I wanted to keep looking at him, but my eyes fell shut and I shuddered with pleasure. It wasn’t just the sensation of his fingers stroking me, but the memory of the morning in the hotel bathroom where his tongue had brought me right to the brink of orgasm.
But since I had my hand inside his pants, I could feel the sudden quiver from his pocket as his phone began to vibrate. It was long and incessant, telling me this wasn’t a call.
It was an alarm.
He froze, and as soon as he processed what was happening, he straightened. It caused him to pull away, and the atmosphere in the room abruptly cooled.
“Wait,” he said. He tugged the phone free from his pocket, disabling the alarm, and whatever he saw on screen, he didn’t like it. “Shit.”
His expression filled with an emotion it took me a moment to place.
Remorse.
No, I wanted to whine.
“I . . . have to get to Rome.”
I lay across the couch, draped an arm across my bare breasts, and shot him an incredulous look. “When? Right now?”
“Yes. I set an alert so I don’t miss my flight. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
My body refused to move. It meant I remained on the couch as he quickly climbed off and began to do up his pants.
“What about our deal?” I demanded.
His movements temporarily slowed, distracted with thoughts, but then he bent and fished his shirt off the floor. “I’ll hold up my end, I promise. But there isn’t time right now.”
Frustration stiffened my muscles, but I fought through it, did up my pants, and scrambled to sit up. As he tugged his shirt into place, anger began to spiral through me.
Had Ethan just played me? He’d gotten what he wanted. Gotten me to open up about my past, and now he was going to walk away without doing the same.
He took a knee beside the couch, retrieved my shirt, and handed it to me, but I said nothing. He could tell I was upset, and he frowned. “I don’t want to go, and trust me, I had every intention of talking. But... we got distracted.” He gave a sad smile. “As I’ve mentioned, I find you terribly distracting.”
I could see he wasn’t lying, but I was worked up, and I didn’t like that he was throwing some of the blame my direction. “Whatever.”
I pulled on my shirt, expecting him to stand and head for the door, but he didn’t. He stared at me, wearing a conflicted expression.
My tone was the perfect balance of bitter acceptance. “I thought you had to go.”
He delivered another one of his abrupt kisses, moving too fast for me to refuse. His lips were like a drug, lulling me in, but just when I was ready to forget about everything else, it ended.
“I swear I’ll tell you, Olivia.” He sounded out of breath, like pulling away from me took a tremendous amount of effort. “For now, go ahead and add it to our unfinished business.”
25
ETHAN
It had been six days.
I palmed my phone for the millionth time. I kept telling myself it was a nervous habit, but it was bullshit. I didn’t get nervous. My fingers itched to pull up the contact where a lyrical voice would answer if I called.
What was wrong with me?
I sat on the side bench in the back of the Abramo’s limo, forcing myself to focus.The mission.My account of the sit-down with Kara and the Dunns had gone over well with Vitale, and slowly I was being brought into the fold.
And with that, I’d finally learned what had placed Constantine in the hallway the day he’d died.
It was a botched deal with a Serbian arms buyer, one that was entirely Constantine’s fault, and his mistake had landed the buyer’s son in prison in the States. Desperate to smooth things over before his father found out, the youngest Abramo had brought in Juric.
