
My skin is still very aware—too sensitive, too warm, every brush of my sheets against naked flesh a reminder that I’m not imagining what happened earlier. Sleep keeps trying to pull me under in soft waves, but I keep hovering in that wonderful in-between state where everything feels slow and dreamy.
From somewhere in the apartment, I hear Antonio moving.
Not loud. Never loud. Just the faintest shift of weight, the quiet click of a latch, the low sounds of him checking things the way other people check their phones before bed.
I close my eyes and breathe, letting the sound of it soothe me instead of spiking my nerves.
Then the bathroom door opens, and he steps through, the light behind him briefly cutting a shape into the dark. He reaches back and locks it from this side with a firm little twist. Another click.
He crosses the room to the door that leads to the hall, and I hear that lock, too.
He turns back toward me.
“I locked the bathroom door from the hall too,” he says quietly, coming closer. “Just in case.”
My eyes flutter open, heavy-lidded. “Just in case,” I echo, the words slow and sleepy.
He stops at the foot of the bed, and the sight of him resets my pulse like a switch.
He’s wearing only his pants—low-slung, unbuttoned at the top, sitting on his hips, and they have no right to be that provocative on a man who just finished checking locks. My mouth goes dry. I bite my lip, and I can feel a fresh wave of desire roll through me, lazy and inevitable as I look at the ‘v’ that starts at his waist and disappears into his pants where it narrows to his groin.
Will I ever get enough?
His torso is bare, and my gaze lands on the scar stretching across it—a pale line that interrupts the smooth stretch of skin over his torso. Not that he doesn’t have other scars, but this one is different. My stomach tightens at the sight, a squeeze of tenderness and fear I don’t like acknowledging.
Then I notice what’s in his hand.
A gun.
Sleep drains right out of my body in a singlejolt.
