“You’ve been hunched over that screen for six hours.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re grinding your own spine into dust.” His thumb presses. The knot releases and I hate the sound that comes out of me. “Sit back.”
“Are you giving me an order?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t work on me.”
“It works on everyone.”
“I’m not everyone.” I face him. Square. His face is right there. Closer than I calculated. “I’m the woman who knows you draw birds. Your intimidation leverage is permanently shot.”
His throat moves. A heat behind his eyes that isn’t anger. The tension that’s been building since the scars, the garden, the rosary.
“Eat,” he says. Low.
“Make me.”
Wrong words. Right words. Both.
The air in the room compresses. The oxygen siphoned into the inch between us.
“Isabella.” Low. Not a question. Not a command. A warning.
“What?” I’m not backing down. My blood is running hot from hours of dead-end data and the proximity and the fact that he showed me his scars and what his mother left him and birds drawn with careful hands and then spent three days pretending none of it happened. “You going to keep acting like the kitchen didn’t happen? Like the garden? You showed me the rosary, Lorenzo. You let me touch the scars on your arm and saiduntil youand then came in here the next morning and asked about theweather.“
“I don’t know how to do what you’re asking.”
“I’m not asking for anything.”
“You are.” He’s facing me now. Full. His body angled toward mine in the chair. “You’re asking me to be the person who talksabout these things. Who processes. I don’t do that. I have never done that.”
“Then what do you do?”
His hand is on my nape. His mouth is on mine.
Not gentle. Not tentative. Not the careful press of a man who planned this. A collision. His mouth hard against mine, his grip on my neck pulling me forward. His hand is shaking. The grip itself, at the base of my skull, fine tremors beating against my skin. He’s shaking and kissing me like he’s been starving and I am the only thing in the room.
Coffee and heat and a decade of nothing.
I make a sound I don’t recognize. My hands grab the front of his shirt, fists in black fabric, dragging him out of his chair and toward me. His other hand finds my waist. Grips. Fingers digging into the curve above my hip hard enough to bruise tomorrow.
His mouth opens against mine. His tongue slides along my lower lip and I open for him and the kiss goes from collision to devouring and it’s in my spine, my stomach, the ache between my thighs that’s been building for weeks.
“So this is happening again.” Breathless against his lips. “Cool. Great. Very professional.”
He draws back an inch. Eyes dark. Pupils wide. The weight on my neck hasn’t moved.
“Shut up, Isabella.”
“You shut up. You started this.”
“You said make me.”
“I was talking about food.”
