Chapter 13 #3
His hands tighten, just slightly. Then he draws me back until the length of him is pressed along me. The breath leaves my lungs in a shaky rush.
“Oh,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
His mouth curves against the side of my neck, not quite a smile. “Exactly.”
The mirror is cruel. It shows me everything—my flushed face, his broad body at my back, the way my hands clutch the thin cardigan like it might save me, the way it very obviously won’t.
It shows the hunger in my eyes, the one I’ve been denying since the moment he walked into my life and set fire to it.
And worse—
It shows how badly I want him to see it.
His hand glides up, skimming the line of my waist, the soft fabric of the sundress, the trembling rise and fall of my breathing. Every inch he covers feels dangerous. Every inch feels like a risk.
Because I want this.
God, I want this.
But terror is a cold knot under the heat, threaded through every frantic beat of my heart. If he touches me too carefully or notices the faint changes I’ve been hiding beneath careful cuts of fabric and strategic angles—
He’ll know.
I go still for just a second too long.
His gaze narrows in the mirror. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” The word comes too fast.
His hand pauses at my middle.
I stop breathing.
Just for a heartbeat. Maybe two.
His eyes flicker down, then back to mine, and the world seems to hold itself suspended on the edge of that glance. My pulse pounds so loudly I’m sure he can hear it. I force myself to relax, force a tiny, shaky smile I don’t feel.
“You’re awfully tense,” he says softly.
“You’re in a fitting room with me,” I manage. “What did you expect?”
Something unreadable moves through his expression. His hand shifts, sliding higher so he can cup my breast, sparing me and destroying me all at once.
“I expected resistance,” he says.
My laugh breaks in the middle. “You got it.”
“No.” His mouth brushes the sensitive place just below my ear, and his voice drops into something that makes my whole body ache. “I got surrender dressed up as attitude.”
My eyes close.
He uses the moment, one hand anchoring at my hip while the other tips my chin up, forcing me to look at us in the mirror. Forcing me to witness exactly what I’m becoming under his hands—flushed, shaken, needy. A woman on the verge of giving him everything she shouldn’t.
“Look at yourself,” he murmurs.
I do and wish I didn’t.
His gaze never leaves mine. “Tell me you don’t want this.”
I should say no and step away and snatch back all the pieces of myself still left intact. I should remember every reason he is dangerous. Every reason this ends badly. Every reason I cannot let the father of my child look at me too closely or touch me too long.
Instead, my fingers loosen around the cardigan. It slips from my hand and pools forgotten on the little bench.
His eyes drop to watch it fall.
When they come back to mine, they’re darker.
“That,” he says quietly, “is what I thought.”
His hand grips my hip through the thin dress, and I can’t hide the way I lean into him. Can’t hide the soft, broken sound that leaves me when he drags his mouth along my throat. Can’t hide anything, not from the mirror, not from him, maybe not even from myself anymore.
“I hate you,” I whisper, and it comes out like a confession.
His hand slides into the dress, cupping my breast and rolling my nipple just the way I like. “No, cara,” he says against my skin. “You’re scared of how little you do.”
Maybe it’s the hormones. Maybe it’s the raw, aching truth that I’ve missed him more than I’ve let myself admit. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me in the mirror—like he can already see every weak place in me and means to press his mouth to each one.
Whatever it is, it breaks me.
“Please, Lorenzo,” I whisper, and my voice is so thin that it barely sounds like mine at all.
His eyes lift to mine in the glass. “Please what?”
A tear slips free before I can stop it. I hate that he sees it. Hate that he sees everything. “You know what.”
“Say it.”
The command lands low and hot, and my breath catches hard enough to hurt. My fingers clutch at the edge of the mirror, searching for something steady while his body crowds close behind mine, all heat and danger and terrible, familiar temptation.
“Please,” I say again, softer this time, more broken. “Please don’t make me ask twice.”
That smile curves over his mouth then—slow, male, merciless—and I know I’m lost.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “Shaking for me.”
I am.
Worse, he knows it.
His hands find the fabric of my dress and begin to ease it upward with agonizing patience, as if he has all the time in the world to enjoy what he’s doing to me.
The movement bares more skin, more vulnerability, more proof of how defenseless I am under his gaze, and the sight of it in the mirror makes a helpless sound catch in my throat.
I should stop this.
I should turn around, yank my dress down, run.
Instead, I part for him.
Just a little.
Enough to make his eyes flash.
The faint sounds beyond the fitting room door—the music, the footsteps, the rustle of hangers—only make this feel more forbidden.
Ordinary life is still happening a few feet away, and here I am, trembling in front of a mirror while the man I should never have let near me again undoes me piece by piece.
His knuckles skim my thigh, light enough to make me shiver, deliberate enough to tell me exactly what he’s noticing.
“Lorenzo…” His name leaves me like a plea.
“No,” he says softly, his gaze locked on mine in the reflection. “I want to hear you ask for it.”
Heat crashes through me, swift and humiliating and impossible to hide. My face burns. My pulse pounds. My whole body feels too tight for my skin, strung between hunger and panic, want and the terrible fear that if he looks too closely, if he touches me too slowly, if he lets himself really see me—
He’ll know.
That thought should cool me. It doesn’t. If anything, it makes the moment wilder. Because I am standing on the edge of discovery, and still I want him.
“Don’t make me say it. You know what I want.”
His expression changes at that, like my desperation gets under his skin.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he says.
The words hit so hard I nearly break.
My lips tremble. “Then stop asking questions you already know the answer to.”
For one charged second, neither of us moves.
Then his hand slides higher, enough to make me gasp as he rubs between my legs, and the sound seems to tear something loose in him.
“You beg so prettily,” he says, voice low and dangerous. “How am I supposed to deny you anything?”
I shudder at that, every nerve lit with wanting.
But underneath it—beneath the heat, beneath the desperate ache of missing him, beneath the dizzy recklessness of being here like this—fear still beats like a second pulse.
Because if he gives me what I’m asking for, he might notice.
And if he notices, everything changes.
Yet when his hand tightens and his mouth brushes the shell of my ear, I hear myself make the softest sound of surrender. Because the worst part—the most shameful part—is that even with everything on the line, I still want him more.
His zipper slides down and then he gives me what I want, entering me in a single thrust. My body answers before my pride can as tremor runs through me, visible even in the mirror, and his eyes catch it. Hold it. Devour it.
“There,” he says softly, almost like he’s reassuring a frightened animal. “That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
I can’t speak. I’m too full of him already.
I force out, “Don’t stop. Please.”
Something fierce flashes through his expression then, something that looks almost like pain before it settles into hunger again.
“You’re dangerous when you beg,” he murmurs.
And then he gives me what I need. What we both need. It’s not pretty or sweet. No, it’s animalistic and raw. When I moan, he covers my mouth with his palm to silence the sounds. And when I shatter, he’s right behind me, leaving us both breathless.
But then reality sets in and I realize just what I’ve done.
I pull away from him, hating the wetness that runs down my thighs.
“Get out.”
He doesn’t listen. Instead, he slides his cock back into his pants and fixes his clothes like this is the most natural thing in the world.
“We’re getting the dress,” he says. “And I’ll see if they have it in any other colors.”
My face burns. “Seriously. Get out.”
He opens the door, then glances back once over his shoulder. “I’ll have them show you to the bathroom so you can clean up. After that, you have an hour. If you don’t have at least seven outfits, I’ll pick what I want you to wear.”
Then he leaves me there alone with my reflection, my racing heart, and the awful, undeniable truth that the heat between us is becoming its own kind of addiction.