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Was she a messenger, sent to remind him how completely he’d failed his mother? His mother had chosen a roof. His mother had leapt to her fate.
His palm met a square silver panel on the wall. The glass shifted soundlessly to create a door.
She remained still. Standing on the edge. Protected only from falling by a waist-high iron-wrapped wall. Her arms were still outstretched, her face tilted as if she were an offering to the city. To the gods...
An offering for you? For redemption?
Raffaele moved towards her, prompted by the tug of his gut. He couldn’t see her face. An inappropriate urge stormed through him to see her eyes, to look into them, to be close enough to do that.
He caught her wrist. She turned.
His breath hitched. Big brown eyes met his. His pulse slowed. He searched her gaze, watching the golden flecks in her left eye burn with something primal. Something achingly close to recognition.
But he didn’t know her.
He would remember those eyes...
The delicate warmth from her body hit him. It was a caress against his prickling skin. An awareness of her femininity. The male in him responded without his permission. A low heat gathered in his gut, arrowing down to his groin. Mocking him with the ease with which his body was reacting to a familiarity that didn’t belong to him.
But the air between them pulsed...throbbed.
He dragged his gaze from hers. Moved it down to where his fingers encased her small wrist. It was her pulse. That throb. It pounded beneath his thumb. And the urge to swipe his thumb against it was so clear, so overwhelming, it consumed him.
So he did it, before he could tell himself not to. He stroked against her skin. Soft. Warm.Delicate.But her pulse wasn’t. It pounded. Fierce. Strong.
His eyes shot back to her face. The lights of London’s skyline flickered around her head like a halo.
‘Are you real?’
It was the most delicate of whispers. It tingled across his skin, snapping him out of the haze that had fallen over him since the inquest. Clearing the fog that had travelled with him since hismamma’sdeath and plunging him straight into the depths of her eyes.
‘Of course I am.’ He straightened, wanting to drop her wrist but unable to will his fingers to release her. ‘Are you?’ she asked.
She blinked up at him, lashes fluttering rapidly. He wanted to count them. Wanted to know exactly how many dark strands it took to create such appealing shadows on her high cheekbones...
He did not ever notice a woman’s eyelashes.
He stilled. His jaw hardened.
He was not himself.
‘Am I asleep?’ he asked, cursing his lack of control over his tongue. This moment was too surreal. Too...something...
‘Only if I am too,’ she said, bringing his attention to a bottom lip so sinful, so plump, his urge was to take it between his teeth and test its fullness.
What was wrong with him?
‘And are you?’ he asked.
He was hoping. But he didn’t know what for. He hadn’t slept for weeks. A sleep-deprived mind could conjure many things.
A vision.
A mirage of creamy flesh laced in green silk.
A woman with a too-wide mouth. Too delicate. Too soft. Too kissable.
‘No,’ she replied, with a gentle shake of her head. ‘I’m awake.’
