Page 14
But when he looks at me, I don’t find any anger burning in his eyes.
It’s raw, unfiltered hunger.
“No one strikes me twice without repercussions.” His grip tightens a fraction. “Want to know the price?”
My throat goes dry. “Tell me.” The whisper escapes my lips a second ahead of my better judgment.
Tiny flecks of humor dance in his eyes as he leans in. “This.”
His mouth clamps over mine with furious desperation. For one suspended moment, I don’t move. My breath hitches between my lungs and lips, and I freeze against him.
The warmth of his lips races through me, tingling just beneath my skin. A small, helpless gasp parts my mouth, and I welcome his teeth and tongue as my own fierce need detonates. His free hand cups my jaw, angling my head as he seizes control. I fist the front of his jacket and drag him closer, even as my mind screams about my spectacularly reckless impulse.
He tastes like coffee and mint. When he groans into my mouth, deep and unguarded, my chest floods with emotion. For exactly four seconds, I let myself drown.
Then reality crashes back in.
With all the strength in my arms, I shove him away.
He stumbles back, heaving through swollen lips and staring at me like I’m water and he’s been lost in the desert.
My hand flies up again, to slap him, to push him away, to do something to quiet the sudden riot tearing through my body.
Before I can strike, Marco’s arms encircle me, locking me in a tight but painless hold. Our faces are inches apart.
“I know why you’re fighting this, Lucia. I just don’t think it’s a good enough reason to stop.”
My name on his tongue sounds like a bewitching spell.
“Fighting what?” I barely manage the question through my gasp.
“Your attraction. Your want. And the fact that you haven’t stopped thinking about me since I landed in your ER.”
“I think about you because you’re infuriating.” I cross my arms, needing a shield, a wall, anything to help me stave off the tiny little sparkles beneath my skin caused by his proximity.
He leans in again, our lips once more dangerously close. “You think about me because you want this.”
“No.” I turn my head side to side, trying to escape the damned sway in his eyes that’s tempting me to consider him an option. “No, this won’t happen.” I hate how my voice quivers. He doesn’t lunge or press me. He just waits, his gaze traveling to my mouth, then up to my eyes, then dropping to my throat, where my pulse hammers away.
The silence stretches on.
“It just did, Dottoressa.”
I shake my head, more to clear it than to argue. “That was a mistake.”
“It didn’t feel like a mistake.” He tilts his head slightly, observing me with a calm, unhurried gaze, like he’s already decided how this ends.
“Well, it was.” I lift my chin and meet his eyes dead-on, because if I glimpse away now, I will have already lost. My fingers fold into a fist, my nails digging into my palm as I want to ignore the warmth still radiating from him from three inches away.
My free hand fumbles for my keys, but they slip from my trembling grip and clatter to the ground.
Marco lets me go, only to bend, pick them up, and hold them out.
Our fingers graze, and a vicious friction jolts through my skin. I quickly snatch my hands back, open the door, and throw myself into the driver’s seat.
Before I can shut myself inside, he catches the top of the door. He knows that I could break his light grasp with one sharp tug. His hand rests on the door not to trap me but to ask me, wordlessly, to stay.
I glance at his hand, then at his face. “Let go, Marco.”
