Chapter 12
Birdie
I’m dreaming of warmth.
Not a place. Not a memory exactly. Just warmth—deep and steady and surrounding me from every side. Strong hands. A hard chest beneath my cheek. The slow drag of fingers through my hair. Safety twisted together with want so tightly I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
In the dream, I’m chasing relief from the sharp, aching emptiness that has lived inside me for so long I barely recognize myself without it. I turn into the warmth, craving more, and a name forms on my lips before I can stop it.
“Lorenzo…”
The sound of it seems to echo through the dark.
I press closer in the dream, desperate for something I can’t even name. Comfort. Escape. Oblivion. I don’t know. I only know I want to feel good for once. Just once.
“Please,” I whisper, my voice small and wrecked. “Please… make me feel good.”
A strange shiver runs through me then, like the dream itself has gone still.
And slowly, painfully, consciousness begins to pull me up from the dark.
The first thing I notice is heat.
The second is that the heat is real.
My lashes flutter open, and for one disoriented second I don’t understand what I’m seeing. The room is dim, washed in gray London light leaking around the curtains. The bed is warm beneath me. My cheek is pressed to bare skin.
Bare skin.
My stomach drops.
I go completely still.
Oh God.
I’m sprawled half on top of Lorenzo.
One of my legs is tangled with his. My arm is draped across his stomach. My hand is curled against his chest like I put it there for comfort. Beneath my cheek, I can feel the slow, steady thud of his heartbeat. And beneath my stomach he’s hard.
Mortification hits so hard it burns.
I jerk back so fast I nearly tangle myself in the blankets and fall off the bed. Lorenzo’s hand shoots out on instinct, catching my waist before I can pitch sideways.
That only makes it worse.
I suck in a sharp breath and stare at him.
He’s awake.
Of course he’s awake.
His dark hair is mussed from sleep, his jaw shadowed, his bare chest warm beneath the sheet twisted low around his hips. But it’s his eyes that ruin me—dark, alert, fixed on me with an expression I can’t quite read.
Not amusement or anger but something far more dangerous.
I wrench out of his grip and scramble backward until my spine hits the headboard.
“Oh my God.”
My face feels like it’s on fire.
Lorenzo pushes himself up onto one elbow, watching me carefully. “Elizabeth—”
“No.” I drag both hands over my face, wanting to disappear inside the oversized hoodie I’m still wearing. “No, absolutely not. We are not talking about this.”
The corner of his mouth shifts.
“You were asleep.”
I drop my hands and glare at him. “Thank you for that deeply humiliating clarification.”
His gaze moves over my face, lingering just long enough to make my pulse trip. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”
That should make me feel better. It doesn’t. Because fragments of the dream are coming back to me now in broken, awful flashes. Warmth. His name on my lips. Need curling hot and soft through my body. And the plea. Heat floods me all over again.
I stare at the blankets like they personally betrayed me. “Did I say anything?”
The silence that follows is far too telling.
My head snaps up. “Lorenzo.”
His jaw tightens. That’s answer enough.
I close my eyes. “Kill me.”
A rough exhale leaves him—almost a laugh, but not quite. “Tempting as that sounds, no.”
I groan and bury my face in my hands again. “I hate everything.”
“You still hate me most.”
I peek at him through my fingers. “Don’t get cocky.”
That nearly earns the thing I’ve been trying not to see all night—a real smile, brief and dark and gone too fast. It only infuriates me further that part of me notices how unfairly handsome he looks like this, rumpled from sleep and half-covered in sheets like sin itself.
I shove the thought away so hard it makes my temples ache.
“What happened?” I ask, forcing my hands down into my lap. “Did I just—” I gesture vaguely between us, mortified all over again. “Roll over?”
His eyes hold mine for one dangerous second.
Then he says, “You had a dream.”
My throat goes dry. “And?”
“And you reached for me.”
I cross my arms over myself. “Well, that was clearly a mistake.”
Something changes in his expression at that. Not much. Just enough to make my chest tighten.
“You were asleep,” he repeats, quieter now.
I look away first. Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? I was asleep. Asleep enough to forget I’m supposed to hate him. Asleep enough to reach for him like some part of me still remembers what comfort felt like in his arms. I hate that most of all.
I swallow hard. “You should have woken me.”
“I tried.”
That pulls my gaze back to him. He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t need to. The look in his eyes says enough—that he had his own reasons for wanting distance, his own battle to keep his hands to himself while I clung to him in the dark.
