When I get where I'm going, I take my time — spreading her open, looking at her like she's something I want to memorize, then lowering my mouth to her. She's wet, and I groan against her, unable to help myself. She tastes like something I'd burn this city down for.
Her whole body shudders.
I drag my tongue through her slowly — learning every fold, every sensitive place — before I find her clit and stay there, circling, savoring, giving her exactly enough to push her to the edge and not quite enough to tip her over. She makes a broken sound above me, and her thighs clench against my shoulders. I press them back open because I'm not done. She doesn't get to rush this.
"Luca—"
"I've got you." I drag my mouth lower, tasting all of her, then back up. "I've got you."
I take her apart slowly — until she's shaking, gripping the edge of the counter, and making sounds that have nothing to do with composure. When I look up, she’s wrecked and glorious, looking at me like she’s furious about how much she wants me, and I feel that look in my spine.
"Come here," she breathes.
I move back up her body. She reaches for my belt with efficient hands, and I let her, my forehead dropping to hers as she works, both of us breathing hard in the quiet kitchen.
When I push inside her, the sound she makes goes straight through me.
I tell myself the relief I feel is purely practical. I tell myself that for approximately three seconds before I stop lying to myself entirely, because the truth is, nothing about this woman has ever made me capable of rational decisions, and skin against skin with Serafina Virelli is not where my self-control makes its last stand.
I move, and she moves with me — urgent, close, her legs wrapped around me, and her mouth at my jaw, and my hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. The anger is still there beneath the heat — we haven't resolved anything, not really. Giovanni Virelli is still out there, Bellevue is covered tonight, but tomorrow is another question entirely.
We haven't fixed any of it.
But right now, she's holding on to me like I'm the only solid thing in the room, and I'm holding her because she's the only thing worth holding. For this moment, it’s enough.
"Look at me," I say.
She does.
"Sei bellissima," I breathe. The words spill out before I can stop them, ragged, real, and entirely unplanned. Her eyes soften for just a second — one unguarded second when the surgeon, the Virelli heir, and the woman who never bends drop away, and it's just her. Just Serafina. Just this.
Then she pulls my mouth to hers, and I stop thinking altogether.
She comes with my name on her lips, quiet and absolute, her fingers digging into my shoulders. Moments later, I follow her over the edge, my face buried in her throat, my hand spread flat against her spine.
We stay tangled together. Her breathing slows against my neck. My heart rate follows.
"I'm still angry at you," she reiterates softly.
"I know."
"The footage thing was wrong."
"I know."
A pause. "The men in the building are staying, though."
"Yes." I press my mouth to her temple. "They are."
She exhales. Not quite a laugh. Close enough.
I'm reaching for my shirt when the phone on the island lights up.
Niko.
I answer. "Talk to me."
His voice comes through fast and tight — the voice he gets when he's found something that changes the picture. "I finished tracing the payment chain. All of it, end to end." A pause. "Luca – it leads to City Hall."
