Chapter 44 Dante
Levi doesn’t answer me. He stands in the middle of my living room, bandana still tied around his hair, sunglasses shoved up into it. He doesn’t say a word. The silence feeds my anger instead of letting it drop.
I turn on the lamp. I need to see him clearly for this.
“There were phones in there, Levi. You grabbed a man by the throat in Tex’s bar and I put my own body between you and a lawsuit. So, you’re going to tell me what that was.”
He’s looking down at the floor.
“There’s video. You get that? By morning there’s video of Lee Streeter putting his hands on a man in a bar, my face in the middle of it. I signed for you at a jail under my name. That connects you to me.”
I wait for an answer. He still gives me nothing. Not a flinch, not a word. Just the top of his head, and his arms starting to come up around himself. The longer it runs, the hotter I get.
When he talks it’s down at the floor. “I know you told me to stay away from there.”
“That’s not what I—”
“You did. Stay the fuck away from there. Those words.” He shakes his head.
“And I went back. Three times. Because I liked the people there and I did the exact thing you were scared of. Walked it right into the middle of Tex’s bar, in front of your people, with my face out.
” He lets out a long, exhausted sigh. “You don’t have to waste your breath on the talking part.
I know how this goes. Call me a car. I’ll go. I’m sorry.”
“Sit down.”
“Dante—”
“I’m not calling a car. Sit down.”
He doesn’t move at all except to back up farther against the wall. We stand there, him braced for the sentence, me unable to hand it down.
I don’t know what I want yet. Only that calling him a car to take him away is not it. Until the answer comes to me, I’m going to keep asking.
“I’m not talking about the bar. Or Tex, or the video, or any of it.” I wait until he almost looks up. “I’m asking one question. And I need an honest answer. Why did you go after that man?”
“Don’t, Dante.”
He glances at the door, takes a step toward it. Damn, he’s going to leave. Car or no car. He’s going out that door. I’m already measuring the distance between me and the door and how fast I can beat him to it.
“One man, Levi. In a room full of men. He puts a hand on my arm and you come across the room with a fist raised. Why that man?”
He stops before he reaches the door. He doesn’t turn back around. But he stops.
“Leave it.”
“Why?”
“Don’t make me—” He’s staring at the floor again. He’s caught between the door and the truth.
“Why?” I ask again. “You owe me the answer.”
“Because I couldn’t sit there and watch him put his hands on you.”
Neither of us moves.
“Explain, Levi.”
“No.”
“Levi.”
“I’m not gonna—” and he lets out a laugh.
“You don’t get it, do you? That guy tonight just walked up to you.
Sat down. Put a hand on your arm like it cost him nothing, because for him it doesn’t.
Worst he’s risking is a polite rejection.
” He drops out of the laugh. “It was never that for me. Not once. Other men just reach for what they want. I learned a long time back I can never reach, I keep it folded up tight where it never shows, because wanting was the thing that—”
The sentence just stops. His mouth closes on the rest of it.
He’s a foot from the door. He could be gone in three seconds. Caution warns me not to put a hand on that door yet. Don’t make him feel trapped. I take what he’s handed me, which is already more than he meant to.
“Why did that bother you so much?”
He turns around, raises his head and finally looks directly at me.
“You really want to know why? Okay, since you won’t stop asking, I’ll tell you.
Straight up. You’ve never once let me touch you.
One time, on the steps at the beach house, I put a hand on your arm, and you quit breathing till I took it back.
I saw it, so don’t try to deny it. You’re so damn careful not to let me touch you that handing over the key to this apartment takes a strategy so our fingers don’t touch.
That guy at the bar touched you three separate times.
A stranger and you sat there. Acted like it was no big deal.
If my hand gets within six inches of you, you yell no and jump back like I’m poison. Tell me I’m wrong, Dante.”
I throw up my hands and move closer.
“That’s because you are poison! Look at what has happened since you arrived.
You’ve turned my life upside down. I should be focusing on closing the biggest sale of my life.
Instead, all I’m doing is worrying about you.
Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Are you even fucking breathing? It’s all I think about.”
“Dante…”
“I never lose my temper and I threw Freddie against a wall. Not to mention, I had you up against a refrigerator, too, yelling at you in Spanish. You’re driving me insane, Levi, and I’m losing my fucking mind. I can’t take this anymore!”
