I turn to face him. “I don’t like you.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to drop the case.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“And this,” I gesture between us, at the charged and stupid air in the elevator, “doesn’t mean anything. It means I’ve had a long month, and you’re attractive in a deeply irritating way, and I’m making a decision that I get to make. Clear?”
He tilts his head slightly. “Crystal.”
“Good.”
I press the button for the penthouse.
The elevator starts to move, and Matteo Vitale says nothing, does nothing, just stands there looking at me, carefully controlled.
That control is what does it. The fact that he’s not reaching for me. Not smirking. Not taking.
I cross the distance myself.
I grab the lapels of his jacket and I kiss him. Not softly, not tentatively, but hard, angry, like I’m trying to win an argument we haven’t had yet.
He goes still for a second. And then his hands find my waist and he kisses me back with the same energy I brought, and it’s a lot. My back finds the elevator wall. His mouth is hot and demanding and he tastes like beer and restraint coming undone.
I bite his lower lip, hard enough to make a point.
He pulls back just far enough to look at me.
“There she is,” he says softly, like he’s been waiting for this version of me since the bar.
I hate that it makes me want to do it again.
“This is a really, really bad idea,” I say.
“I’ve had worse.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second.”
I hook my fingers through his belt loops and walk backward, toward the oak door of my room, watching his face as I do.
I’m watching for the smugness, the victory, the proof that this is exactly what he engineered.
It’s not there. He looks… undone. A precise man coming apart at the seams and aware of it and continuing anyway.
The fact that Matteo Vitale, who controls everything, looks like he’s surrendering something makes me want him more.
CHAPTER 4
Lindsay
For a minute, we stare at each other, our chests rising and falling in tandem. My own disbelief is mirrored in his expression.
A part of me is repeatedly asking what the hell I’m doing. The other part is in shock and desperately needs the kiss to continue.
Because Matteo Vitale is a damn good kisser. And that kiss might have short-circuited my brain.
He looks just as surprised as I feel. Which throws me off a little because I didn’t think surprise was an emotion he was capable of. He swallows, dark eyes staring so hard he might as well be looking into my soul.
