I don't answer.
"I saw a man who can command a room full of people with a single word." Her thumb traces along my jawline. "I saw a man who terrifies everyone around him. Who makes grown men flinch when he looks at them."
"Antonella—"
"I saw the most terrifying man I've ever met." She leans closer. Her lips brush against my ear. "And the hottest."
Something cracks open inside my chest.
"The wheelchair doesn't change that," she whispers. "Nothing changes that. You could be in that chair for the rest of your life, and you would still be the most dangerous man in any room you enter."
I grab her.
My hands fist in her hair. I pull her mouth to mine.
The kiss is brutal. Desperate. I pour everything I can't say into it. Every fear. Every doubt. Every moment I've spent hating myself for what I've become.
She kisses me back just as hard.
Her hands grab my shirt. She pulls at it, trying to get it off me.
I break the kiss long enough to yank the shirt over my head.
Her eyes drop to my chest. To the scars that mark my skin. The bullet wound on my shoulder. The surgical scars from the operations that saved my life but couldn't save my legs.
She doesn't flinch.
She traces her fingers along the scar on my shoulder. Light. Gentle.
"These don't change anything either," she says.
I grab her wrist. Pull her hand away.
"Stop talking," I say.
She smiles. That dimple appears in her cheek.
"Make me."
I flip her onto her back.
The movement is awkward. My legs don't cooperate the way I want them to. But I manage it. I pin her beneath me, my weight pressing her into the mattress.
Her eyes go wide.
"You were saying?" I ask.
She laughs. The sound is bright. Surprised.
"I was saying you're terrifying," she says. "And hot. Very, very hot."
I kiss her again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Antonella
Bruno lies beneath me on the bed.
