Chapter 21 #2
“You are the only person who has ever made me want to be better without making me feel weak for wanting it,” he says.
That does it.
I reach for him.
The moment my hands find his shirt, his control breaks.
His mouth crashes into mine.
The kiss is nothing like the last night in Miami.
There is no softness in it at first. No careful exploration.
It is anger and grief and relief pressed into one impossible collision.
My back hits the bedroom door. His hand catches the side of my face before I can strike it, not trapping me, only holding me there while I kiss him like I am trying to punish him for every day he stayed gone.
He makes a rough sound against my mouth.
Good.
Let him hurt.
My fingers twist in his shirt. I pull him closer. He responds instantly, one hand at my waist, the other still cradling my jaw as though he is afraid I will vanish if he lets go.
"Maya." It scrapes out of him against my mouth. "Tell me what you need."
"You don't get to ask questions tonight." I yank his shirt free of his waistband, press my palms flat to the heat of his stomach, feel the muscle jump under my hands. "You have a month to make up for. Start now."
He kisses me harder.
The room narrows around us. His hands move underneath my shirt, warm on my skin, then higher, slower, as if he is relearning every place he has spent a month trying not to remember. I hate that my body responds to him so quickly. I hate that every touch feels like it has been waiting for us.
He lifts me easily, and I wrap my legs around his waist before I can argue with myself. My back presses to the wall. His mouth finds the hollow of my throat.
“Still angry?” he murmurs.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The answer pulls a laugh from me, breathless and broken.
Then he bites gently below my ear, and the sound turns into something else.
He carries me to the bed without breaking contact. The mattress gives underneath my back. Stefano braces himself above me, looking down with an expression I know too well now.
Possession.
But something different sits beneath it.
Fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of losing me again.
I touch his face.
“You are here,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“You aren’t leaving.”
“No.”
His mouth closes over mine before I can ask whether he means it.
This time, he is slower.
The anger is still there, threaded through every touch, but he gives me time to feel the choices in it.
His fingers trace the line of my hip. His mouth moves over my neck.
He pauses whenever my breath changes, watching me with that dark, unblinking attention that has always made me feel seen too clearly.
I pull his shirt over his head.
The sight of him nearly steals my breath.
He is all sharp lines and dark ink, bruised knuckles and the body of a man made for violence who is holding himself over me with care. I run my hands over his chest, his shoulders, the familiar ridge of muscle underneath my palms.
“You are staring,” he says.
“You are very vain for someone who claims to hate compliments.”
“I do not hate them. I distrust the people giving them.”
“That is worse.”
His mouth curves.
Then his hand slides beneath the waistband of my pants.
The smile disappears from my face.
He watches every reaction as his fingers slide beneath the lace, through the slick heat that betrays exactly how much my body missed him.
His touch is knowing, unhurried — two fingers stroking me open while his thumb finds the swollen center of me — and my anger doesn't leave.
It changes shape. Turns hot and grinding.
Fists itself in his hair as I ride his hand.
"A month," I breathe, furious even now. "You left me for a month."
"I know." He curls his fingers, and my vision sparks. "Take it out on me."
I do.
I pull his hair. I bite his shoulder hard enough to leave a mark, and he takes it, groans like it's absolution, works me faster until the coil snaps and I break against his hand with a sound I muffle in his throat — angry, wrecked, alive.
He strips the rest of my clothes while I'm still trembling. Strips his own. Then he's back, skin to skin, and the fury between us finally goes quiet enough for me to feel what lives underneath it.
Fear. Grief. A month of missing him I refused to name.
"Stefano," I whisper.
"I am here."
The words are simple.
They break something open anyway.
He pushes inside me in one slow, relentless stroke, and we both go still, forehead to forehead, breathing each other's air. I feel full and furious and found, and I hate that the word for it is home.
"No more leaving," I say against his mouth.
"Never again."
"Don't lie to me."
"I am not."
My fingers curl in his hair. "Then move."
He does.
It's nothing like Miami. There's no seduction in it — just deep, driving need, his hips meeting mine in a rhythm that builds from slow to punishing, his hand finding mine and locking it against the sheets, his mouth at my ear telling me, low and rough and certain, that I'm his, that he's mine, that he's done running from what that means.
Only need.
Only apology.
Only love so strong it scares me.
I come apart beneath him with his mouth against my throat and our joined hands white-knuckled in the sheets, my body pulsing around him and dragging him over the edge with me. He follows with my name breaking on his lips, his body shaking once before he goes still above me.
Sometime later, Stefano lifts his head and his eyes move past me toward the bathroom door. The drawer beside the sink is not fully closed.
“Maya,” he says slowly.
My stomach drops.
He reaches for the sheet, pulls it around me, then sits up.
“What are you hiding?”
I close my eyes. There is no good way to say it. No careful moment left to choose. When I open them, Stefano is staring at me with the same stillness he had on the auction floor.
“I took a test today,” I say.
He doesn’t move.
Then I whisper, “It was positive.”