Chapter 12 #2
“I can see it,” he says quietly. “In the way you’re holding yourself. In the way you keep trying to outrun what your body is doing.”
My throat goes dry. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“No.” His gaze fixes on mine. “I’m very sure of you.”
I laugh once, but it comes out thin. “You don’t know what I need.”
Something dark flickers in his face. “No?”
He takes a step toward me. Then another. By the time he stops, I can feel the heat of him. The steady force of his presence. The danger of being this close to him when I’m already unraveling.
“I think,” he says, voice dropping to something velvet-dark, “that you’ve had too much fear, too much pain, too much anger for one woman to carry alone.” His eyes search mine. “And I think you want one thing tonight that doesn’t hurt.”
My heart pounds so hard it almost aches.
I look away first, because I cannot stand the possibility that he might be right.
His hand lifts. Not to grab me. Not to corner me. Just the backs of his fingers brushing lightly beneath my chin, turning my face back to him with a gentleness that feels more dangerous than force ever could.
“Let me help you take the edge off.”
The words slide through me like sin.
I should say no. I should laugh in his face. Slap him again. Remind him of the church, the gunshot, the ruined altar, the life he ripped apart with his bare hands.
Instead, I hear my own voice come out soft and shaken.
“I need something good in my life.”
For one suspended moment, neither of us moves. Then Lorenzo exhales like the answer cost him something, his thumb tracing once along the line of my jaw.
“You have no idea what you just agreed to.”
“Then tell me.”
That finally does something to him. A crack in the iron control. A flash of hunger so hot and stark it makes my knees feel unsteady.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, not pulling, just holding. Anchoring. Claiming.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
I do.
I hate that I do.
I love that I do.
The first kiss is slower than the one on the plane. Not softer. More deliberate. Like he’s savoring the fact that this time I came to him awake, with my eyes open, knowing exactly who he is and what I should fear and stepping into him anyway.
My hands fist in his shirtless shoulders as his mouth moves over mine, unhurried and devastating, until all the anger in me starts to melt at the edges and turn into something molten and reckless.
His other hand settles at my waist, then glides lower, spanning my hip through the hoodie, drawing me closer until I can feel every line of him.
I make a sound into his mouth that I don’t mean to.
His answer is a dark, satisfied hum.
“That’s it,” he says against my lips. “Stop thinking.”
I almost laugh at the arrogance of that.
Then his mouth finds the hinge of my jaw, the sensitive place beneath my ear, and whatever smart thing I might have said dissolves into air.
“Lorenzo—”
“I know.” His hand strokes slowly up my side beneath the hem of the hoodie, warm against my skin now, his voice a low command against my throat. “I know exactly how much you hate this.”
My breath catches as his fingers drift higher, then pause, letting the anticipation do its own cruel work.
“And I know,” he continues, lips brushing my pulse, “how much worse it is that you want it anyway.”
The truth of it hits so hard I could cry. Instead, I grip him harder.
His mouth curves against my skin like he feels that too.
He guides me backward until the backs of my knees meet the edge of the bed.
I sink onto it almost without realizing, and he follows, standing between my legs, looking down at me with that same devastating stillness.
Like this matters. Like I matter. Like he’s about to ruin us both and intends to do it slowly.
“You tell me to stop,” he says, voice darkening, “and I stop.”
A tremor moves through me.
He waits. That waiting nearly undoes me more than his hands.
“I’m not going to stop you,” I whisper.
His eyes burn.
“No,” he says softly. “You’re not.”
He kisses me again, deeper this time, and I feel his hand slide beneath my leggings, over bare skin, slow enough to make me shiver.
He doesn’t rush. Doesn’t take. He coaxes.
Teases. Learns me all over again with every deliberate touch until my head tips back and my breathing goes ragged as he finally reaches my clit.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, his forehead briefly touching mine. “So angry. So beautiful. And still falling apart for me.”
“I’m not—”
The protest breaks when his hand moves again, and suddenly words feel impossible. A quiet, humiliating sound escapes me.
His gaze locks onto my face, hungry and intent. “There she is.”
My cheeks burn. “Don’t.”
“Why?” His voice turns silk smooth. Merciless. “Because you don’t want to hear how sweet you sound when you stop fighting me?”
He keeps talking to me like that, low and dark and patient, every word wrapping around the heat building inside me until I don’t know whether I want to kiss him or curse him or both. Maybe both. Probably both.
He tells me to breathe. Tells me to let him have this. Tells me not to hide from him when he can feel exactly what he’s doing to me. And every time I try to gather enough pride to throw one of his own words back at him, his mouth or his hands make a liar out of me.
The worst part is that he knows it.
“You don’t have to be good for me,” he says, mouth at my throat, his hand coaxing me higher, closer to the edge of something shaking and bright. “You just have to let go.”
I’m trembling now.
Not from fear.
From the unbearable pressure of wanting this while still hating him for making me want anything at all.
My fingers bury in his hair. My other hand clutches the sheets hard enough to wrinkle them. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” He lifts his head, and his eyes pin me where I sit. “You can come apart for me and still be furious when it’s over. You can hate me and need this. You can feel all of it, Elizabeth.”
The words crack something open in me. Because that is the truth, isn’t it? It isn’t one thing or the other.
It’s all of it.
Rage and grief and want and memory and hunger, all knotted together so tightly I can’t separate them anymore.
And Lorenzo is right there in the middle of it, looking at me like he sees every piece.
“Let it happen,” he says, almost tenderly now. “I’ve got you.”
That should not be what does it.
But it is.
The release hits me hard and sudden, tearing through me like a storm breaking open after too much pressure in the sky. My breath catches, then shatters. I clutch at him blindly, overwhelmed by the intensity of it, by the way my body yields even while my heart is still in open rebellion.
It feels so good.
Too good.
Good enough to make tears sting unexpectedly behind my eyes. Because relief should not come from him. I should not find this in his hands, in his voice, in the man who ruined everything and is still somehow the only one who knows exactly where to touch the broken places.
I come down trembling, breathless, my forehead dropping to his shoulder. For a moment, neither of us says anything. I can hear both of us breathing. Can feel the hammering of his pulse beneath his skin.
I laugh shakily.
“That was a terrible idea.”
His mouth brushes my temple. “Probably.”
I lift my head just enough to look at him.
His eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them. Starved. Satisfied. Still dangerous. Still not done, if the look in them is anything to go by. And the most frightening thing of all is that some traitorous part of me feels the same.
“I still hate you,” I whisper.
His hand cups the back of my neck, thumb stroking once over my pulse.
“I know,” he says.
Then his gaze drops to my mouth.
“And that,” he murmurs, “is what makes this so addictive.”