Page 279 of Don’t Say Mafia

Get it together. He’s just a man with a staring problem. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before⁠—

The door opened behind me, and I gasped when I turned and saw Jagger filling the doorway, his broad frame cutting off most of the hallway light, and his eyes already locked on mine like he’d followed the thread of my pulse straight here.

He stepped inside, and the door drifted shut behind him.

Jagger kept his eyes on me as he turned the lock. The sound of it engaging was small, but it seemed to roar in my ears. My heart pounded so fiercely I felt it everywhere at once.

He didn’t speak at first. He simply stood there, his gaze holding mine in the reflection with the same unrelenting intensity he’d aimed at me all night—deep, consuming, as if I were the sole point keeping his world from spinning apart.

I turned slowly to face him. “You shouldn’t be in here,” I managed. My voice emerged softer than I intended, threaded with a tremor I couldn’t quite mask.

His gaze dipped to where I’d wetted my neck, and when his eyes returned to mine, they burned with something feral. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he rasped. “Every fucking day. Every fucking hour. Every fucking second.”

My eyes widened at his confession, and I was trembling as he stalked toward me with unhurried steps. I moved back until the cool porcelain edge of the sink pressed against me, hemming me in. Not that escape was particularly crossing my mind at the moment.

He didn’t stop until I could feel his heat, and there went the temporary relief the wet paper towel had given me. I was on fire, like a flame had started inside me, and it was slowly eating me up. I gasped, and there it was again: his scent. It wrapped around me, curling into my lungs. The same trace I’d woken up to all week. Only this wasn’t just a trace.

This was an assault against my hormones.

For a dizzy second, it felt less like coincidence and more like he’d been pumping it in through the vents to make an erotic version of Abercrombie.

My pulse jumped under his thumb as he settled it right over the frantic beat at my throat, pressing just enough to feel how wildly my heart raced for him.

“Beautiful,” he murmured as his other hand grazed my jaw and then continued its path downward, tracing the vulnerable line of my neck like he was mapping out every place he planned to claim.

I couldn’t look away from his eyes. This was what I’d meant earlier. Somehow he didn’t seem to be tainted by whatever else was thought of me.

“Every time I close my eyes, you’re there,” he said, and there was an ache in his voice . . . like that was painful. “I see you laughing at the bar. I see you walking past me with that little sway in your hips. I see you bent over a table wiping it down, ass up, and I have to grip the edge of my booth so hard I leave marks in the leather just to keep from dragging you out of here.”

My stomach clenched, and heat pulsed between my thighs.

He leaned in until his lips brushed the shell of my ear. “And when I’m near you like this—close enough to touch, close enough to taste—and I can’t . . . Fuck, I feel like I’m dying. Slowly. Every second I’m not inside you is pure torture.”

“Jagger . . .”

“I lie awake replaying every look you’ve ever given me. Every time you bit your lip when you thought I wasn’t watching. Every time your breath caught when I walked too close. I play it on repeat until my hand’s wrapped around my cock and I’m coming so hard I see stars, and it still isn’t enough. It’s never fucking enough.”

His thumb continued its intoxicating stroke over my pulse. “I want to ruin you for anyone else. I want you to feel me every time you move tomorrow. I want you marked so deep that when you shower, when you sleep, when you fucking breathe, you still feel me there. I want to fill you up, so there’s no room for anyone else.”

No room for anyone else.

Ryan’s name rose in my mind like it had been summoned.

Of course that was what he meant.

My knees weakened, and I gripped his shirt tighter, steadying myself against the storm building inside me.

“You’re fucking killing me, Eden. Standing there flushed and dripping, trying so fucking hard to pretend you don’t want this just as bad as I do. I bet your perfect pussy is soaked, baby. You’re probably dripping down your thighs, soaking through those little panties . . . desperate for me to bend you over this sink and fuck you until you can’t walk. And I’m supposed to just walk away? I can’t. I fucking can’t.”

Oh my gosh.

Ryan’s face suddenly flashed in my head, the sight of his ashes scattering in the wind.

I shoved Jagger’s chest, an involuntary reaction to the guilt. He rocked back half a step, a brief flash of surprise crossing his dark eyes before his expression hardened again.

“Stop,” I cried. “You can’t say that shit. You can’t talk about ruining me, marking me, owning me—not right now. This is wrong. This is so fucking wrong.”

He went eerily still, and a sort of thrill skated through me because we were right on the edge of something that I knew would be irreversible for me.