Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It's hard not to dislike Rafael right now. He has the worst timing in the universe.
I'm sitting on the couch with my legs tucked under me and a mug of tea going cold in my hands, watching him make himself completely at home in a cabin that isn't his, sprawled in the armchair like he owns it, telling some story about a job in Lisbon that Enzo is pretending not to find funny.
Pretending. Because I can see the way the corner of his mouth keeps threatening to move.
I've been staring at that mouth for the last ten minutes.
I can't help it. I can't stop. Ever since that shower, ever since he stood close enough that I could feel his breath on my lips and his hand on my face and his palm sliding up my side like he was mapping every inch of me through the towel, I can't look at him without my body doing something completely traitorous.
He's leaning against the kitchen doorframe now with his arms crossed over his chest, and I let myself look, really look, the way I've been desperately trying not to all evening.
He's infuriating to look at. That's the problem.
Broad shoulders that strain against his shirt every time he shifts his weight, the fabric pulling tight across his chest in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
The column of his throat when he tilts his head back.
The way his jaw is always tight, always set, like he's holding back something enormous.
His hands, which I cannot stop thinking about, large and rough and so careful when they touched me, so devastating in their restraint.
I want to put my mouth on his jaw.
The thought comes out of nowhere and I almost choke on my tea.
Oh fuck me, this man will really be the death of me.
I want to trace the line of it with my lips, feel the stubble against my tongue, work my way down his throat, learn every inch of him the way he seems to already know every inch of me.
I want to peel that shirt off him and put my hands on his chest and find out if he makes any sound at all when someone touches him or if he stays silent even then, controlled even then.
I've been dreaming about him.
Not the soft, vague kind of dreaming where you wake up with just a feeling and no details.
No. Specific, detailed, mortifying dreams where his hands are in my hair and his mouth is on my neck and he's saying my name in that low rough voice but differently than he does when he's being careful, differently than he does when he's keeping his distance.
In my dreams he doesn't keep his distance.
In my dreams he closes it, every inch of it, and I wake up with my heart pounding and my sheets twisted and this aching, greedy want pooling low in my stomach that won't go away no matter what I do.
I hate it.
I hate how much I want him. I hate that every time I think I've built the walls back up high enough, every time I think I've gotten myself under control, he does something like stand outside a bathroom door in the dark telling ridiculous stories about caviar and I lose every inch of ground I've gained.
I spent four years after that porch telling myself I was over it. Over him. That what I felt at eighteen was just a crush, just proximity, just the foolishness of being young and sheltered and mistaking someone's attention for something it wasn't.
And then he carried me out of that ballroom and put me on that bike and I felt his body against mine and every single lie I'd told myself dissolved like it had never existed.
I am so screwed. Totally and officially.
In the armchair, Rafael is laughing at something he said himself, completely unbothered by the silence from the rest of the room, and I drag my eyes away from Enzo before I'm caught.
Too late.
Enzo is already looking at me.
Not the quick, careful glances he's been giving me all evening, the kind where he looks away before I can catch him.
This is direct and unhurried, and in the low light of the cabin his eyes are darker than usual, and I know what I look like right now, I know my cheeks are flushed and my breathing is slightly off and I've been staring at his mouth for ten minutes.
He knows what I was thinking.
I look away first, fixing my eyes on my tea like it's the most interesting thing in the room.
"Isabella."
Rafael's voice. Cheerful and completely oblivious.
"Hm?"
"I asked if I can grab that from you." He's gesturing at the throw blanket half falling off the couch beside me, starting to lean across the coffee table to reach it.
His hand closes around my wrist trying to grab it.
I freeze.
Everything in me locks up at once, muscles going rigid, breath stopping in my throat. His hand is warm but wrong, completely wrong, nothing like the hands I've been thinking about, and something primal fires in my nervous system before I can stop it.
"Sorry, didn't mean to—"
"It's fine." My voice comes out too sharp and I can feel the color draining from my face even as I say it.
Rafael pulls back immediately, his expression shifting into something careful and apologetic.
The room feels too small suddenly. Too loud. I can feel my pulse in my ears.
"Isabella."
Enzo's voice, low and quiet and cutting right through the noise in my head.
I look up and he's already moving, crossing the room without any of his usual hesitation, crouching down in front of me so we're eye level. He doesn't ask permission. He just reaches up and cups my face in his hand, his thumb resting against my cheekbone, his palm warm against my jaw.
The panic dissolves.
Just like that. Just that fast.
My breath comes back and my muscles unlock and the room goes back to its normal size because his hand is on my face and it's right, it's completely right, it doesn't set off a single alarm in my body.
It never does.
That's what I can't stop thinking about as I look into his eyes from two feet away, close enough to see the line between green and grey in his irises, close enough that this feels unbearably intimate in a room that isn't empty.
His touch has never once felt like danger.
Last night in his room, when he helped with my zipper. His hands in my hair, patient and careful in the dark. Outside the bathroom door, his palm on my face, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth.
Every single time, my body does the opposite of what it does when anyone else gets too close. Every single time, it settles, recognizes something, stops fighting.
I don't know what to do with that information.
His thumb moves slightly against my cheekbone, just a small shift of pressure, and I have to work very hard not to close my eyes and lean into it the way I want to.
"Okay?" he murmurs.
"Yes." My voice comes out steady. "Sorry. I'm fine."
He holds my gaze for another second, searching, making sure, and then he stands and steps back and I miss his hand the second it leaves my face.
I am so completely and utterly screwed.
"Right." Rafael's voice is softer than usual, his earlier cheerfulness dialed down. "Where’s my room at?"
"There's a room at the end of the hall," Enzo says without looking away from me.
"Perfect." Rafael picks up his bag and disappears upstairs and his footsteps move down the hall, then a door closes.
Silence.
Just me and Enzo and the dying fire and this thing between us that I don't have a name for anymore.
I stand up before he can say anything, before he can look at me like that for one more second with those careful eyes that see too much.
"I'm going to bed."