13. Crossing the Line #3
“Chris.”He looked at her. Really looked, for the first time since he’d entered the room.
The professional mask was still there, but it was cracking — hairline fractures she could see through if she looked closely enough.
She was close enough now to smell him: cedar, sweat, the faint ghost of the espresso he’d been trying to fix that morning.
She remembered that morning — his frustration with the machine, the way his jaw had tightened, the absurd urge she’d had to kiss him right there over the counter while he cursed at a gasket.
“You could have left,” she said. The same words Mateo had used, but loaded differently. Heavier.“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you were there.”She set the antiseptic down.
Her hand was still holding his. She moved closer — not fast, not slow — and he didn’t pull away.
Her knee pressed against his thigh. The robe loosened at her shoulder, silk sliding, and she didn’t fix it.
“Camila.” His voice was low. Warning.“Mateo made you mine,” she said. “Permanent. Whatever I need.”
“That’s not what he meant.”She lifted his hand — the one she’d just cleaned — and placed it against her collarbone, where the robe had slipped.
His palm was rough and warm against her bare skin.
She felt his fingers curl, just slightly, before he caught himself.
“What if that’s what I need?” she asked.He kissed her first.Not her.
He kissed the inside of his own jaw, teeth clenched, like he was physically trying to hold something back.
And then his hand moved — the one she’d placed on her collarbone — sliding up the side of her neck, rough fingers catching on the silk, and he pulled her in.The kiss was not gentle.
It was the kind of kiss that happens when someone has been starving and finally gives themselves permission to eat.
His mouth opened hers and his tongue swept in and she made a sound against him — something raw and involuntary — and her hands gripped the front of his shirt, pulling, twisting the fabric.He broke away just long enough to say her name.
“Camila—” and then she pulled him back.They went down together onto the bed.
His weight pressed her into the mattress and she wrapped her legs around him, pulling him closer, feeling the hard line of him through his jeans against her inner thigh.
The robe was open now, barely hanging on, and his hand found her breast — large palm covering her, thumb dragging across her nipple until it peaked and she arched into him.
“You’re going to get me killed,” he muttered against her throat. “By who?”
“Me. I’m going to kill myself for doing this.”She laughed — breathless, real — and pulled his shirt over his head. The bruise on his ribs was ugly. Purple and black, spreading like a storm cloud across his left side. She touched it and he hissed.“Sorry—”
“Don’t be.” He kissed her again, softer this time, his mouth moving to her jaw, her ear, the spot below her ear that made her grip his shoulders and dig in.
He was careful with his left side but everything else was urgent — his hands everywhere, sliding down her ribs, her waist, pushing the robe fully open and off.She was naked underneath.
She’d been naked underneath the whole time.His breath caught.
He pulled back just enough to look at her — the length of her stretched across the rumpled sheets, brown skin against white cotton, her dark hair fanned across the pillow.
She watched his face and saw the thing he’d been hiding for months surface completely.
Want. Not just attraction — something deeper, something that had weight and teeth and had been chewing through his restraint since the first time she’d climbed into the front seat of the Range Rover and put herself on his lap.
“Stop looking at me like that and do something,” she said.He smiled.
It was rare and crooked and it transformed his face.He started at her collarbone.
Mouth pressing, tongue tracing, teeth grazing.
Down to her breasts — he took one in his mouth while his hand worked the other, rolling and pinching just hard enough to make her hips lift off the mattress.
She was wet. She could feel it, could feel the heat building between her legs, and when his hand finally drifted down — across her stomach, over the curve of her hip, between her thighs — she opened for him without hesitation.His fingers slid through the slick warmth and she heard him exhale, sharp, like he’d been punched. “Christ, Camila.”
“Stop talking.”He stroked her — slow, deliberate, two fingers circling the place that made her vision blur while his thumb pressed against the sensitive bud above.
She grabbed his wrist, not to stop him but to guide him, to show him the rhythm she needed, and he followed it perfectly.
Like he’d been listening to her body for months and had memorized the language.She came against his hand with her mouth against his shoulder, biting down to muffle herself, her whole body tightening and then shattering in waves that left her trembling.He held her through it.
Didn’t pull away. Didn’t rush. Just held her while she shook.When she opened her eyes, he was watching her with that expression again — the one that scared him.
“Your turn,” she said.She pushed him onto his back, careful of his ribs, and unbuttoned his jeans.
He lifted his hips so she could pull them down.
His erection was straining against dark boxer briefs, and she palmed him through the fabric, feeling the length and hardness of him, watching his jaw tighten. “Off,” he said. “Take them off.”