Raffaele sets the gun on the edge of the sink.
Then he starts unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing.”
“Washing the blood off.”
“Raffaele—”
“Unless you’d prefer I stay like this.”
The shirt comes off and drops onto the tile, and under it is everything I’ve been pretending I didn’t spend two nights memorizing.
He unbuckles the belt.
I don’t stop him.
The pants come off. The rest comes off. He steps over the body like it’s a piece of furniture in his way, and he reaches past me to pull back the shower curtain. Steam pours out.
He steps under the water. Pink rinsing off his chest. Pink running down his arm and off his fingers. Pink at the drain at his feet.
He turns and holds out his hand.
“Come here.”
17
BEA
The first thing that hits me is the heat.
Steam drags itself up the tile around us until the corner of the bathroom where the body is becomes blurred and far away. I let it drift into the back of my mind. Because what else am I supposed to do?
Raffaele’s hand rests on the small of my back, holding me in place.
The pink runs off him fast. Off his collarbone. Down the inked plane of his chest. Out of his hair when he tips his head back briefly to push it out of his face. The water carries it pink, then paler, then almost clear, swirling into a clean spiral at the drain at our feet. I watch it go because I can’t look up at him yet.
“Bea.”
I force my gaze to meet his.
God, he’s fucking gorgeous.
His hand on my back tightens, fingers spreading wide across my spine, and he pulls me into him. My breasts press against his chest. The slick of him, the warmth, the sheer, plantedsizeunder the water—my body responds to all of it before my brain has registered it.
Then, he kisses me.
His hand slides up my spine. Tangles in my wet hair. Forms a fist.
He pulls.
My head goes back. My throat opens to him under the water, and his mouth follows it down—jaw, collarbone, throat. He bites there. Not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough that I understand the message:you belong to me.
His other hand is moving. Down my side, over my hip, around to grip the back of my thigh and lift it. I cling to his shoulders for balance, and he hooks me up against him until my leg is locked around his waist.
The tile is cold on my back when he turns me into it.
He pins me there with the weight of his chest. One forearm braced flat against the wall above my head. The other hand still holding my thigh against his hip. Water sheets down between us, hammering my collarbone. I’m breathing in steam and the smell of him and the iron still ghosting off the tile, and I can’t tell anymore which part of any of this I’m supposed to be afraid of.
