Chapter Twelve #2
“I thought criminals didn’t text. Logs and all that. What?” I asked when he shot me a look. “I watch a lot of crime documentaries.”
“Ever consider that might not be great for the whole anxiety thing?”
“I like to think of it as research. I know what’s out there and maybe how to avoid it.”
“Cait,” he said, waving a hand between us.
“I mean, yeah. But also, you’re not the same.”
“Different class of criminal?” he asked. “We might have a code. But make no mistake, we’re criminals, too. Do whatever needs to be done. Morally questionable all the way to completely immoral.”
“But not to women or kids.”
“Not to women or kids,” he confirmed. “Or animals. Basically, just to men.”
“But only the guilty ones.”
“Been alive a while. Not sure I’ve ever met an innocent man. Not in my line of work, anyway. You know what you’re doing when you get involved with the Family. You wanna fuck up or fuck us over, you know what consequences are coming.”
“And do you dole them out? The consequences, I mean.”
“If I need to.”
“I’m having a hard time imagining that.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t give me any consequences. And I’m pretty sure in the grand scheme of bad things a person could do, holding a capo captive is high on the list.”
“Yeah, it’s up there. But you get the woman card to keep you safe. Also, still feel kinda bad about your wrist.”
“I mean, I did punch you.”
“I provoked it.”
“You did. Here, you need to try one of these,” I said, grabbing a dumpling and climbing off the bed to go over to where he was sitting on the edge of his.
I really thought nothing of it.
Not until I was holding the dumpling up by his lips and his gaze flicked up to mine.
My breath stalled in my chest.
My face felt flush.
My clothes too heavy, too scratchy.
A little shiver coursed up my spine.
And there was an ache deep in my core that I couldn’t find any other excuse for but desire.
Holding my gaze, Gav opened his mouth.
In my panic over what I was feeling toward a man I literally held at (fake) gunpoint, I pushed the dumpling into his mouth just a little too firmly, meaning my finger traced across his lower lip in the process.
Maybe it was a trick of the light or my overactive imagination, but I could have sworn his eyes went heated at that.
It wasn’t until he started to chew that I dropped my hand and took a step back. Then another.
The bed stopped further retreat.
“Good, right?” I asked, trying to act like nothing had happened. Like desire wasn’t still coursing through my system as I sat and fiddled with the food.
“Yeah, it’s good,” he agreed. “I’m gonna get ready for bed.”
I watched him as he gathered his things then closed himself into the bathroom. Only when I was sure I was alone, I buried my face in my hands and let out a little groan.
I was going to replay that moment no fewer than fifty thousand times.
Before I fell asleep. And then likely at least once a day for the rest of my life.
Like that one time I’d accidentally said “cunt” when I meant “can’t.
” In front of my father. Who found it hilarious enough to recount to all his friends.
I was still thinking about that one a couple times a day… twenty years later.
I sighed, shoved the rest of the dumplings in my mouth, then pushed the tray into the hall.
I was just walking back, cheeks puffed out with food, when the bathroom door flew open.
Then there he was.
Wearing a pair of black sleep pants… and nothing else.
I had no idea what kind of body I expected a homebody like Gav to have. But it certainly wasn’t one that involved a full set of six-pack abs and corded biceps. Or, oh God, those deep indents that disappeared into his pants.
I wanted to swallow, but I had too much food in my mouth.
Realizing I was ogling him, my gaze shot back up to his face, finding him shooting me a lazy grin.
Caught.
I was hopelessly caught.
But Gav reached out, poking at one of my puffy cheeks.
“Squirreling that away for the winter?” he asked.
I couldn’t say anything with my mouth still hopelessly full.
“I’m gonna read for a bit before turning in,” he said, moving past me as I finally remembered to start chewing.
I couldn’t tell you if the flush I felt creeping up my neck was from desire or embarrassment. Either way, I grabbed my toiletry bag and flew into the privacy of the bathroom before he could see it.
Alone, I finally swallowed my food, then turned to admire the shower before deciding I owed it to myself to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to indulge in a four shower head shower.
So that was exactly what I did. While trying to remind my overwrought system why lusting after Gavino Costa was a horribly bad idea.
The problem?
When I finally made my way back out of the bathroom a while later, he was lounging up in bed, his stupidly gorgeous body on display, casually reading a book, looking like some sexy professor from some silly adult movie.
And my body went right ahead and forgot everything I’d just spent the last hour convincing it of.
I exhaled hard and made my way to my bed, grabbing my book, and curling up to read.
And it was just… nice.
I’d never really been around other readers before. Certainly never shared a room with one.
My most recent ex was a video game addict, and as much as I tried to engage in parallel play—where I sat next to him while he played and I read a book—the constant yelling and cursing used to make it impossible for me to focus.
At some point, Gav snapped his book shut and set it on the nightstand. “Mind if I turn the light off? You’ve been staring at the same page for twenty minutes.”
“Hm? Yeah. Yeah, I can’t focus tonight,” I said, putting my book down and sliding down on the bed as he turned off the light.
The room blanketed in darkness broken only by the glow of the under-sink light in the bathroom.
“Gav?”
“Mm?”
“What’s your book about?”
“The unyielding pressure of middle-class existence and the soul-sucking grief that comes with knowing if you’d made just one different decision, your life would be completely different. It’s a comedy.”
A snort escaped me at that.
“What’s your book about?”
There was no stopping the groan that escaped me at that.
“Looks like one of those books with a shadow fae who has a heart of stone, but he melts for the heroine who had no idea she had any kind of powers until, magically, one day, they showed up exactly when she needed them, allowing her to defeat a bad guy, but not before she got critically injured, so the shadow fae could find her and vow to burn the whole world down to get vengeance for her.”
Another groan slipped out.
“Are you embarrassed?”
“You’re reading high-brow lit fic. And sixty percent of this book so far is steam.”
“So what? You like what you like. I’m not judging. I’ve got a weakness for locked-door thrillers, even though I can guess the killer from the first chapter. Not everything you read has to be some literary masterpiece. We can just enjoy the shit we like. Was it good?”
“What?”
“The steam?”
My stomach flipped.
“Yeah.” God, I sounded so breathy.
“Maybe I’ll read it.”
“No, you won’t. But thanks for making me not feel weird about it.”
“I think you’re going to make yourself feel weird about it anyway.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It is. And before you say something like, ‘no one is thinking about you,’ I’ve heard that a million times. But the problem with that argument is… I am. I think about people. All the time.”
“I’m not going to try to convince you that people don’t think about you. But maybe you can accept that they’re thinking good things. Most people aren’t going to be anywhere near as harsh as that voice inside your head wants you to believe.”
“I’ve embarrassed myself no less than, like, fifty times with you already.”
“And I was kind of amused by all of it.”
I liked that he didn’t rush to tell me that I hadn’t embarrassed myself. For some reason, not sugarcoating it made me believe what he was saying a lot more.
“Even the throwing up?”
“Cait, you got yourself so worked up over the thought of torture that you got sick, had to comfort yourself with saltines, and fell asleep from the whole ordeal. Trust me, in my world, that shit is amusing. Maybe even kind of sweet.”
“Not weak?” Like I’d been calling myself ever since.
“Not weak. Maybe soft. But, trust me, I work in a hard industry, know a lot of hard people, soft is good.”
It was absurd just how much my heart swelled at those words.
“You know what is weak, though?” he asked.
“What?”
“Your self-control around junk food.”