“Right now,” I tell her, and my voice is flat, certain, a surgical statement, “you are mine.”
Her pupils dilate.
“Not Nick’s. Not Rafe’s. I am not asking you to choose. I am telling you that in this moment, I own every second of your attention. And you are going to give it to me. Willingly.”
Recognition. The same look a patient gives you when you tell them the truth they already know.
I take her hand.
Her fingers are small inside mine. My thumb finds her pulse at the base of her wrist and it is racing, hammering against my fingertip with the rhythm of a woman who has already made her decision and is waiting for the man in front of her to catch up.
I walk her to the bathroom. Four steps across the cabin floor. Through the doorframe. Into the small, utilitarian space with its single shower stall and cracked tile and a mirror that reflects both of us in the dim overhead light.
I close the door behind us.
Snick.The lock slides home.
I look at the locked handle for one beat. Then I look at her.
“Tyra is right outside that door.” My voice is low enough that it will not carry through the wood. “She is asleep. She needs to stay asleep.” I hold her gaze. “And I have every intention of making that very, very difficult for you. So whatever sounds you want to make tonight, you make them into my hand. Or into my mouth. But you do not make them loud enough to wake that little girl. Understood?”
Lucia’s lips part.
No sound comes out. She nods once. Her eyes are black in the low light, the pupils swallowing the iris.Yes. Yes. Whatever you want. Yes.
I back her against the sink. Her hips hit the edge of the porcelain and she gasps, a short involuntary sound that she swallows before it can fill the room.
Good. She is already learning.
I take her face in both hands.
My hands are large. Scarred across the knuckles and the webbing between the thumb and forefinger and along the tendons that run from wrist to fingertip. Surgeon’s hands. Killer’s hands. Hands that have held beating hearts and still triggers and a four-year-old girl’s grey stuffed wolf with equal care.
I hold her face and I kiss her.
Not testing. Not asking. This kiss is a door opening. The bottom lip first, the fullest part, caught between mine and held there until she exhales through her nose and her jaw goes soft. Then I tilt her chin up with both thumbs and take her mouth the way I take everything. Thoroughly. Completely. Her tongue meets mine and the taste of mint and adrenaline and Lucia Costa hits my bloodstream like a drug I have no intention of quitting.
She grabs my shirt. Both fists in the fabric over my chest. Pulls me closer. She is half my size and she is hauling me toward her like a woman who has stopped negotiating with herself.
I let her pull. Then I take over.
One hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers threading into the damp curls at her nape. The other drops to her hip, findsthe sharp bone under the oversized fabric, and grips. She makes a sound in her throat. Small. Hungry. That sound goes straight through my abdomen and lands below my belt.
I pull back from the kiss. Her mouth chases mine. I hold her still with my hand on her neck and look at her. Swollen lips. Dilated pupils. The flush starting at her collarbone and climbing toward her jaw. Her pulse is visible in the hollow of her throat, beating fast and hard, and the surgeon in me catalogs it at one-twenty, one-thirty.
I did that.
My hands move to the hem of Rafe’s t-shirt. I grip the fabric and lift it over her head in one smooth motion.
She is bare underneath. No bra. Golden skin and dark nipples already hard in the cool air and the flat plane of her stomach pulling tight when the shirt clears her head. A small scar below her left rib, old, faded to silver. A constellation of moles across her right shoulder.
I look at her. All of her. Standing against the sink in nothing but a scrap of black lace—the mesh already soaked through and transparent against the engorged, dripping curves of her pussy—her dark curls falling over one shoulder, her tits heaving with the controlled breathing of a woman who is determined not to make a sound. The thin fabric highlights the swollen, throbbing bead of her clit, pulsing with every ragged breath she takes.
“You,” I tell her, “are the most dangerous thing I have ever let myself want.”
“I have made my peace with Nick. With Rafe. That math works.” I lower my mouth to the side of her neck and speak the nextwords against her pulse point. “But right now, tonight, every sound you make belongs to me.”
Her hands are in my hair. Pulling. Not gentle. Costa pride translates directly into the way she touches me, and it is not soft, and it is not polite, and it is everything I need.