Chapter 16
LORENZO
Her hands are on my shirt. We’re in the hallway outside the office.
An hour ago she was still at the keyboard.
Talking to the screen. Running her fingers through her hair until it stuck up at angles that shouldn’t work on anyone.
Ten minutes ago she closed the laptop, looked at me, and said “Your room or mine.” Not a question. A decision already made.
Hers. Because she needs ground she can control. Because the locks and the exits belong to her.
Except she’s reaching for my buttons. And my hand catches her wrist. Reflex. Same instinct that would stop a fist or a blade. I close around her wrist bones and hold.
“Don’t.”
She stops. Doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t fill the silence with analysis or deflection or the rapid-fire commentary that is her survival mechanism.
She waits. Her pulse ticks under my thumb.
Fast but steady. Her eyes on mine. Patient.
Like she already knows what’s going to happen. Just waiting for me to catch up.
My grip loosens slowly, one finger at a time. Like unclenching a fist.
She doesn’t rush. The top button first. Worked through. Second. Third. The fabric parts. She pushes the shirt off my shoulders and it drops to the floor and I’m standing in front of her with the lamp on and nowhere to hide.
A decade of cover, stripped away as easily as a shirt.
She’s traced the forearms. Mapped the training marks and the blade gouge on my bicep.
But the rest. No one has seen the rest outside of a hospital or a fight.
The scars from throat to belt line. Knife work on the ribs.
The bullet wound scar on my thigh, the one that aches when it rains.
A burn on my shoulder from a hot engine at sixteen, when I was still learning cars before learning how to end men.
And the ink. Full sleeves running up both arms, climbing the neck, across the chest. Traditional Sicilian knotwork over the pectorals. Black work down my sides designed to incorporate the scar tissue, making the damage part of the pattern.
She looks at me. Not recoiling. Not clocking the damage the way a doctor would. Not appraising me the way women in bars once did, before I stopped letting anyone close enough to try. Like I’m a language she’s been wanting to learn.
Her palm rises. Flat on my chest. Over the sternum. The impact of her skin on mine runs straight through my ribs. She holds it there. Steady. An anchor.
My hands shake. I have held a knife without the slightest tremor.
Aimed at center mass with a resting pulse of sixty.
Ended lives with steady aim and walked away with the same air of calm and never once lost the discipline that keeps me operational.
I am shaking because she put her palm on my bare chest and didn’t pull away.
“Breathe,” she says. Not a joke. An instruction.
I breathe.
She traces the scar on my ribs. The long one. Her thumb following the raised tissue from sternum to spine. Down. The oblique. Another scar crossing the muscle. Her touch is careful. Not timid. Careful in the way a person handles an important document.
“I know.” She says it like it’s a fact she’s already sure of.
Fuck.
My legs are failing. A thing they’ve never done. Not under load, not under fire, not once. Failing now because she pressed her palm over the place where I should have died three separate times.
I sit on the edge of the bed. She stands between my knees. Palms on my shoulders. Tracing the tattoo that climbs my neck. I press into her stomach. Through the cotton. The muscles tense beneath me. She grips my hair.
Her shirt goes. I lift it over her head. The bra underneath, black, simple. I unclasp it. Let it fall.
Sharp. The collarbones too prominent. Ribs visible when she inhales. Years of forgetting to eat, of caffeine and guilt as sustenance. But underneath the sharpness, soft. The curve of her breast in my palm. The dip of her waist. The catch when I run my thumb over her nipple.
I lower to the center of her chest. Between her breasts. Her heartbeat racing against me.
Her hips. I grip them. Guide her down onto the bed. She lowers against the pillows and I’m above her. The lamp is on and the light is doing nothing to help me hide.
Jeans. I unbutton them. Zipper. She lifts her hips and I strip the denim down. Underwear. I hook the elastic and drag those down too. She kicks them off.
She’s under me. Bare. And I’m going to take my time.
I start at her ankle. Pressing against the bone. Up the calf. Inside the knee where the skin is thin and she twitches. Higher. The muscle trembles against me.
“Lorenzo.” Her voice strained.
“You don’t have to.”
“Good.” Me learning her. Response by response.
I trace higher along her inner leg. She grabs the sheet with both fists. Knuckles going white.
I taste her. The sound she makes goes through me like a round. A gasp fracturing into a moan that she cuts short by pressing her fist against her teeth. Reflex. Years alone. Silent.
I take her fist in my hand. Hold her wrist against the mattress.
“Don’t hide.”
“I’m not. I just—”
“I want to hear you.”
Her eyes go wide. Like I’ve asked for more than skin.
My tongue. Flat. Broad. I drag up the full length of her and she arches off the mattress and the sound that comes out is uncensored. Raw. She grabs my hair and I let her. Let her hold on.
“You taste like—” It falls against her skin. I don’t finish. Can’t. She tastes like something I’m going to crave for the rest of my life.
