Chapter 17
Gianni
The kiss should never have happened.
That was the first thought that hit me as soon as her mouth left mine. Sharp. Immediate. Followed closely by about a dozen worse ones.
She was grieving. Hunted. Standing in my house while a Russian madman tested my walls and my patience with bullets and body parts.
And she had just kissed me like the world had narrowed down to one point and I was standing in it.
I should have stepped back.
I should have put distance between us, put my hands at my sides, reminded myself of the rules I lived by and the ones I enforced. She was vulnerable. Raw. Still shaking under the weight of what she’d lost.
Instead, my pulse roared in my ears and every instinct I had went feral.
She stood there in nothing but a towel, skin still warm from the shower, hair damp and curling at her shoulders. Her eyes were too bright. Too open. Like she was standing at the edge of something she didn’t fully understand but wasn’t backing away from either.
Dangerous. For both of us.
I saw the moment it hit her too—that split second where she realized what she’d done and didn’t take it back. Where her breath stuttered and her fingers curled into the fabric at her chest like she needed something solid to hold onto.
I told myself to stop. I didn’t. I closed the distance in one step and backed her into the nearest wall before my mind could catch up with my body.
Her gasp was soft but startled, her back meeting the plaster, my hands bracketing her before she could slip sideways or think better of what we were doing.
I didn’t kiss her again right away. I hovered there, breathing her in. Soap and heat and a scent so unmistakably her. My forehead dropped to hers, my breath heavy, uneven.
“This is a mistake,” I said quietly.
She swallowed. “So was kissing you.”
“Do you really believe that?”
My hand slid to her waist without permission, fingers splaying against warm skin just above the towel. She inhaled sharply, chest brushing mine, and the sound snapped the last thin thread of restraint I had left.
I kissed her again.
This time it wasn’t careful.
It was deep, demanding, like I was trying to ground us both and at the same time, trying to wake us up with the force of our collision.
Her mouth opened under mine, tentative at first, then answering.
Her hands came up, clutching at my shoulders, her body pressing into mine like she needed the contact as much as I did.
I felt it everywhere. The tension she carried. The grief humming just under her skin. The way she trembled under my fingers.
My grip tightened at her waist, anchoring her there, my thumb brushing slow, deliberate arcs like I was reminding both of us that she was alive. Here.
She broke the kiss to breathe, forehead resting against my jaw, her breaths coming fast and shallow.
“Gianni,” she whispered.
My name left her lips like a confession she hadn’t meant to make—soft, unguarded, and devastating. The sound slid through me in a single, precise line of heat, a spark that traced my spine and settled in my groin, unwelcome and undeniable, reminding me exactly how close my control was to breaking.
I pressed my mouth to her throat instead, to the place just beneath her ear, my breath hot against her skin. I didn’t bite. Didn’t mark her. I forced myself to keep it restrained even as my body demanded more.
She tilted her head anyway.
Invited it.
My control slipped another inch.
I pinned her there with my body, solid and unyielding, my hand sliding up her back, fingers spreading between her shoulder blades like I was holding her together. She made a soft sound—half breath, half moan—and it echoed straight through me.
This was wrong. I knew it. And I didn’t stop. Not when her hands slid into my hair. Nor when her breathing matched mine, fast and unsteady and full of need she’d been trying to tamp down.
I rested my forehead against hers again, forcing myself to pause, to breathe, to keep this from tipping into something I couldn’t take back.
“We shouldn’t do this,” I said, low.
She laughed softly, broken. “We shouldn’t.”
I was thinking about the way Archie Popovich would tear the world apart to get his hands on her again. About the blood on my doorstep. About how every instinct in me had shifted from protect to claim without asking permission.
I eased back just enough to look at her. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips swollen from my mouth. Her eyes dark and searching, still sad, still raw—but alive with something fierce and wanting.
I cupped her face gently this time, grounding us both.
“This doesn’t make things easier,” I said.
“No,” she whispered. “But it makes them better.”
That was the most dangerous thing she could have said.
I kissed her once more, and it felt like a promise I wasn’t ready to make. I held her there, breathing her in, forcing myself to stop before the line disappeared completely.
She took a step back. It was just one quiet movement, like she was giving herself space to breathe—or daring me to take it instead.
Then her hands lifted.
My attention locked onto them instantly.
Her fingers trembled as they reached for the knot at her chest, loosening it slowly, deliberately. The towel slipped an inch. Then another. I should have looked away. I didn’t. I couldn’t. My body went rigid, breath stalling somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
The towel slid free and fell to the floor in a soft heap at her feet.
She didn’t pose or preen. She didn’t try to hide, either.
She just stood there, bare and real. Vulnerable in a way that had nothing to do with naked skin and everything to do with the way her shoulders tensed, the way her arms hovered for a second like she wasn’t sure what to do with them.
Like she was bracing for judgment she’d already passed on herself.
I saw what she probably saw.
The curve of her hips she tried to shrink away from the world. The fullness of her chest she thought was too much. The soft line of her thighs where they touched. The way she held herself like she was apologizing for existing exactly as she was.
But what I saw… was beauty. She wasn’t polished.
Nor perfect. But she was alive. Her skin was warm and flushed, still damp from the shower.
Water clung to her in places it had no business lingering.
Her dark hair framed her face, curling softly at her shoulders, drawing my eyes down whether I wanted them to go or not.
My chest tightened painfully.
This wasn’t lust born from hunger alone. It was something sharper that burned. A need that flared so fast it felt like my restraint had simply… evaporated.
She watched my face, searching it. Waiting for something—approval, rejection, confirmation of every cruel thought she’d ever had about herself.
What she got was the truth. My jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
“Jesus,” I breathed, before I could stop myself.
Her breath hitched.
I took a step forward without deciding to. My hands curled at my sides, fingers flexing like they were fighting orders from my brain. Every instinct I had screamed to touch her, to prove with my hands what my eyes already knew.
She wasn’t too much. She was everything.
The space between us charged, thick and humming. I could feel the loss of control settling in, heavy and inevitable. The careful man I was cracked, just enough to let something darker push through.
And that—that was the moment I knew how badly I’d fucked up.