“Yes.”
The answer landed between us like a slap. Her flushed face went still. “You’re not even going to pretend?”
“No.”
“That is infuriating. You don’t know everything about me,” she insisted.
“No,” I said, letting my gaze move over her face slowly. “Not yet.”
Color touched her cheeks. There it was. That tiny reaction she hated giving me. The little betrayal of blood beneath skin. I wanted to put my mouth there. Then lower. Then make her say my name like a confession she wished she could take back. Instead, I stayed seated. Because I had given her choice. And now I had to survive the consequences.
Deeply inconvenient.
Aurora stepped closer and threw the keys onto the table. They slid across the stone surface and stopped beside my coffee.
“You can have those back.” I looked at them. Then at her.
“No, thanks,” I said. “They’re yours to keep.”
She froze. Just slightly. Enough that I saw it. Enough that it mattered. “They are not mine.”
“They are now.”
“Santino.” I liked when she said my name. That was becoming a serious problem. The first time she’d said it, she’d sounded horrified. Now she sounded furious. Still preferred it.
“You cannot just give me a motorcycle,” she said.
“Why not?” I shrugged.
“Because people don’t do that…” she groaned. “You’re making this whole situation very weird.”
“I’m not people.”
“No,” she muttered. “You’re a criminal with boundary issues.”
“Among other things.”
She stared at me. I stared back. The wind pushed dark strands of hair across her mouth. She brushed them away impatiently. That mouth. Fucking hell. Marco coughed behind me.
I had forgotten he existed. Unusual. Aurora glanced at him, then back at me. For the first time, suspicion replaced outrage. Marco looked almost amused.
“This is Marco,” I muttered. “Marco, