My throat closes.
I can't. Because the truth will slam a door between us that no contract in the world can reopen. And he will look at me withbetrayal instead of tenderness and I will not survive that look on his face. Not from him.
Cinderella doesn't get to stay past midnight. That's how the story goes and by that timing I'm way past the time for my carriage to turn into a rotting pumpkin.
"Goodbye, Massimo," I whisper to the dark room. The only time I'll let myself say his name like this. Like he belongs to me.
I scoop up my heels by the straps and carry them in one hand, barefoot and silent on the cold hardwood as I slip through the penthouse in the dark. Past the kitchen island with two empty whiskey glasses. Past the hallway where he kissed me so hard my knees gave out. Every step carries me further from the warmth of his bed and closer to the cold reality of who I am and who he is and why this can never happen again.
The elevator doors open on a quiet chime. I step inside and reach for the lobby button.
"Tesoro?"
His voice carries down the hallway, rough and half-asleep. Bands wrap around my chest and tighten. My footing falters. I slam my palm against the button before I make the bad decision of going back to him. The doors begin to close and my hand is shaking so hard one of the red heels slips from my fingers and tumbles to the marble floor outside the elevator with a sharp clatter that echoes through the silent foyer.
The doors shut. The elevator drops.
Just like that, I'm gone before sunrise. Just like the fairytale says. So why does my heart ache with a fierceness that makes me want to cry?
Four
Massimo
My cock throbs with the need to be inside her again. I've barely closed my eyes for a moment and I'm already hungry for another taste of my fairytale princess.
That thought brings a curve to my lips. When was the last time I woke up wanting someone? I can't remember. I've woken up alone so many times the absence of another body became background noise, something I stopped noticing the way I stopped noticing the city lights outside my window. One night with this woman and the background noise is deafening.
I reach for her before I'm fully awake.
My hand slides across the sheets and the cold hits my palm first. Cold cotton where warm skin should be. Empty space where her body curved against mine. I spread my fingers wide across the mattress, pressing into the fabric, searching for any trace of the heat she left behind.
Nothing.
I open my eyes. Moonlight still floods the bedroom. The pillow next to mine holds the dent of her head and the scent of herskin clings to the fabric, clean and floral. The sheets are tangled from where we slept wrapped around each other, my arm across her waist, her back pressed to my chest, her fingers threaded through mine over her stomach.
"Tesoro?" My voice comes out rough, cracked with sleep, and the word fills the penthouse and dies without an answer.
I sit up. Drag my hands over my face and press my palms into my eyes until the pressure releases. The room smells like her. Like us. Like sex and the warmth that happens when two bodies spend hours tangled together in the dark. Every muscle in my body carries a pleasant burn I haven't felt in years, and the ache between satisfaction and loss sits so close together under my skin I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
She's gone. I know it before I check the entire floor. The air in the penthouse has changed. That fullness, that charged, alive warmth I felt when she walked through my elevator doors, has drained out of the rooms and left behind the same hollow silence I've been living in for fifteen years.
Fifteen years of silence and I never minded it. Not really. I told myself it was the price of the life I chose and I paid it without complaint. One night. One woman. And the silence sounds like a fucking accusation.
I swing my legs over the edge of the mattress and my bare feet hit cold hardwood. The chill shoots up through my soles and I'm moving, pulling on my boxers, walking through the penthouse with my jaw locked and my fists tight at my sides.
"Tesoro?"
The bathroom door is open. Light off. The warm cloth I used to clean her still drapes over the nightstand. The kitchen is dark.Two whiskey glasses sit on the island, her glass still holding the ghost of her scent along the rim. I pick it up. The crystal is cool in my hand. I bring it close and breathe in, catching the faint trace of warm skin and that floral sweetness that's been wrecking me since she walked through my door. My chest constricts hard enough to make my ribs ache.
Her baby blue panties are still on the counter. I pick them up and press the silk to my face before I can talk myself out of it. Her scent fills my lungs, faint and warm and intimate, and my eyes close. If Luca could see me right now, he'd have me committed. And he'd be right. A Harvard-educated attorney standing in his kitchen in his boxers sniffing a stranger's panties. This is not in any professional development plan I've ever written.
I keep moving. Past the sofa, past the scattered contracts on my desk, past the hallway where I carried her with her legs around my waist and her mouth on mine.
The foyer stops me cold.
A red heel lies on its side on the marble floor in front of the elevator doors. Through the fog of sleep, I called out and heard the elevator chime and the sharp clatter of something landing on marble.
I drop to one knee and pick it up. The leather is worn smooth, still warm from her skin. I press it against my bare chest and kneel there on my own marble floor holding a woman's shoe like it's worth more than everything else in this penthouse.