He turns and reaches for the doorknob. I cross the room and throw my weight against the door, holding it closed. I’m inches from him, my hand above his shoulder.
“Where are you going? We’re not done, Levi.”
I’m standing right in front of him, my chest heaving, my arm caging him between my body and the door.
This close I can feel the heat coming off him, smell his aftershave now that his beard is gone. Every inch of the four feet I just crossed to stop him is roaring at me about all the times I didn’t.
“Move out of my way, Dante. Let me go.”
“No.”
His eyes are almost dead level with mine. Those green eyes of his promising my destruction.
“I’ve answered your question, now you answer mine,” he says. “What are you afraid of? Why won’t you let me touch you one goddamn time?”
“Because it wouldn’t be one time, or a hundred times,” I say. “You’ll ruin me and I want you to. Damn it!”
My hands find his face, the rough texture of his jaw, and I kiss him hard.
He goes rigid for half a second—dead still, mouth closed, body locked as if bracing for impact.
Then his hands fist in my shirt and yank me in.
The stillness shatters. Levi kisses me back like a man who has been starving in the dark and tasted light for the first time.
His mouth is hot and urgent, lips parted, teeth catching my lip as I give it right back.
I angle his head with both hands to pull him deeper, drinking in the thick, needy groans vibrating up from his chest.
He’s grabbing at me now, fingers dragging up my sides, gripping the back of my neck hard enough to bruise—checking if he’s allowed to touch me and then not giving a damn whether he is.
I tug the bandana from his hair and let it fall; his sunglasses are already lost somewhere on the floor.
Shoving him back against the wall, I catch his sharp gasp as I grind my hips into his so he can feel exactly how hard I already am.
He rolls against me in answer, and the kiss turns raw—a shared breath and wet slide of tongues that doesn’t stop for air.
I bite his bottom lip and suck it into my mouth. He makes a broken noise, pulling at my shirt when there’s already no space left between us, taking what he was sure he’d never get like he might never get it again.
I break the kiss to ask him, “Is this what you want?”
“God, yes,” he breathes, the words barely more than an exhale before our lips crash together again.
“Anywhere you need to be tonight?” I ask.
“No,” he answers against my mouth.
“Then we’ve got all night.”
I start walking him backward down the hall, mouths locked, both of us clumsy and hungry, catching shoulders on the wall without slowing for a second. I’m past being careful with him.
His hands never leave me—one gripping my shirt, the other sliding under the hem to splay hot against my spine.
The bedroom door is already half-open. I kick it wider and keep driving us forward until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress. One firm shove to his chest sends him down onto the bed, and I follow him before he can catch his breath.
I strip my shirt off in one impatient yank and fling it aside. Reaching down, I grab the front of Levi’s shirt with both hands.
“Your shirt’s coming off,” I tell him. I don’t wait for an answer. I just rip.
Buttons scatter across the mattress and floor, fabric tearing open down the middle. Levi’s breath hitches in a shocked sound, and I catch his next gasp with my mouth as I settle my full weight over him, chest to chest.
The heat of it draws a moan from both of us. I angle deeper, tongue sliding wet and demanding, nipping at his lower lip until he arches up beneath me.
“You wanted to touch me?” I ask against the shell of his ear. “Then touch me, Levi.”
His hands flex against my sides, uncertain for a second. “Where can I?”
“Everywhere.” I catch one of his wrists and drag his open palm up my ribs, over my stomach, until his fingers splay across my chest. “Keep your hands on me. Don’t take them off.”
He obeys. Both hands roam freely now, rough palms sliding up my back, nails scraping lightly as he maps my spine and grips my shoulders, pulling me down until our hips grind together through the layers of denim.
I press open-mouthed kisses along the sharp hinge of his jaw, feeling the evening rasp of his skin.
“They shaved your beard before I could touch it,” I murmur. “I watched it grow for days, waiting for the chance to see how it felt against mine. And then they took it from me.”
“I can grow it back,” he says quickly.
I draw back just enough to look down at him. “You would do that for me?”
“Anything, Dante,” he says. “Just tell me and it’s yours.”
I trail lower to the strong column of his throat, sucking lightly where his pulse hammers wild and fast. He chokes out a sound before swallowing it back.