Chapter Fourteen
Vito
Water pounds over my shoulders, hot enough to redden my skin, and it still doesn’t do a damn thing to settle me.
I brace one hand against the tile and tip my head forward, letting the spray run over the back of my neck, my spine, my chest.
Usually a shower helps. Usually heat, water, silence, or something physical and simple, is enough to strip the edge off whatever’s got under my skin.
Not today.
Today I’m annoyed.
I’m irritated all over again.
And I’m hard.
The damn doctor.
Sitting out there on the deck like some kind of temptation dropped into the middle of a problem I already can’t get a handle on.
Beautiful in that light morning breeze, the soft gold of the rising sun catching in her hair and reflecting in her eyes. Calm on the surface, or trying to look calm, coffee in her hand, legs crossed like she thought that posture could keep her body from giving anything away.
It didn’t.
I noticed too much.
The dilated pupils.
The shallow breathing.
The way she shifted in the chair, not entirely comfortable in her skin.
Something had her worked up. Frustrated. Sexually.
Was it me?
I close my eyes and drag a hand over my face, water streaming down my arm.
I hope so.
That’s the problem.
I hope it was me, because then maybe there’s an easy answer to this.
Maybe then all this tension winding around us every time we’re in the same room, but not in a session, has somewhere obvious to go.
Maybe then we could stop circling it, stop pretending not to feel it, stop acting like every look and every silence and every clipped little exchange doesn’t have something else burning underneath it.
Maybe then we could just fuck and get it out of our systems.
But the good doctor would probably object to that.
The thought almost pulls a laugh out of me, except there’s nothing funny in where my head is right now.
I reach blindly for the soap, then set it down again without using it. I’m too distracted to bother. My mind is still out on that deck.
Teresa in those stubborn jeans even though she has to be hot as hell in them. Teresa pretending she wasn’t looking at me when I came out of the water. Teresa trying to hold herself together while every small tell in her body said she was feeling something she didn’t want me to see.
Unless I imagined that.
Unless I saw what I wanted to see because I’ve been too aware of her for too long already.
I hate that possibility almost as much as I hate the other one.
Because if I’m wrong, then I’m just standing in a shower thinking about a woman I should not be thinking about like this.
And if I’m right, then this gets even more complicated than it already is.
Water runs down my chest, over my stomach, lower, and I grit my teeth and plant both hands on the tile.
She looked good this morning.
Too good.
Soft tank top. Hair loose. Bare feet on the deck. Sleep still clinging to her a little, but not enough to hide what she is when she’s fully awake.
Sharp, guarded. Beautiful in a way that pisses me off because I keep noticing it at the wrong moments.
The wrong details. The curve of her mouth when she’s irritated.
The heat in her eyes when she pushes back.
The way she tries to hold herself professionally even when her body is doing something else entirely.
And yeah, I noticed that too.
Not just that she was uncomfortable.
Why.
I saw the way she pulled herself inward as I approached. The tension in her shoulders that had nothing to do with fear this time. I know what arousal looks like. I know what frustration looks like. I know what it does to breathing, to pupils, to posture.
I noticed.
Too fucking much.
I want to peel those jeans down her body. I want to lay her back and spread those long legs wide, just like I imagined doing the night I watched her out with her friends in that dress.
I want to lower my head and taste that sweet pussy, bury my tongue inside her while she writhes under me.
I drag both hands back through my hair and stand there under the spray, jaw tight. Cock so hard it hurts.
This is not helpful.
None of this is helpful.
She’s supposed to be helping me get control, not making me lose it in entirely different ways.
The irony is ugly.
I mutter, “Jesus Christ.”
The sound disappears into steam and falling water.
I should be thinking about the session.
About what she said.
She wants to talk about “the catalyst.” About the warehouse. About Nico. About the way she keeps circling the pressure points without letting me deflect for long.
About the fact that she sees more than I planned for and that every conversation with her leaves me more exposed than I can afford.
That is what I should be thinking about.
Instead, I keep replaying the look on her face when I caught her watching me.
Not shame.
Not exactly.
More like irritation at herself for doing it at all.
I relate to that. I know that feeling.
I know what it’s like to want something that complicates a situation already on the verge of becoming unmanageable.
