The raid drops away. The blood. The failure. The empty rooms. Just her. The taste of salt on her throat where the tears dried. The sounds she makes. The way she’s tightening around me, her rhythm getting ragged.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
I am. My knuckles on the wood. Trembling. Same tremor from days ago. Same reason.
“So are you.”
She bites her lip. “Shut up.”
“Don’t stop.” She says it against my mouth. Almost a kiss. Not one.
I don’t stop. My rhythm goes rough. Desperate. Hers matches it, her heels digging into my lower back, pulling me deeper.
“Don’t move.” Rough. Against her mouth. “Stay with me.”
“Lorenzo.” Quiet. Broken. My name sounding like the only word she can remember.
Her body locks around me. Head thrown back against my palm, spine arching off the desk, mouth open on a sound that moves through me like a blade. She comes and I watch it happen. Her face. Her neck. The pulse beating wild in her throat. The way her thighs squeeze and her nails score my shoulders and she stops breathing for three seconds, four, five.
The realest thing I’ve ever seen.
She pulses around me. Her eyes find mine, glazed, undone.
She sees me. While she’s falling apart. She’s looking right at me.
The pressure shatters.
I come harder than I have in my life. Every muscle seizing. The world goes black at the edges and my hips stutter, drive deep, and the groan that rips out of me is low and broken and dragged from somewhere that should have been long dead.
“Isabella.”
Her name tears out of me. Then again.
“Isabella.”
Then Italian. Flooding. Not a decision. The language underneath, the one I buried with my mother, spilling out in fragments.
“Dio.“ Against her throat. ”Cazzo, Isabella.“
Words I didn’t choose. My mother’s language pouring out while I’m buried inside this woman and I can’t stop it. Can’t stop any of it.
My forehead drops to her shoulder. I’m still moving. Small rolls of my hips. Still inside her. Not ready to leave.
“Volerti è la cosa più pericolosa che abbia mai fatto.“
The words come out against her skin. Ragged. I don’t translate them. She doesn’t ask.
Wanting you is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done.
I stay pressed against her. Still standing. My legs aren’t.
She runs her fingers through my hair. Once. Lightly. I jerk. Involuntary. She doesn’t pull back. Does it again.
I let her.
Then the shift. I catch it before I see it. Her body going stiff beneath me. Her rhythm changing from the open, shattered aftermath into steel. Closed. She’s pulling away without moving.
“The data.” Flat. “I need to look at the data again. There might be something I missed.”
