Chapter 19
ISABELLA
The vibrator is in the drawer. Useless. I’ve been staring at the ceiling for what feels like an hour, running numbers through my head because my brain won’t shut off and what it actually wants is thirty feet away and I refuse to give in.
Except.
The forehead press. Two days ago. His skin against mine, his breath on my mouth, his voice scraped raw saying “I keep coming back” like the confession was being pulled out of him with pliers.
The tender kiss that was nothing like the collision of mouths on the desk before.
The hand over mine over his heart. He stayed.
Not long. Not the whole night. But he stayed in our office with his forehead against mine until the distance between us shrank to the width of a promise he hasn’t made yet.
And now I’m lying here. In the dark. And the vibrator is in the drawer, mocking me. And I’m aching for his hands. His knuckles dragging down my skin. His grip on my neck. The weight of him behind me, pressing me into marble until I couldn’t think. I am done fighting it.
I get up. Down the hall. My feet have the floorboards memorized. Third one creaks. Avoid it. The moonlight cuts the same line across the hardwood. His door is the last on the left.
I knock. Once. Soft. No answer. But I hear him move. Bed springs shifting. The pad of bare feet.
The door opens.
He’s shirtless. Of course he is. Because the universe has decided to test me and the test is a man standing in a doorframe with ink and scars on full display and the lamp behind him throwing gold across his shoulders.
“I’m not here because I can’t sleep.” The words come out steadier than they should. “I’m here because I want to be. That’s it. No excuse.”
He looks at me. That flat, measuring gaze that gives away nothing. A tendon in his throat pulls taut. His hand on the doorframe.
Then he steps aside.
I walk in. His room. The bed with charcoal sheets, neatly made even now. A lamp on the nightstand. Not much else. He closes the door. Locks it. Stands with his back to the wood and watches me.
“You’re thinking too much,” he says.
“I’m always thinking too much. That’s why I’m here.” I face him. Close the distance by two steps. “You shut my brain off. With your hands. Years inside my own head and you’re the only thing that makes it go quiet. That terrifies me and I’m done being terrified.”
“That’s why you came.”
“That’s why I came.”
Silence. He holds still. His eyes track my face like he’s bracing for impact and the impact is that I might mean it.
I reach for him. My palm on his chest. Over the ink. Over the scar. His skin is warm and his heartbeat is fast under my palm.
He lets me. For three beats. Then he covers mine. Holds it there.
“If you want out, you say so.” His voice low. “At any point. And I stop.”
“Noted.”
“I need you to say it.”
“If I want you to stop, I’ll tell you.” I hold his gaze. “I’m not here out of obligation or boredom or because I can’t sleep. I’m choosing this. I’m choosing you.”
A tendon in his neck pulls tight. He fights to stay still instead of pulling me in. He doesn’t pull me in. Not yet.
He crosses the room. Opens a drawer. Comes back with a length of fabric. Silk, or close to it. The color of his sheets.
“Do you trust me?”
The question lands in the quiet like a stone in water. Ripples.
“Yes.”
He steps close. Gripping the fabric. He lifts it to my face. “Close your eyes.”
I close them. The fabric settles over my lids. He ties it behind my head. Careful. A tug at the back of my head, pulling my hair free of the knot. Not too tight. He runs his thumb under the edge where it meets my cheekbone, checking.
The world goes dark. My other senses rush forward. The heat of him in front of me. The scent of soap and sandalwood and that trace of sweat.
“Color?”
“Green. So green. Extremely green.” Silence. Then: “Are you just standing there? Because the suspense is killing me.”
His heat is behind me. I missed the movement. Breath against my nape. Goosebumps down both arms. The words die.
A graze on my shoulder. Not a kiss. Warmth on bare skin above my collar. I tense everywhere and he hasn’t done anything yet.
“Breathe.”
I try. Shallow. I know the room. The bed behind me. The door to my right. But I don’t know where he is and my pulse is sprinting.
He finds the hem of my shirt. Lifts. Over my head. Off. Air on my bare skin. No bra. I came from bed. He makes a sound. Low. Involuntary.
“What? Disappointed? I can go back to mine and find a push-up if you—”
“Stop talking.”
He starts at my shoulders. Slides down. The backs of my arms. My elbows. The inside of my wrists. Learning me by touch. Finding pulse points and soft skin and the places where I twitch.
“Is this your idea of a first date? Because I had notes.”
“What notes.” Not a question. A warning.
“Candles. A playlist. Not a blindfold in a room that smells like a woodshop.”
“You’re still talking.”
“You haven’t made me stop yet.”
He does. Thumbs grazing the undersides of my breasts. I arch into the contact before I can stop myself. He cups me. Circling. The pressure builds in my stomach and between my legs and he hasn’t gone below my ribs yet.
“Lie down.”
His grip on my waist. Guiding me backward.
My calves hit the mattress and he eases me down.
The mattress shifts under his weight. His knees between mine.
Fingertips trace down the hollow of my throat.
The dip between my collarbones. Lower. Between my breasts.
Down my stomach. Every nerve firing because there’s no warning, no way to predict where he’ll touch next.
My shorts go next. He hooks the waistband and drags them down. The underwear with them. I kick them off.
I’m under him. Bare. Blind. Shaking.
“You’re shaking.”
“Aware.”
