Page 34 of Fastest Kill

"You're staring at me…like that."

Dario didn't look away. The heat in his eyes wasn't subtle, and he wasn't trying to hide it.

"I told you," she said, and her voice came out flatter than she intended. "Cut it out. I know what you're doing, and it doesn't work on me."

"What am I doing?" he demanded.

"The look. The whole, sexy eyes thing…" She gestured at him. "I'm not one of your marks, Dario. If you're feeling whatever you're feeling, that's between you and your feelings. Don't use it to get under my skin."

Dario looked completely confused for a few seconds before growling. "God fucking damn it." He closed the gap between them and kissed her.

It wasn't tender. It was frustrated and hungry. She had no control as her hands grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him closer before she was taking from him just as hard, and angry for entirely different reasons.

She was tall, but he still had to wrap an arm around her and pull her up onto her tiptoes to reach him. The front of her body lit up as she rubbed against so much muscle and strength. She made a hungry sound, overwhelmed with the feeling of it. Warmth, stubble, soft, wet, a nip of teeth… and then his mouth was gone, and she was left rattled and hot and breathing too hard.

Dario stepped back, and reality crashed in. She could hear the harbor. She could hear the voices in the garden. Her hands were still in his shirt.

"Shit. That was a mistake," she said and let him go quickly.

Dario looked at her for a long beat before something passed across his face, and his mask reassembled itself.

"Maybe, but I've never seen someone who needed to be kissed as badly as you," he said, clearing his throat. He took another step back, putting space between them. "Don't look so worried, Spartana. It was the heat of the moment. Won't happen again."

Frederica wasn't sure if that made her feel better or worse. Fuck.

"For the record," he added, "I'm not playing games with you. I told you that before, and I meant it. If I look at you a certain way, it's because that's what I'm feeling, and you're just going to have to deal with it."

He picked up his wine glass from where he had set it on the railing's edge. "I'm not going to chase you or beg you either. I don't do that, and I sure as shit don't go where I'm not wanted."

Frederica stood at the railing and said nothing because, if she did, she would probably regret it.

"Tomorrow, we have a heist to plan and execute," Dario said, heading back around the house toward the light and the voices. "You should get some sleep. We might not get much of it until this shit is over."

She listened to his footsteps fade and stayed where she was, her hands gripping the cold railing as his words rattled in her head.

This 'not-enough' story? You wrote it yourself and handed it out before anyone asked you for it. He hadn't said it like a platitude but a straight-up fact. Like something that had been in the room the whole time she hadn't been aware of, and he was simply pointing at it. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to break something.

In the garden around the corner, she could hear Tore saying something, warm and unhurried, and a beat later, Despina's laugh.

She didn't move until both sounds faded, waiting until she could creep upstairs to her room without anyone bothering her. If either of her parents saw her, they would be able to read the look in her eyes, see her kiss reddened lips, and know something had happened.

Maybe if she told no one, Frederica could forget that she now knew exactly what Dario tasted like…and how much she had liked it.

15

Dario was not thinking about Frederica. Not at all. He was a professional with a job to do. Hooking up with dangerous people wasn't a part of it. Not this time anyway.

He was making more coffee in the Alesci kitchen at seven in the morning, enjoying the silence as much as he could before the day started.

He would be ready, and focused, and wouldn't obsess over the fact that he had kissed Frederica against the terrace railing under a sky full of stars, and she had kissed him back like she had been waiting for an excuse.

He had told her it wouldn't happen again because she made him forget every smooth move he had cultivated over the years.

The thing between them was manageable and didn't require further examination. It meant nothing.

Heat of the moment, as you said…so much heat. Fuck.

The problem was that the version of Dario who had said those words was a reasonable, measured adult who understood consequences, and the version of him currently standing in the kitchen with a coffee cup and no peace of mind was the version that kept replaying the sound she had made when he pulled her in close. Those insanely soft lips and berry scented…