"Are you here with me?" I ask. "Or are you trying to prove something?"
She flinches. It's small, barely perceptible.
"I want this," she says.
"That's not what I asked."
She's quiet for a long moment. Her hands have gone still on my belt. When she finally speaks, her voice is smaller than I've ever heard it.
"I can't stop hearing her. Vivienne. What she said." She swallows. "What if she's right? Valentina turning me, me ending up here, with you. What if none of it was coincidence?"
There it is. The doubt I saw in the car. The poison Vivienne planted, still working its way through her.
I look at her. Really look. At the vulnerability she's letting me see, the fear underneath the want. Like she came here tonight trying to outrun the questions, bury them under sensation. And I almost let her.
If we do this now, if I take her on this desk the way every instinct is screaming at me to do, part of her will wonder.
I can't do that to her. I can't let our first time be shadowed by doubt.
I catch her wrists. Gently, but firmly.
She freezes. I see the flash of hurt in her eyes before she can hide it, the assumption that I'm about to push her away and call this a mistake.
And God, part of me wants to. Part of me, the part that's been running from this for weeks, the part that still hears Luciano's voice telling me that caring is weakness, is screaming at me to stop this now. To rebuild the walls. To protect myself and her from whatever destruction caring will inevitably bring.
But that's not why I'm stopping. Not this time.
"Not like this," I say, and my voice comes out ragged. Wrecked. "Not tonight."
"Why?" The word is sharp. Defensive. She's bracing for rejection, and I hate that I've taught her to expect it.
"Because of what Vivienne said."
She flinches. Tries to pull her hands back. I don't let her.
"Not because I believe it," I say quickly. "Because you do. Or part of you does. And I won't have that between us. Not for this."
She stills. Searches my face.
"I don't want the first time I'm inside you to be something you question afterward." I release her wrists, bring my hands up to frame her face instead. Force myself to meet her eyes even though every nerve in my body is screaming at me to stop talking and start touching. "I don't want you wondering if you're here because you wanted to be, or because someone else wanted you to be. I don't want Vivienne in this room with us."
"She's not."
"Isn't she?" I brush my thumb across her lower lip, swollen from kissing. "You were quiet for twenty minutes in the car. You've been somewhere else since she’s said that, even when you were kissing me. Part of you is still in that parlor, listening to her tell you that none of your choices are really yours."
She's quiet. I watch her face, watch the emotions flickering across it. Frustration. Recognition. Something that might be relief.
"I hate that you're right," she says finally.
"I hate that I'm right, too." I let out a breath that's more frustration than anything else. "Do you have any idea how much I want you right now? How hard it is to stop?"
"I can feel how hard it is." She shifts her hips against me, and the friction makes me groan. "Literally."
"That's not helping."
"It's not meant to." But her expression has softened. The defensiveness is fading, replaced by something warmer. "You're really not pushing me away."
"No."
