She also knows I’m right.
Chapter Eighteen
Caterina
I make it as far as Adrian’s door before my nerve fails.
The hallway is dim and quiet in the early morning. The house is awake underneath it. I can feel that even before I hear anything downstairs. Too many people under one roof. Too many rooms occupied. Too much worry between these walls.
His door is shut.
There is nothing remarkable about a shut door. People shut doors all the time. Especially injured men who are probably sleeping. Especially stubborn, impossible, infuriating men who have no business getting out of bed after being shot and probably will anyway, the second no one is watching closely enough.
I stop outside it.
My hand lifts halfway before I realize what I’m doing.
Then it freezes.
The memory of last night hits me so hard I almost take a step back.
His mouth on mine.
My hand sliding under the blanket.
The pain that cut through him because I could not think past my own need for five seconds.
Oh God.
My stomach folds in on itself.
I lower my hand.
Absolutely not.
I cannot go in there. Not now. Not when I can still feel the heat of his mouth and the sharp, blistering shame of what I did afterward. Not when I can hear my own voice in my head, frantic and apologizing and ridiculous.
Not when I do not know whether he is awake in there thinking about what happened, or worse, awake in there carefully filing it away under trauma response and client instability.
That thought makes my face burn.
I kissed my bodyguard.
I climbed into his bed.
I tried to—
No.
No, no, no.
I close my eyes for half a second and force the thought back before it can fully form.
I am not doing this in the hallway outside his room like some shamed teenager sneaking home after curfew. I am Caterina Conti. I have survived quarterly audits, investor interrogations, opening-weekend disasters, regulatory reviews, and a coordinated attempt to kill me on my own casino floor.
I can survive a kiss.
Probably.
