She shifts — adjusting her weight, her hand finding my chest for balance — and every rational thought I have takes a brief sabbatical. She's warm and close, and I can feel her pulse where her wrist rests against my sternum, elevated and giving her away completely.
"Your heart's racing."
"People are trying to kill us."
"Is that why?"
Another pause. Longer.
Then she kisses me.
Not tentative — nothing about Serafina is tentative — but like a dare. Like a decision she's made and intends to stand by. Her hands fist in my shirt. Her mouth is demanding. I respond immediately, one hand in her hair, the other finding her waist and pulling her flush against me.
She makes a sound against my mouth.
"Fuck," I breathe. "We shouldn't?—"
"I know." She pulls me back down. "Do it anyway."
What follows isneither careful nor considered, and nothing like what I'd choose if I had options, time, and a room that didn't smell like cleaning supplies.
It's fast and desperate, more honest than anything we've said to each other — her hands working at my belt while mine slide herdress up around her hips, both of us moving with the efficiency of two people who've run out of patience and reasons entirely.
I turn her around. Her hands find the shelving unit, and she arches back against me without being asked — spine curved, hips tilted, an invitation so deliberate it stops my heart for a full second.
"Cazzo," I breathe into the back of her neck. My hands grip her hips. She's warm and bare, pressed against me, and I'm hanging to the last shred of control by a thread. "You're going to kill me."
"Later. Now move."
I push inside her in one deep stroke and feel her gasp — sharp and unguarded, her head dropping forward, fingers white-knuckled on the shelf. I stay there for a moment, fully seated, both of us breathing hard in the dark. The feeling is so complete and consuming I have to press my mouth to her shoulder to keep from saying something I can't take back.
She rolls her hips.
The thread snaps.
I move, and she moves with me, fast and merciless, her free hand still covering her mouth while mine grips hard enough to bruise. She's trying to stay quiet and failing — small, broken sounds escape between her fingers, and I feel them in my spine, in my jaw, everywhere. I reach around and find her clit. Her whole body shudders, her thighs clench, a moan swallowed behind her palm.
"Let me hear you." Against her ear.
"There are people?—"
"Let. Me. Hear. You."
She drops her hand.
The sound she makes goes straight through me. Raw and helpless, nothing like the composed, untouchable woman she shows the world — just Serafina, completely undone, her head falling back against my shoulder as I drive her toward the edge with ruthless focus. I feel every tremor, every catch of breath, the exact moment she stops fighting it and simply falls.
She comes hard, shaking around me, my name a wrecked whisper on her lips.
I follow her over — her name locked in my throat like something I'm not ready to say out loud, but I'm running out of reasons not to.
We stay still.
Her breathing slows. Mine follows.
"We're going to pretend that didn't happen." She straightens her dress.
I lean against the shelf. "Exactly like the study. The study also didn't happen."