And Teresa Donato is becoming exactly that.
Complication.
Distraction.
Temptation, if I’m being honest.
I lean my forehead against the tile for a second and breathe through it, slow and hard, trying to drag myself back into something that resembles control.
I slide my hand down to my cock and squeeze just a little to relieve the pressure.
I allow myself a couple of firm strokes before dropping it.
This has to stop.
Or at least it has to wait.
That much is obvious.
Even if she is feeling it too.
Even if the whole damn thing is sitting between us now, hot and obvious and impossible to fully ignore.
I can’t touch that yet.
Not if I want anything else here to work.
The thought doesn’t cool me off. It just leaves me standing there frustrated in a different way.
Teresa is already waiting when I walk into the sitting room.
She chose the one on the western side of the house today, the room with the lower light and the long windows facing the water through the palms. Less formal than the kitchen.
Less exposed than the beach cabana. The air-conditioning is on, thank God, because the heat outside has been punishing since midmorning, and even after the shower I still feel it in my skin.
She’s sitting in one of the armchairs with her notebook on her lap, one leg crossed over the other, posture straight but not stiff. Professional. Or trying to be.
She’s changed but still in one of her own outfits.
Of course.
Her own dark pants, one of her own tops, hair pulled back instead of loose. She looks cooler than she did this morning, but not by much. There’s still a flush high on her cheeks from the heat, and I know she’s miserable in these clothes. Still, she keeps wearing them. Keeps drawing that line.
I understand it.
I don’t mention it.
When I step fully into the room, she looks up, already reading me.
That’s one of the things making this harder than I expected.
I knew she was smart. Knew she was observant. Knew she’d be good at this. But there’s a difference between reading a résumé and sitting in front of the woman herself while she watches every shift in your face like she knows exactly what it means.
She usually does.
I walk in and shut the door behind me, even though there’s no one else here. I’ve already turned off the camera and microphone in the sitting room.
Teresa watches, but doesn’t say anything right away. She just sits there with that notebook on her lap and those blue eyes fixed on me, taking in everything. My face. My posture. The way I close the door. The extra beat I take before I turn around.
She catches too much.
I’m getting tired of that.
And not tired of it at all.
I move to the chair across from her and sit, stretching one arm along the side of it like I’m more relaxed than I am.
The room is cool enough to take the edge off the heat outside, but not enough to do anything about the agitation still riding under my skin.
She waits until I’m settled.
Then, precise as ever, she says, “You wanted this done in three months.”
I look at her. “That hasn’t changed.”
“I know.” She uncrosses and recrosses her legs, small, neat movement, then opens the notebook. “Which means I’m not wasting another session skirting the edges.”
My mouth shifts. “That sounds almost threatening.”
“It’s an observation.”
“Very clinical.”
“I am a clinical psychologist.”
I look at her for a second, then lean back farther in the chair, letting her take the lead.
“The catalyst,” she starts. “The event that pushed you into this. That’s where we start.”
There it is again.
Catalyst.
It’s such a simple word. Almost neat.
Makes the whole thing sound controlled, predictable.
It wasn’t.
She waits.
I don’t answer immediately, and I can already feel her attention sharpening, settling in deeper.
She has learned enough in a week to recognize the difference between me choosing silence and me standing at the edge of something I don’t want to say.
I look past her toward the windows, toward the pale movement of leaves outside.
Then I say, “You’re right.”
Her expression doesn’t change much, but I see the slight lift in it anyway. Not satisfaction. More focus.
“About?”
“There being a catalyst.”
She says nothing.
Good. Better when she doesn’t fill space for me.
I drag a hand down over my jaw and let out a slow breath.
“It was a warehouse job,” I say.
She still doesn’t interrupt.
That helps.
“Nico and I broke into a rival Family’s warehouse,” I continue. “We were there to steal merchandise. High-end electronics. We wanted it, but more than that, we didn’t want them to have it. Worth enough to justify the trouble of breaking into a well-guarded warehouse.”
Teresa makes one small note and looks back up.
I make a mental note to burn that notebook and any of her notes before we leave the island.
“It was supposed to be a stealth job. In and out. No making waves,” I continue.
That gets written down too.