I freeze.
“What?” Since when? The arraignment is next week. I was in those files until eight last night.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. The court has dates. The prosecutor has dates. There are deadlines?—”
He moves.
I don’t see him decide to. One second, he’s at the island; the next, he’s across the kitchen and I’m being walked backward in a single fluid motion that ends with my shoulder blades flatagainst the wall and his palms on either side of my head. The gasp arrives a beat after the impact, small and useless.
“Raffaele—what?—”
His mouth finds my neck.
There’s nothing tentative in it. He puts his lips on the spot just below my ear, and my entire argument rushes out in one warm, embarrassing exhale.
It’s immediately obvious to me that he’s doing this to shut me up. A spark of fury flickers up in me. My fingers clench.
“The depositions?—”
He bites down. Carefully. Just enough that I feel it. A warning shaped like a kiss.
“The court—the dates?—”
His hand is under my shirt. His palm is flat on my stomach, fingers spread and moving up. My breath catches in a rhythm he sets.
“Deadlines—”
Suddenly, I’m flipped around. My chest is pressed against the island. Raffaele pins me there with one hand. With the other, he grabs the saucepan.
“None of it matters,” he growls.
“But the files?—”
“Fuck the files.”
The first spank arrives, stinging and hot. The painful heat flashes across my cheeks.
“Fuck,” I gasp, toes curling.
“That’s right, fuck,” he says. “Fuck. The. Files.” Each word is punctuated with another spank.
My hands grasp for something to hold onto, but before they find anything, Raffaele throws the saucepan aside and twists me back around to face him.
The metals clangs against the wall as his thumb traces the edge of my jaw. His other hand is somewhere under my ribs, working up.
“The cases. The clients. The whole goddamn operation. Fuck it.”
He kisses me harder.
His hands have moved past undressing me and into a more possessive maneuver—under the blouse he hasn’t bothered to take off, into the cups of my bra, palms hot against my breasts as his thumbs work until I’m arching up off the wall and into him.
The flesh on my ass is tingling… along with the rest of my body. We’re making out the way teenagers make out, open-mouthed, breathing into each other, neither of us coming up for air.
I get a word out between his mouth and mine.
“What—what happened?—”
