"I know—I've always—Dante—I'm close—"
"Come. Let me see it."
He comes with a sound that fills the room. His body arches, clenching around me in rhythmic contractions that grip every barbell. His face is in the daylight when he falls apart, mouth open, tears caught at his lashes.
The pressure pulls me under. I come buried inside him, the orgasm tearing through me, total and obliterating. I hold myself inside him through it, eyes open, watching his face because I promised myself I'd see.
I see him.
The collapse comes in pieces. My arms give first, and I lower myself onto him before they fail completely. His arms closearound me. My face goes into his neck, his into my hair, and daylight stays on every inch of us.
We lie there while the light moves across the ceiling.
"I love you," I say into his neck, quieter. "I chose this city for you. The rest, I'll figure out with you too."
"I love you," he says. His hand finds my hair. Holds. "I'm not going anywhere, D. Whatever your father thinks you owe."
His hand cards through my hair, the same slow pass Maya uses on me.
"When she gets home," I say, "I need to tell her everything I told you. The dinner. The family. The platform."
"She's going to see the parallels."
"She'll understand it better than anyone. That's why it'll hurt more."
I put my head on his chest. His heart beats against my ear.
"Cole."
"Yeah?"
"She said if I go behind her back again, there won't be a conversation. There will be a door closing."
"I heard her."
"She meant it."
"Maya doesn't make threats. She makes promises."
His hand stills in my hair.
"It's already in motion," I say. "Marco's people are watching David Ashford. My father has a hook in me now. And Maya is going to walk through that door and I'm going to have to tell her everything. The family. The cost of the protection I purchased without her permission."
"What do you think she'll do?"
"I don't know. I know what it'll cost her to hear it."
Cole's hand tightens in my hair.
The front door opens downstairs. Maya's footsteps in the hallway. She's back. Early. Her seminar runs until five and it's barely three.
Her footsteps come up the stairs.
Cole and I are still in bed. Naked. The sheets are tangled around our legs, the room too bright to hide anything.
Maya appears in the doorway. She looks at us. At the bed. At the daylight filling the room. Her eyes move over the two men who just made love in the light for the first time while she was in a lecture hall processing the fact that one of them used his mafia family to protect her.
The bag drops from her shoulder to the floor.
