Chapter 8 - Luca
“Tell me, little faith. Does that make you want to thank me? Or punish me?”
Each word sends shivers down her spine—I can feel them through my chest pressed nearly against her back.
She tries to turn the handle under our joined hands, but I hold it firm, trapping her between the door and my body. Not quite touching except for our hands, but close enough that she can feel the heat radiating from me.
"Let go." Her voice wavers between command and plea.
"No." Simple. Final. The way I say it makes her breath hitch, diaphragm spasming against her ribs. "You ran from me. Nobody runs from me, Faith."
"You're Luca Rosetti." She says it like an accusation, like learning my name changes what's between us. "My father warned me about you. Said you're the worst of them."
"Your father's right." I lean closer, my lips nearly touching the shell of her ear.
"I am the worst. The one who doesn't sleep anymore because sleep is time I could spend watching you.
The one who's killed men for looking at you wrong.
The one who knows you touch yourself at 3 a.m. after your nightmares, trying to chase away the guilt with your fingers. "
She goes rigid against the door. "You sick—"
I spin her around, pressing her back against the door with my body.
Not rough, but inevitable. Like gravity.
Her hands come up to push against my chest, but the moment her palms make contact with the expensive fabric of my suit, she stops.
Her fingers curl slightly, not quite grabbing, not quite pushing away.
"Sick?" I repeat, studying the way her pupils dilate in the hallway's low light. Forty percent dilation despite adequate illumination. Arousal response. "Is that what you tell yourself when you read my photographs? When you kiss them like prayers?"
"I didn't know they were from you. From a Rosetti."
"Would it have mattered?" I cage her with my arms against the door, watching her pulse hammer in her throat.
One hundred thirty beats per minute. "Would you have stopped looking for me in shadows?
Stopped leaving messages in your window?
Stopped wearing that silk nightgown when you know I'm watching? "
Her breath catches. "The nightgown was a mistake."
"The nightgown was an invitation." I lean closer, until my lips almost brush hers. So close I can taste her exhale, sweet from champagne she barely touched. "Your body knows who it belongs to even if your mind pretends otherwise."
"You've been watching me." Not a question. An accusation wrapped in hazel eyes that burn with something between fury and fascination.
"Every. Single. Night." Each word deliberate, watching her pupils dilate further. "Memorizing your breathing patterns. Ensuring your safety. Stopping myself from waking you up and showing you exactly who guards your sleep."
"You're insane."
"And you're soaking." Not a question. I can smell it, that sweet musk that says her body recognizes its owner even if her mind rebels. "Soaking for the man who kills for you. Who watches you sleep. Who knows every secret you think you've hidden."
She tries to push past me, but I shift my weight, my thigh sliding between her legs as I press closer.
We both freeze at the contact. Her heat against my leg, the pressure making her gasp.
The scent of her arousal intensifies, mixing with jasmine from her shampoo and something uniquely her—a pheromone signature I've been cataloguing for weeks.
"You've been in my apartment," she breathes, but it's not quite the accusation it should be.
I study the pulse hammering in her throat, resist the urge to press my lips there, to mark her. I savor the warmth of her soft belly so close to my hard, hard cock. "I know you write in that journal you hide in the air vent, not under your mattress like you want people to think."
"How could you possibly—"
"I know Trent Neumann is responsible for your mother's death." The words hang between us like a blade. "And I know you want him to pay."
"You're ruining everything!" The words explode from her like she's been holding them back all night. "Years of planning, of getting close to his family, of building trust, and you—you just—"
"He was going to touch you." My jaw clenches at the memory of Neumann approaching her earlier. "His hand was already reaching when I made him run."
"I wanted him to get close!" She beats her fist against my chest, but there's no real force behind it. "That was the point! That was the whole point of tonight!"
"No." My hand catches her wrist, thumb finding her pulse point. Radial artery pounding at one hundred forty beats per minute now. "The point of tonight was for you to find me. To stop hiding behind folded paper messages and shadows. To admit what your body already knows."
"That you're a psychopath who breaks into my home?"
"That you're mine." I press my thumb harder against her racing pulse. "Have been since the first Polaroid. Since before that, when you started looking for me in the darkness. Your body knew I was there before your mind caught up."