He spreads my legs apart. Slow. Deliberate. I grab the sheet. He slides down my stomach. Between my legs. One touch tracing where I’m wet and aching. Not entering. Just circling. The pressure exact enough to make my hips rock but nowhere near enough.
“Lorenzo.”
“I know what you need.”
“Then give it to me.”
“I decide when.”
He slides through me. Slick. Precise. Building a tension that pools in my thighs and the base of my skull. He reads every shift and shiver and I have nothing left to hide behind. My hips rolling. Climbing. Close.
He pulls back.
“No.” I grab for him. Find his forearm. “Don’t stop.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I hate you. I actually hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
“I really, really do right now.”
Warmth against my inner thigh. Waiting. Letting the tension ebb just far enough.
Then his mouth. No warning. I can’t see it coming and a moan tears out of me, raw, uncontrolled.
“Fuck.” The word ripped out. My hips rolling against him. His tongue. Flat. Broad. I grab the sheet so hard my knuckles ache.
“How do you know exactly—” The words dissolve.
“I pay attention.”
He works me. Precise. Circling. Direct. Building the tension until my legs won’t hold. I can’t see his face and every sensation’s intensity is doubled because there’s nothing else. Just his voice and the dark.
“I swear if you stop again I will—”
“You’ll what?”
“I don’t know but it’ll be devastating.”
Close. So close. The edge. Right there.
A sob. Raw. Wrenched out. “Please.” I break on the word. “Lorenzo. Please.”
He pulls back.
“Good girl.” Low. Against my inner thigh.
Heat floods my neck, my chest, the backs of my knees. My hips jerk toward him without permission. Two words and I am shattered and I don’t understand why. Can’t explain it. Can’t make sense of what those words in that voice in this dark just did to me.
“Say that again.”
Silence. He’s tracking it. I can feel it. The same focus he brings to everything, turned on those two words and what they did.
“Earn it.”
I whimper. He rises to his knees. Reaches across me. The nightstand drawer slides open. I catch his wrist.
“I’m on birth control.” Raw. “And I’m clean.”
Silence. The drawer slides shut.
“I’ve never done this without one.” Rough. A confession.
That settles between us. Neither of us moves.
I’m the first. “Neither have I.”
“I want to feel you.”
He settles over me. His hips between mine. The slide of his cock against me, slick and hard, nothing between us. Skin on skin.
He pushes into me. The noise I make is not recognizable as mine. The stretch. The warmth. Everything. I can feel everything. Every ridge. Every pulse.
He holds. Every muscle locked.
“Stay.” Barely there. “Don’t move.”
“If I move you’ll—”
“I know. Stay.”
He stays. The stillness is torturing him. The effort lives in the ragged sounds above me.
Then he moves. Deep. Full. I pull him deeper with my thighs. Closer than the desk. Closer than before. More. I’m answering with sounds, not words, because words are gone.
He slows. Holds me at the peak. Strung so tight I might snap.
“Lorenzo. I swear to God.”
He reaches for the blindfold. Pushes it up to my forehead. The lamplight hits my eyes and I blink.
His face. Right there. Dark eyes. Fierce. Close enough to kiss. Everything he uses to keep distance, gone. Just him.
“There you are.” His voice breaks on the second word.
And the look on his face. Not the flat assessment. Not the enforcer. The man underneath all of it, looking at me like I’m the first real thing he’s seen in a decade.
He moves. Forehead against mine.
“Look at me.”
“I am.”
“No. Look at me.”
His eyes lock on mine. No hiding. No distance.
“Isabella.”
I come. A wave instead of a crash. Every nerve firing, my pussy pulsing around him, wet and tight. His forehead hard against mine. Eyes open. Both of us.
I watch his face change. The jaw going tight. The breath stopping. His eyes still on mine, refusing to close even now.
He breaks. A groan he doesn’t try to hide. Going rigid. Fists gripping the pillow on either side of my head.
Quiet. The warmth of him on me. The blindfold pushed up to my hairline. The lamp casting gold across the bed.
He shifts. Rolls to the side. Gets up. Water. Cloth. The routine I’m learning. The tending he doesn’t think counts but does.
When he comes back, I’m lying on my side. He wipes me clean. Careful. Sets the cloth aside.
I sit up. Swing my legs off the bed. Reaching for the shirt on the floor.
“Don’t go.”
Two words. I freeze with my hand on the fabric. I look at him. Standing by the bed with the water glass and the request hanging in the air like it cost him a year of silence.
This man. Asking me not to leave.
I let go of the shirt. Lie back down.
He sets the water on the nightstand. Gets in beside me. The mattress holds us both. His body stiff against mine. It’s in the way he’s holding himself still. Like he doesn’t trust his own body not to ruin this.
I reach for the blindfold on the pillow. Hold it up. The silk pooling between us.
“Next time, I’m putting this on you.”
His throat bobs. He doesn’t say no.
I set the blindfold on the nightstand. Lie back. His bed. His sheets. My eyelids get heavy. The world narrows to the sound of his heartbeat and the press of him along my side.
“Lorenzo.”
A sound low in his chest. An acknowledgment.
My eyes fall shut. He reaches for me under the sheet. Our palms press together.
I fall asleep first. I know this because the last thing I hear is his heartbeat. Still awake. Still here.
He stays.