The room went still.
Marcello whistled low.“Jesus, Atlas.Possessive much?”
I shot him a look sharp enough to make him shut up.
I dropped into my chair but didn’t pick up my cards.My knee bounced.My hand went to Marcello’s pack for a cigarette.The irony was that I’d quit two years ago.My brain kept replaying the moment she’d lifted that book and breathed it in.The soft sound she’d made.The way her lashes had lowered.
She had no idea the effect that had on me.
Marcello leaned back.“You need to calm down before you walk back in there and propose marriage.”
I kicked him in the shin under the table.Hard.
He cursed and kicked me back.
“Children,” Gianni muttered, shuffling the deck.
The room tried to fall back into its rhythm.But I wasn’t in it.I was stuck against that library door in my head, inhaling her breathing, imagining what she looked like now.
I shouldn’t have given a damn.I should have kept her locked in that damn bedroom.
My blood spiked at the memory of Alessio’s face when he’d seen her.His admiration.His interest.
I almost kicked the table over.
“Fuck this,” I muttered, standing.
Marcello groaned.“Where are you going now?”
I grabbed the whiskey bottle from the counter but didn’t answer.
Gianni lifted his cards.“Atlas.Don’t do anything stupid.”
I stopped in the doorway, my jaw clenched.“Define stupid.”
Alessio snorted.“Anything you’re currently thinking.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I left the room before I embarrassed myself further.My footsteps echoed down the hallway.The closer I got to the library, the heavier my breath got.
I wasn’t going in.I wasn’t.
I stopped outside the door but heard nothing.No rustling of pages and no sighing.There was no movement.My pulse spiked.
I wondered if she was asleep.Or if she’d fainted.Perhaps she’d tried to escape.I cursed under my breath, my hand reaching for the doorknob, then stopped myself.
No.No, I wasn’t doing this.If I walked in… I didn’t know what I’d do.
I leaned my back against the wall instead, staring at the ceiling, trying to force logic into a skull that hadn’t used it since she’d come into my life.
She was here because she had nowhere else to go and because I refused to let death take her again.Nothing more.
It didn’t matter that she was beautiful, or that kissing her had felt like releasing something I’d held caged for an eternity.
She was a problem.Nothing more.An old threat.
But as I stood in the hall like a man possessed, listening through a closed door for the sound of her breathing… I knew the truth of the matter was that I was afraid of what she made me want.