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I stare at him in shock, my skin on fire from where he’s touched me.

My chest heaves as my brain finally realizes I need oxygen and it feels like there’s just not enough air in the world for what he’s just said.

Before I know it, my hands are in the front of his shirt and I’m dragging him down.

My mouth is on his before I’ve finished the thought.

The second I feel him kiss me back—not surprised, not hesitant, like he has been waiting for exactly this—every logical thing in my head goes silent, all at once, like someone flipped a breaker.

The rest of me is louder than it has ever been.

His hands come to my waist and then my hips and then he’s lifting me like I weigh nothing and setting me on the counter.

I hook a leg around him without meaning to, dragging him in between my thighs, and he groans against my mouth in a way that goes straight down to my core.

He kisses me like he’s been thinking about it for years. Because he has.

Nico’s mouth moves down my throat, and I make a sound I have never made in my life.

Every kiss, every scrape of his teeth, sends a jolt through me I can feel in my hands.

I gasp, gripping his shoulders, arching up for more, and I hate how much more I want, and I want it anyway.

His tongue traces the line of my collarbone, and my core clenches so hard my breath catches.

I can’t stand it. I drag his mouth back to mine, and this kiss is worse than the last one—deeper, angrier, both of us gone.

Our tongues meet and I bite his lower lip and pull. The growl that comes from him makes me wet immediately.

My hands slide under his shirt. God—his body. Broad shoulders, hard planes of muscle, a scar under his ribs I can feel with my fingertips before I can see it, and I want to know how he got every single one of them.

I run my nails down his back and he shudders, hips jerking against mine, and the filthy sound he makes against my throat is the most obscene thing I have ever heard.

He makes me feel—Christ, I don’t even have the word.

Wanted, in a way that has nothing to do with love and everything to do with hunger.

Two years’ worth of it, all of it aimed at me, and I can feel every single day of that hunger in the way his hands move on me, like he’s trying to make up for lost time and doesn’t know where to start.

His fingers dig into my hips and pull me flush against him, and I can feel his hardened cock, can feel how much he wants this, and I grind against him without deciding to, and the sound he makes⁠—

“Katerina.”

My fingers thread through his hair, tugging gently, and he responds with a growl that sends shivers down my spine.

“Fuck,” I murmur against his lips, my voice breathy with want.

I fist the hem of his shirt and yank up.

He leans back just far enough to reach behind his neck and pull the shirt off in one motion, and my mouth actually goes dry.

I have seen good looking men before and have drooled over him. But Nico Barone?

Well, shit.

I take him in inch by inch, and every inch is worse for me than the last.

His shoulders are broad and thick with muscle across the tops and down into the cut of his arms.