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“We need to get into shelter,” I whispered.
“I know,” he whispered. “But I don’t particularly want to move.”
I drew his head back so I could look into his eyes. “Maybe not. But I’m assuming you have a bedroom somewhere on this beast, and it would be a whole lot safer to continue this there.”
His mouth twitched. “Leave it to you to take a beating like that and come out of it strategizing how to make it even better.”
I touched one fingertip to his lips. “You know you love me,” I said. “Don’t try to deny it.”
I had no idea whether that was true. But we were on the same side of the line, now, and that felt awfully right. Was that what love was? Finding yourself allied with someone else and feeling so right with them they felt like the home you’d never really had?
I didn’t know. I would have liked to have said that we’d have the time to figure that out.
But I wasn’t stupid enough to think that was true.
Right now, I didn’t even know if either of us was going to live through the night.
13
ANTHONY
We didn’t get to enjoy our moment of peace for very long.
Not that the night was peaceful. Being with Brooks was like being at war, every move a battle of wills, every statement the start of an argument. She was so fiery that I wondered if she actuallyhadbeen born with red hair, so aggressive that I was constantly on my guard for what she would try next.
It was like meeting my other half. The fire to my peace. The fight to my mellow outlook on life. And it was good.
Beyond good.
But I was trying very hard not to put a label on it. And when she woke up at 5 in the morning to take a phone call, I knew I needed to come back to the real world. Brooks and I might have had a moment here on this boat, but it was never meant to last.Wewere never meant to last. We’d been born in the wrong universe for that.
“Sloane,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep and sex. She listened for several long moments, then closed her eyes and nodded. “Got it. Yes, I’m with him. Yes, we’ll head in.”
She hung up and turned to me, the shadows in her eyes deeper than they had been half an hour ago.
“What?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“That was Sloane.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “So I heard. Get to the point, Brooks.”
“Right. Okay, well, Joseph and Michael are putting their families in a safe house. Hiding them away. They’re meeting up with Irish Brennan to figure out what to do. Word’s reached them that the Massimos are planning an answer to last night, despite the fact that the Rossis and Brennans had nothing to do with it. Evidently Ercole doesn’t believe them when they say that.”
She gave me a pointed look that told me she thought this was somehow my fault—or that I could do something to change it—and then continued.
“No one is safe. The Carusos have announced that they’re on the Massimo side of things, not that that’s a big surprise, and the Massimos are threatening all-out war.”
I blew out a breath. “So things are bad.”
“Things are bad,” she agreed. “And I have to go home.”
I stared at her, trying hard to wrap my mind around everything. I finally had Brooks in my arms, her body hot and ready under my fingertips, and out here...
“We’re safe out here,” I said quietly. “What if we don’t go back? What if we run?”
She brushed her fingertips gently across my cheekbone, bringing chills up on my skin and sending my back into an arch of pleasure. “You know we can’t do that.”
I hated that she was right. I wanted Brooks with me and the peace of the water around us. I wanted an end to constantly thinking about who was going to kill who and what I might be able to do about it. I didn’t want the intrigues or conspiracies or plans for how to take over the city.