"Seven bodies," she whispers suddenly, and there's something in her voice that isn't fear. "You think that makes you my savior? That's seven witnesses who could have testified against Neumann. Seven pieces of evidence you destroyed."
The observation is so unexpectedly clever that it sharpens my desire, and my cock hardens painfully against my zipper. When I lean in, my erection presses against her stomach through our clothes. Her eyes widen at the evidence of what she does to me.
"Nine bodies," I correct. "And they weren't witnesses. They were threats. Men who thought they could look at you, want you, approach you."
"That's not your choice to make."
"Everything about you is my choice now." I release her wrist, let my fingers trail down her arm, feeling her shiver. "What you wear. Where you go. Who you speak to. Who lives after looking at you."
"You don't own me."
"Don't I?" I pull the Polaroid from my pocket. Black paper this time, taken during the endless hours of last night while I watched her sleep through my cameras. "Your body says otherwise. The way you're grinding against my thigh says otherwise."
She stills, apparently just realizing she's been moving against me. The flush spreads down her neck, disappearing beneath the neckline of her dress.
"You're sick," she breathes, but her hips haven't stopped moving entirely.
"And you like it." I tuck the photograph into the neckline of her dress, my fingers brushing the heated skin of her chest for just a moment. She gasps at the contact, and I feel her heartbeat against my knuckles. Wild, desperate. "You like that someone's watching. Protecting. Killing for you."
"I didn't ask for any of this."
"You didn't have to." I lean closer, my lips almost touching hers. "Your body asks for it every time you wear that nightgown to bed. Every time you look out your window at 3 a.m. wondering if I'm watching. Every time you kiss my Polaroids like they're love letters."
Her breath shudders against my mouth. "I should be terrified of you."
"You should be." I pull back just enough to see her eyes, wide and dark with want. "I'm everything your father warned you about. Everything you should run from. But you won't run, will you, little faith? Because some part of you has been waiting for someone like me. Someone who sees past the mask."
"You don't know me."
"I know you dream about violence. Know you wake up dripping from thoughts of revenge.
Know you've been planning Neumann's destruction with the patience of a saint and the dedication of a sinner.
" My hand finds her throat, not squeezing, just resting there, feeling her pulse race under my palm.
"I know you better than you know yourself. "
"Let me go." But she doesn't move away from my touch.
"Never." The word comes out as a growl. "I won’t let you go until the last breath leaves your body. And probably not even then, because I don't share well, even with death."
She stares at me, something shifting in those hazel eyes. Not surrender, not quite. But recognition. Of what I am. Of what this is. Of what we're becoming together.
"You'll beg for it," I tell her, stepping back suddenly, completely removing my body from hers. She sways forward without my support, hand flying to the wall to keep herself upright. "You'll beg me to touch you. To take you. To make you mine in every way that matters."
"Never."
"Tomorrow," I say, straightening my cuffs like we've been discussing the weather instead of drowning in sexual tension.
"The Polaroid has instructions. Follow them, or I'll handle Neumann permanently.
And little faith? When I handle things permanently, there won't be enough left for your twelve-year plan.
There won't be enough left for God to recognize. "
I turn to walk away, then pause, looking back over my shoulder. "Oh, and Faith? Next time you run from me, I won't be so gentle when I catch you."
I leave her there, shaking against the door, arousal and fury warring in those hazel eyes. My cock throbs with every step away from her, demanding I go back, demanding I claim her. But this isn't about taking her apart. It's about making her come to me. Making her choose the sinner over the saint.
The sound of her ragged breathing follows me down the hallway, each exhale a reminder of what I'm walking away from. What I'll come back for.
Tomorrow she'll find the instructions in that black Polaroid, the photo of that crooked little smile that quirks her lips right before her first sip of coffee every morning.
Tomorrow she'll have to choose: her twelve-year plan or accepting my protection completely.
But I already know what she'll pick. Her body already chose the moment she ground against my thigh.
A lifetime without proper sleep, and finally, something worth staying awake for.
My little faith. So brave in her fury. So beautiful in her denial.