His thumb strokes across my knuckles. Once. A question without words.
“Cassia.” My name in his mouth. Rough. Broken.
“I’m here.”
His expression changes. Darker now. The fear draining away, replaced by something else. Something that makes my pulse stutter.
His free hand rises. Slow. Deliberate. His knuckles graze along my jaw, and I stop breathing.
“I should send you back to your side of the bed.” His voice is gravel and smoke.
“You should.”
“Tell me to stop.”
The command hangs between us. Not a request. A dare.
I don’t tell him to stop.
The air charges. The moment before lightning strikes.
His thumb traces my lower lip. Featherlight. Testing.
“Three weeks.” The words scrape out of him. “Three weeks of lying next to you. Not touching.”
Three years,I think.Three years of watching you and never being seen.
“I know,” I whisper.
His focus snaps to mine. Reading something in my face that makes his grip tighten on my jaw.
“You know?”
I shouldn’t say it. Shouldn’t admit anything. But his thumb is still on my lip and his heart is still pounding under my palm and I’m so tired of being invisible.
“I know exactly.”
His control snaps. I can see the exact moment it goes.
He moves.
His mouth finds mine.
Not tender. Not tentative. Hunger, raw and urgent, like every night of lying beside me built pressure he couldn’t contain. Like he’s been holding his breath for days and I’m the only air that matters.
The first press steals my breath. Warm, firm, tasting of coffee and a darkness underneath. A taste that is his alone.
The second kiss erases every number in my head.
He tilts my chin, and I part for him without thought. His tongue strokes against mine and my whole body clenches, a pulse that radiates from the contact to my spine to the ache between my thighs.
He kisses like he does everything else. With focus so complete the rest of the world ceases to exist. One palm cups my face. Rough calluses against my cheekbone. The other slidesinto my hair, cradling the back of my head like I’m something precious and something dangerous all at once.
“Cazzo.” The Italian escapes against me. Involuntary. Wrecked.
I pull back just far enough to breathe. “That bad?”
A rough sound. A laugh. “I’m fucked.”
