Page 57 of The Devils in the Details

His hand was on the back of my neck. His other hand held tight on my hip, fingers pressing through the thin fabric of my shirt with the specific pressure of someone who had decided that the distance between us was unacceptable and was now correcting it.

I held his shirt. White-knuckled.

Ari’s beard scraped my jaw. His mouth found the corner of my lips, then my lower lip, and the attention he paid to that specific area was something my nervous system filed under “highly relevant data”.

I was so done for.

Completely. Irrevocably. The kind of done for that came with no reverse gear and no off-ramp and the distinct, terrible realization that I did not, in fact, want either of those things.

His thumb moved against my hip. A small circle, warm through the fabric, and the gesture was so deliberate, so specific, that my breath caught in a way that had nothing to do with the kiss and everything to do with the fact that Ari touched the way he did everything—like he meant it.

The study around us. The lamp’s circle of light. The smell of old paper and cedar and the quiet hum of a building that had been standing for four centuries and had just witnessed something it hadn’t been designed to accommodate.

I held his shirt as he started moving us.

He held me.

And somewhere in the dark beyond the window, tomorrow waited, patient and inevitable, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I did not care.

We made it approximately twelve feet before Ari decided that the hallway wall was a structural feature worth testing.

One moment I was walking, the next I was against plaster with two hundred and twenty-five pounds of focused intent pinning me in place, and my brain did a quick recalculation of several previously held assumptions about physics and personal space.

His mouth found mine. Harder now. The controlled carefulness from the study had evaporated, replaced by something warmer and considerably less patient.

His hand was still on the back of my neck, fingers tight in my hair, and his other arm braced against the wall beside my head, the muscle in his forearm flexing. His leg was between my thighs, holding me up.

The plaster was cold against my back. Ari was not cold. Ari was the exact opposite of cold, his chest pressed against mine through the thin fabric of my shirt, his heartbeat steady against my sternum in a rhythm that suggested his cardiovascular system was considerably more composed than mine, which was frankly offensive given the circumstances.

I discovered, with the clarity of a man who was being thoroughly kissed against a hallway wall, that this was everything I had suspected it would be and also approximately three standard deviations more intense than my risk assessment had allowed for.

File that permanently. Category: worth it.

His beard scraped my jaw. His mouth moved to my throat, and the sound I made was not dignified, but it was enthusiastic, and Ari’s response was to bite—not hard, but the kind of bite that was totally possessive.

We made it to the staircase. Four centuries of dark walnut, smooth from generations of hands, the banister worn to a patina that caught the low light from the sconces on the wall.

I paused at the bottom step and looked up. The staircase stretched above us, quiet and patient, and the arithmetic of climbing it while being thoroughly distracted by Ari presented a logistical challenge that my coordination center was not currently equipped to handle.

“Architectural inconvenience,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I’d intended, which was Ari’s fault entirely. “Four centuries of Italian craftsmanship and nobody thought to install an elevator. Shameful oversight. I’m adding it to the invoice.”

Ari’s hand found the small of my back. Warm through the fabric, fingers pressing with the specific pressure of someone who had decided that commentary was a secondary concern.

“Stop talking.” His voice was low, rough, something barely controlled.

“Make me.”

He did.

His mouth covered mine. One hand on my jaw, tilting my head back, and the kiss was thorough in a way that suggested Ari treated challenges the way he treated everything—as problems to be solved rather than inconveniences to be negotiated.

By the time we reached the top step, my shirt was half untucked in a configuration that suggested either a strong wind or several minutes of focused attention from large, careful hands.

I was not entirely steady on my feet. This was also Ari’s fault. I planned to invoice him for the coordination deficit. The rate would be premium.

The bedroom was dark. Low light from the hallway spilling through the open door, throwing long shadows across the wide-plank floor and the bed that dominated the far wall. The sheets were clean.

I had people for that, Ari had said once, and the memory arrived with a warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the man currently steering me through the doorway with one hand on the small of my back.