I tap his computer with my left hand, his diamond flashing at us. “Is this what’s keeping you up so late?”
Very slowly, Rem slides his laptop out of my reach and closes the lid. His eyes stayed glued to my hand. “Among other things.”
“Those other things…” I say, feeling wildly bold, so outrageously unlike myself. “Is there anything I can help with?”
I can’t explain why I say it. What I’m even doing here. My only excuse, beyond the insanity defense, is that my body has lost is freakin’ mind. I can’t forget the feel of Rem’s finger threading between my breasts. Or the taste of his skin in my mouth. Or the look on his face when he saw my nipples through my shirt.
Whatever my brain thinks about Rem Cosenza, my body wants him. Craves him. With an intensity that’s making me want to crawl out of my skin and straight into his.
I’ve heard stories of soldiers being incredibly horny after surviving battle, of experiencing a driving need to celebrate life after escaping death.
Maybe that’s what’s happening to me. Maybe I want to strip Rem naked and climb his impressive form out of a desperate need to feel something other than fear and sadness and grief.
Maybe some part of me has decided I need to thank the man responsible for keeping me alive, selectively ignoring the niggling fact that he’s messed up in this situation in ways I don’t yet understand.
Whatever the reason, my body has effectively shut my brain down and gotten its way when I slide in front of him, filling the space between Rem’s desk and where he’s leaning back in his chair.
Leaning back and watching me like the predator I know he is.
A ripple of something—excitement, arousal, fear, all the above?—lights up my nerves from head to toe.
“What did I tell you about playing,piccolina?”
I sit back on his desk more fully, my legs hanging over the edge, my toes dangling just shy of the floor. With our height differences, with us both sitting like this, we’re relatively eye level. “And what did I say to you? I’m not playing any game.”
“Really?” Rem leans forward and I’m forced to open my legs, making space for him in between. “If you aren’t playing with me,bella, then you won’t mind answering a few questions.”
His hands land on my knees, keeping my legs spread. I have to swallow before I can make my voice work. “What sort of questions?”
“Well, for starters—how often do you get orders from the Paganos?”
The Paganos?“What?” I shake my head. “I’ve never even heard of—them? It? What are the Paganos?”
Rem ignores my counter-questions and slides one hand down my leg. My shiver is noticeable when he presses his fingers into the hollow behind my ankle. Feeling my pulse there. Like he can catch me in a lie. “How many times have they met you at work, pointing out women in the Patron’s Lounge they want you to pay special attention to?”
“Never. Didn’t you hear what I said? I don’t know what—who?—the Paganos are. And other than serving drinks, I don’t talk to guests at work.”
“You don’t receive instructions at work, messages instructing you to make friends with select female guests? No one ever pays you a little extra to take care of them at the bar? To make them an extra special drink?”
“What!?” It’s so unthinkable I laugh. “No, never.”
“None? Never?”
“No,” I repeat, frustration mixing with the fever only his proximity ignites. “None. Never.”
“I don’t understand you.” Rem slides his hand up from myankle, under the fabric of the sweatpants until he’s gripping my bare calf. “You don’t do any of the things someone on the Pagano payroll—” He stops himself, his grip on my legs tightening before he continues. “You don’t do anything I expect, most especially staring down a man like me.”
If I was thinking more clearly, I’d stop and ask him who the hell the Paganos are and why he thinks I know them. But his proximity, his intensity is making it impossible to think about anything other than him. “And who is that, a man like you?”
“A man,” he answers, leaning forward, the truth stamped in every line of his face, “who will do anything for his family. I will protect them at any cost, always, against anything and anyone who dares threaten them.”
A pang of jealousy catches me off guard. Makes tears burn at the back of my eyes. Because, unlike Rem, I don’t have any family left to protect.
“Who are your family?” I spread my legs wider, making a hollow for him to fill. Instinctively, Rem leans closer, his chest practically brushing mine.
“Johnny, Bianca. My brother. My uncle, not by blood but in all the other ways that count. The men and women and children who depend on us, who look to us for their livelihoods, their safety, their happiness. Those people are my family and I’ll do whatever I need to keep them safe.”
“Anything?”