Page 64

He leaves his fingers in me as he kisses his way back up my body, and when he takes my mouth again, I taste myself on his tongue. He fingers me right to the breaking point, and then wedges between my legs, swapping his fingers for his cock.

The difference is almost enough to make me come right then.

He moves in me slow and deep, watching my face the whole time. I’m not fighting anymore. Not denying how good this is, not pretending in some game we’re playing. I let him have all of it—the pleasure, the fear under the pleasure, the enormous unspoken thing we’ve both stopped pretending isn’t there.

I’m letting him see me. All of me. For the first time.

Twice he slows almost to a stop just to look at me, and I hold his gaze because looking away has become the one thing I can’t do with him. Not anymore. Because this is the first time that I’m seeing him too.

He brushes a tear away from my cheek with his thumb, and I bite that thumb, causing a fascinated smile to pull at his lips. Then he pulls me in for another kiss, and this might be the one that ends me, because I never want it to stop.

He rolls onto his back while keeping me on him, so I’m on top, and dizzy, and still on the edge of that little death. He pulls me down for a kiss, and his rough hands skate down my back to my ass. My ass, he grips like handles. He pulls me back and forth, making his cock hit that spot inside that makes me turn inside out.

When I break, it’s with my hands in his hair and his name in my mouth. He follows me with his forehead against mine and something that isn’t quite a word breathed into my skin, and I don’t ask for more, because I’m afraid of which word it is and more afraid it’s the same as mine.

After, we lie tangled and quiet while the room goes blue. His fingers trace idle patterns on my spine. That was his end of this conversation, his response. The proof of his feelings.

I know most men aren’t good at articulating how they feel. Especially men his age. But what he just showed me was the articulation. That soul-deep stare was enough to tell me everything.

I doze off in his arms, and I sleep harder than I have in a very long time. The sleep of the peaceful.

At just about midnight, I wake to an empty space beside me and my throat dry as paper.

Water. I need all the water.

I pull his shirt off the floor, button most of the buttons, and pad out into the dark hallway toward the kitchen, barefoot. The house is asleep and ticking around me. His shirt smells like him, and I register that I reached for it over my own robe on instinct alone.

It’s the same way I’ve started choosing him over the sensible option in a hundred small unexamined ways. The longer we’re together, the more okay with that I am.

The house at midnight feels like a completely different space compared to during the day. The artwork on the stairwell wall transforms into abstract shapes, and the marble feels chilly beneath my feet. Every sound I make echoes as an intrusion into a place that’s quietly resting. Since I know the way to the kitchen perfectly in the dark, I prefer to keep the lights off. I’ve already disturbed the house enough for tonight.

There’s light under the study door.

And voices. Lupo and Nick.

I’m not trying to listen—I’m trying to get to water—but the hallway carries sound at night, and their words reach me before I can decide not to hear them.

“—Brancati won’t wait much longer.” Nick, quiet. “The sit-down’s set. After that, there’s no walking any of it back.”

Lupo’s answer is too low to catch, a murmur, and then one phrase surfaces out of it, clear, in his voice, unmistakable.

“—before she ever finds out. She can never know about any of it, so you cannot fuck this up.”

“I know⁠—”

“She’s smart, Nick. Smarter than any of us. If she gets suspicious⁠—”

“She won’t.” The rest sinks back under Nick’s murmur, and I catch nothing else usable.

But I don’t need the rest. It’s done.

I stop in the dark hallway with my hand against the cool wall.

Before she finds out. There’s a she in this house they’re managing information around, and there’s a thing she isn’t supposed to find out. I have spent enough weeks in the Sartorre orbit to know exactly how many candidates there are for she, and the number is one.

It’s not Sarah. If there was something to protect her from, he would have told me about it already.

It’s not Diana. The only thing he might try to keep from her would be a surprise party for her, and that would have nothing to do with the Brancatis.