25
Lorenzo
Elizabeth and I have shifted into something I don’t know how to name since I returned from my trip. It isn’t peace. It sure as hell isn’t forgiveness. It’s something hotter than that. A ceasefire negotiated with hands and mouths and the frantic drag of skin against skin.
We have sex every fucking moment we can.
In the kitchen, with her bent over the counter and my hand clamped over her mouth because the staff is two rooms away. In the bathroom, her skirt shoved up around her hips, my tie still knotted at my throat while she comes apart against the sink. In the hallway, because neither of us makes it to the bedroom. She goes down on me, and I go down on her. We get creative. We keep it old-school. We make a mess of each other and pretend that means we’re not making a mess of everything else.
But when I’m not buried deep inside her, the wall goes back up. She gets that look in her eye. Cool. Untouchable. Like I didn’t just have her shaking beneath me ten minutes earlier.Like she didn’t say my name in a voice I’ve started hearing in my sleep.
Then come the barbs. Russo this, Russo that. A name dragged between us like a blade. And God help me, it works. Because Russo has become a sore subject.
He’s outsmarted me more than once. Slipped through places I had locked down. Put men in rooms I thought I controlled. And now word is he’s in Chicago, ready to take back his fiancée.
Hisfiancée who is currently full ofme.
I rock into her, slow and deep, and the thought turns something inside me black. Elizabeth’s eyes flutter shut. Beautiful, treacherous woman.
She’s spread out beneath me like sin and consequence, her hair tangled across my pillows, her lips parted, her nails dragging down my back as if she means to leave proof. Her body welcomes me even when her heart keeps a knife at my throat.
I lower my mouth to her ear.
“Does he know?” I ask.
Her eyes open. There she is. That vicious little spark she gets when she knows she’s found one of my bruises and presses down anyway.
“Does who know?” she whispers.
I drive into her harder. Her breath breaks.
I smile against her jaw. “Don’t play innocent with me,cara. You’re terrible at it.”
She turns her face, her mouth brushing mine. “Maybe I like making you say his name.”
My hand tightens on her thigh. Wrong answer. Or maybe exactly the right one. I push her leg higher, opening her more, changing the angle until the next thrust punches the smugness right out of her. Her head tips back. A moan spills from her throat, soft and helpless, and satisfaction tears through me so violently it feels almost cruel.
“There,” I murmur. “That’s better.”
She glares at me, but it’s ruined by the way her body clenches around mine.
“You’re jealous,” she says.
I laugh once, low and humorless, and kiss the corner of her mouth. “I’m territorial.”
“Same thing.”
“No.” I pull back just enough to look at her. “Jealous implies I think he has a chance.”
Her lips part.
I move again, slower this time. Deeper. Mean enough to make her feel every inch of my answer.
“He doesn’t.”
Her fingers curl into my shoulders. “You sound very sure of yourself.”
“I am.”
