I rolled my eyes and carried the flowers into the kitchen, hunting for a vase while she followed me with all the subtlety of a police investigation.
“So,” she said, leaning against the counter, “how’s the sex?”
I nearly dropped the vase.
“There isn’t any,” I said, far too quickly. Yes, we’d gotten closer. And one dinner turned into two, then three. After that came spontaneous breakfasts, impromptu coffees outside my classroom, and stolen kisses in quiet corners dark enough to make bad decisions reasonable.
Two weeks of seeing him every day. But nothing beyond that. Nora blinked. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
She stared at me, not cruel, just openly surprised. “Emily, he’s twenty-three. Sex is on his mind.”
I glared. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing bad,” she said at once, holding up both hands. “I just mean he clearly likes you. A lot. He looks at you like he’d happily commit treason in your honor. So I’m a little surprised he hasn’t at least tried.”
The words hurt more than they should have.
For one stupid, ugly second, something old and poisonous stirred to life inside me.
Maybe he didn’t want to.
Maybe all that intensity, all those looks, all the flowers and stolen kisses and the way his hand lingered at my waist meant everything except that.
Maybe he liked me, just not enough.
My stomach turned over.
Then, almost as quickly, I was annoyed with myself.
I was being ridiculous.
Because the truth was, he wasn’t exactly keeping his hands to himself. Pietro touched me all the time now, but never in a way that felt careless. A hand at my waist as he passed behind me. His palm settling lightly at the small of my back when we crossed a street. His fingers sliding over my hip when he pulled me closer in some dim corner before kissing me slow enough to make me forget my own name. Once, in the library, his hand had come to rest just under the curve of my breast as he leaned over to murmur something against my ear, and the brief, accidental pressure sent heat through me so fast I almost dropped my pen.
My body lit for him with humiliating ease.
That was still new enough to feel dangerous.
After Adam, I half believed that part of me had died, or at least gone quiet for good. Desire had started to feel like something complicated and treacherous, too tangled up with fear and and the constant low-level calculation of how to keep someone else pleased without losing track of myself.
But with Pietro it was different. With him, when his hand found my hip or his mouth brushed the place just below my ear, there was no dread. No bracing. No split second of panic dressed up as anticipation.
Just fire.
Which was almost as unnerving.
Nora was still watching me with the expression of someone who had already guessed half the answer from my face.
“Oh my God,” she said slowly. “You want him.”
I turned back to the lilies as if they had suddenly become a matter of national importance. “That is not the point.”
“That is absolutely the point.”
“It is one point,” I muttered.
She grinned. “A very important point.”