I work her slowly. Long strokes. Learning her geography. Where she gasps. Where she moans. Where her hips buck. She’s responsive to everything. Every shift of pressure. Every change. She’s climbing toward a climax. I can tell. The tension in her legs. The pitch going high and short.
I ease off. Kiss the inside of her thigh instead.
“No.” She’s gripping my hair. “Don’t. Please.”
“Breathe.”
Again. Different. My tongue focused. Direct. One finger sliding inside her, curling, and the dual sensation lifts her clean off the mattress. Her thighs clamp around my head and I press them open.
“The sounds you make.” Against her skin. Low. “I want every one of them.”
She’s louder now. Permission granted and she can’t undo it. Her hips rolling against me. My name coming apart between her teeth. Close again. The tremor starting in her legs, the flutter around my finger.
I ease off.
“Lorenzo. I swear to God.”
“Patience.”
I tilt her hips up. The angle changes everything. She gasps. Just the tip of my tongue now. Tracing where she needs me but not giving it.
“Please.” Her voice breaking. “Please, I can’t—”
“You can.”
I hold her at the edge. Whimpering. Writhing. My name between gasps like a word she’s trying to hold onto.
When I let her fall, I stay through the orgasm. Her body contracting against my tongue. The sounds. Unfiltered. Uncontrolled. The loudest I’ve heard her. I stay through the aftershocks. Until her hold goes slack in my hair. Until the trembling stops.
Then I move up. Over her.
She turns. Automatic. Rolling onto her stomach. The position that’s simpler because it’s anonymous and distant and she doesn’t have to look at me while I’m inside her.
“Not this time.”
She looks at me over her shoulder. Half undone. Hair plastered to her skin. Cheeks flushed.
I answer by easing her onto her back. Settling between her legs. Face to face. My weight on my forearms. Open under mine.
This is my choice. Not because she wants it. Because I want her to see what she does to me.
Condom. The wrapper tears wrong and I have to try again and I grit my teeth. Then I’m lined up.
My cock pushes into her. Her face. Everything. The way her expression opens. The way her eyes widen and narrow. The way she arches to take me deeper.
I have never chosen this. Facing a woman while I’m inside her. More devastating than being shot. And I’ve been shot twice.
Her ankles lock at my lower back. Her fingers bite into my shoulders.
I move. Deep. She gasps. Her spine bows beneath me.
“God, Lorenzo.”
“Yeah.”
“You feel—” She swallows. “You feel so good.”
I’m too close. Too fast. Her pussy is tight and wet and she’s open beneath me. Damn. I want to slow down. Make this last. But the discipline that’s kept me alive is dissolving. Not failing. Dissolving.
“Hey.” Her palm on my jaw. Turning me toward her. “Stay here.”
My own words. Returned.
Our eyes meet. And I let the control go. I give her everything I’ve kept from her. Deep. Hard. My forehead against hers.
“Don’t stop.” Her nails biting into my shoulders. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“I’m not.” Rough. Gutted. “Not stopping.”
Her name scraped from my throat. “Isabella.”
“There. Don’t stop. Lorenzo, don’t stop.”
She comes. She tightens around me so hard my skull empties. Nails drawing lines down my back that I’ll feel for days. My name broken apart in her throat.
The orgasm tears through me and I let it. I bury my face in her neck. My spine locks. My hips drive deep. The groan that comes out of me is one I don’t try to contain. Don’t try to hide.
Surrender. Not failure.
Quiet. Her chest rising and falling. My weight on her. I shift. Roll to the side.
The ceiling. White. Blank. My heartbeat the loudest thing in the room.
I should leave. Should clean up. Walk away before this rewrites every rule I’ve ever established.
I get up. Walk to the kitchen. Fill a glass. Carry it to her. She takes it. Drinks half. Sets it on the nightstand.
I find a clean cloth. Run warm water over it. Wipe her inner thighs where my stubble left marks. Her stomach. Careful. I’m halfway through before I clock what I’m doing.
I finish anyway.
Heavy lids. Loose. Every defense undone by orgasm and proximity and the fact that we held eye contact through the entire act and neither of us turned away.
“You draw birds,” she murmurs. Half asleep. The words barely formed. “And you bring me water. And you just—”
She doesn’t finish. Her eyes close. Each inhale longer. The way her chest rises. Her fist curled on the pillow. The faded purple at the ends of her hair against white cotton.
I pull the sheet up. Over her shoulders. The same instinct as the jacket. Acting before the brain can intervene.
I leave.
In the hallway, my back meets the wall. Gravity wins. I slide down until I’m sitting on the hardwood with my knees up and my head against the plaster.
I’m not praying. Haven’t prayed since I was nineteen and holding a phone that carried the news I already knew.
The compound is quiet. The hall dark. Wrung out. My chest won’t settle.
What I name becomes real. What becomes real can be taken.