A fresh wave of embarrassment crashes over me.
I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them, making myself as small as possible. “This is a disaster.”
“Yes.”
I blink, surprised by the lack of argument.
Lorenzo sits up fully now, resting his forearms on his knees, his voice rough with sleep and something heavier. “But not for the reason you think.”
I stare at him. He stares right back. And suddenly the air in the room feels too thick, too full of everything that happened on the plane, in the church, in the dark between us while I was dreaming.
I shake my head once. “Don’t.”
His brow furrows. “Don’t what?”
“Make this into something.” My voice comes out thinner than I want it to. “I was asleep. It didn’t mean anything.”
His gaze drops briefly to the blanket twisted around my legs, then lifts again. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself.”
My temper sparks, partly because he’s wrong to say it and partly because he isn’t. “You are unbelievable.”
“And you were begging for me five minutes ago.”
The words hit like a slap. I freeze. He seems to realize immediately he shouldn’t have said it, but by then it’s too late.
My mouth falls open. “I was what?”
His jaw locks.
Oh God. The dream flashes through me again in a rush—heat, aching need, his name. I want the floor to open beneath me.
Instead, I grab the nearest pillow and throw it at him.
He catches it one-handed against his chest.
“Get out,” I hiss.
“This is my bed.”
“Then I’ll get out.”
I throw the blankets back and start to climb over the side, but Lorenzo is faster. He catches my wrist and the contact sends a sharp pulse through me that has nothing to do with anger.
“Elizabeth.”
“Let go.”
“Listen to me.”
“I would rather die.”
A beat passes.
Then, very quietly, he says, “I didn’t touch you.”
I still. His fingers loosen around my wrist, but he doesn’t drop it entirely. His eyes are on mine now, dark and serious and stripped of everything but the truth.
“You climbed on me in your sleep,” he says. “You reached for me. You said my name.” His voice roughens at the edges. “And I didn’t touch you.”
There is something almost unbearable in the effort I can hear beneath those words. Something restrained. Controlled. Something that cost him.
Slowly, I pull my hand free and he lets me.
I look down at the sheets.
“Okay,” I whisper.
It’s not forgiveness. It’s not peace. But it’s the closest thing to honesty I can manage. I slide off the bed and stand, my legs unsteady beneath me. Lorenzo watches me from the mattress, bare-chested and dangerous and far too close even from several feet away.
“Elizabeth.”
I don’t look at him.
“What?”
His voice is quieter than I’ve heard it in a long time.
“Next time you dream like that,” he says, “don’t ask me for mercy unless you mean it.”
Heat slams through me so fast it steals my breath.
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t soften the words. Just lets them sit there between us, low and dark and devastating. I stare at him, furious and flustered and far too aware of my own heartbeat. Then I grab the pillow he caught and throw it at him again. This time it hits him square in the face.
“Go to hell,” I say, and storm toward the bathroom before he can see how hard my hands are shaking.
When I come out of the bathroom, the air in the bedroom feels heavier than before.
Lorenzo is still sitting on the edge of the bed, bare-chested, one forearm braced on his thigh, his dark gaze lifting the second he hears the door open. He looks at me like he’s been listening for that handle to turn. Like he’s known exactly when I would come back into the room.
My pulse stumbles.
I’ve splashed cold water on my face. It hasn’t helped.
My skin still feels too tight, my body too aware, my thoughts too tangled.
Mortification still burns low in my stomach from waking up half on top of him, from what I apparently said in my sleep, from the heat he left behind with that last line before I fled.
Next time you dream like that, don’t ask me for mercy unless you mean it.
I hate that it’s still moving through me. I hate that part of me doesn’t hate it enough.
His gaze drifts over me slowly.
He says nothing at first. That silence is worse than words.
I cross my arms over myself. “Don’t.”
His mouth barely shifts. “Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“And how exactly am I looking at you?”
I should not answer. I know I should not answer. But my nerves are frayed raw, and he has always had a talent for dragging the truth out of me by making it impossible to hold onto anything else.
“Like you know something I don’t.”
A pause.
Then, low and rough, “I know exactly how frustrated you are.”
The words stop me cold.
Lorenzo rises from the bed in one fluid movement, and the room seems to tighten around him. He doesn’t come too close. Not yet. He just stands there watching me with that dangerous, unreadable calm that always makes me feel like the ground beneath me is shifting.