The release hits me hard and sudden, tearing through me like a storm breaking open after too much pressure in the sky. My breath catches, then shatters. I clutch at him blindly, overwhelmed by the intensity of it, by the way my body yields even while my heart is still in open rebellion.
It feels so good.
Too good.
Good enough to make tears sting unexpectedly behind my eyes. Because relief should not come from him. I should not find this in his hands, in his voice, in the man who ruined everything and is still somehow the only one who knows exactly where to touch the broken places.
I come down trembling, breathless, my forehead dropping to his shoulder. For a moment, neither of us says anything. I can hear both of us breathing. Can feel the hammering of his pulse beneath his skin.
I laugh shakily.
“That was a terrible idea.”
His mouth brushes my temple. “Probably.”
I lift my head just enough to look at him.
His eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them. Starved. Satisfied.Still dangerous. Still not done, if the look in them is anything to go by. And the most frightening thing of all is that some traitorous part of me feels the same.
“I still hate you,” I whisper.
His hand cups the back of my neck, thumb stroking once over my pulse.
“I know,” he says.
Then his gaze drops to my mouth.
“And that,” he murmurs, “is what makes this so addictive.”
13
Birdie
We don’t have sex.
I should be proud of that.
Instead, I wake with the taste of him still haunting my mouth and a low, restless ache curled deep inside me, one I’m ashamed to recognize for what it is. It isn’t just hunger. It’s the awful knowledge that if he had touched me a little longer, kissed me a little deeper, pressed a little harder, I would have let him take me all the way to ruin. And some traitorous part of me wishes he had.
Maybe that’s the ugliest truth of all.
Not that I wanted him.
That I still do.
Because Lorenzo has always known exactly where I’m weakest. Exactly how to touch the emptiness in me until it feels like something other than grief. Other than loneliness. Other than the hollow, aching thing I carry around like a second heartbeat.
I hate that he can still do that when no one else ever could.
By the time I make myself get out of bed, he’s already gone.
For one disorienting second, I stare at the empty side of the mattress and feel something dangerously close to disappointment. Then I hate myself for that too, grab the oversized hoodie tighter around me, and force myself out of the room.
I find him in the kitchen.
Fresh clothes. Dark trousers. Black sweater. Coffee in one hand like he didn’t nearly unmake me with that same hand last night. Morning light spills through the tall windows behind him, painting him in pale gray and gold, and he looks maddeningly composed. As if he slept just fine. As if I wasn’t up half the night replaying every word, every touch, every breath I gave him.
His gaze lifts the second I walk in.
