Page 111 of Levi

He turns around, raises his head and finally looks directly at me. “You really want to know why? Okay, since you won’t stop asking, I’ll tell you. Straight up. You’ve never once let me touch you. One time, on the steps at the beach house, I put a hand on your arm, and you quit breathing till I took it back. I saw it, so don’t try to deny it. You’re so damn careful not to let me touch you that handing over the key to this apartment takes a strategy so our fingers don’t touch. That guy at the bar touched you three separate times. A stranger and you sat there. Acted like it was no big deal. If my hand gets within six inches of you, you yell no and jump back like I’m poison. Tell me I’m wrong, Dante.”

I throw up my hands and move closer.

“That’s because you are poison! Look at what has happened since you arrived. You’ve turned my life upside down. I should be focusing on closing the biggest sale of my life. Instead, all I’m doing is worrying about you. Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Are you even fucking breathing? It’s all I think about.”

“Dante…”

“I never lose my temper and I threw Freddie against a wall. Not to mention, I had you up against a refrigerator, too, yelling at you in Spanish. You’re driving me insane, Levi, and I’m losing my fucking mind. I can’t take this anymore!”

He turns and reaches for the doorknob. I cross the room and throw my weight against the door, holding it closed. I’m inches from him, my hand above his shoulder.

“Where are you going? We’re not done, Levi.”

I’m standing right in front of him, my chest heaving, my arm caging him between my body and the door.

This close I can feel the heat coming off him, smell his aftershave now that his beard is gone. Every inch of the four feet I just crossed to stop him is roaring at me about all the times I didn’t.

“Move out of my way, Dante. Let me go.”

“No.”

His eyes are almost dead level with mine. Those green eyes of his promising my destruction.

“I’ve answered your question, now you answer mine,” he says. “What are you afraid of? Why won’t you let me touch you one goddamn time?”

“Because it wouldn’t be one time, or a hundred times,” I say. “You’ll ruin me and I want you to. Damn it!”

My hands find his face, the rough texture of his jaw, and I kiss him hard.

He goes rigid for half a second—dead still, mouth closed, body locked as if bracing for impact. Then his hands fist in my shirt and yank me in. The stillness shatters. Levi kisses me back like a man who has been starving in the dark and tasted light for the first time. His mouth is hot and urgent, lips parted, teeth catching my lip as I give it right back. I angle his head with both hands to pull him deeper, drinking in the thick, needy groans vibrating up from his chest.

He’s grabbing at me now, fingers dragging up my sides, gripping the back of my neck hard enough to bruise—checking if he’s allowed to touch me and then not giving a damn whether he is.

I tug the bandana from his hair and let it fall; his sunglasses are already lost somewhere on the floor. Shoving him back against the wall, I catch his sharp gasp as I grind my hips into his so he can feel exactly how hard I already am. He rolls against me in answer, and the kiss turns raw—a shared breath and wet slide of tongues that doesn’t stop for air.

I bite his bottom lip and suck it into my mouth. He makes a broken noise, pulling at my shirt when there’s already no space left between us, taking what he was sure he’d never get like he might never get it again.

I break the kiss to ask him, “Is this what you want?”

“God, yes,” he breathes, the words barely more than an exhale before our lips crash together again.

“Anywhere you need to be tonight?” I ask.

“No,” he answers against my mouth.

“Then we’ve got all night.”

I start walking him backward down the hall, mouths locked, both of us clumsy and hungry, catching shoulders on the wall without slowing for a second. I’m past being careful with him.

His hands never leave me—one gripping my shirt, the other sliding under the hem to splay hot against my spine.

The bedroom door is already half-open. I kick it wider and keep driving us forward until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress. One firm shove to his chest sends him down onto the bed, and I follow him before he can catch his breath.

I strip my shirt off in one impatient yank and fling it aside. Reaching down, I grab the front of Levi’s shirt with both hands.

“Your shirt’s coming off,” I tell him. I don’t wait for an answer. I just rip.

Buttons scatter across the mattress and floor, fabric tearing open down the middle. Levi’s breath hitches in a shocked sound, and I catch his next gasp with my mouth as I settle my full weight over him, chest to chest.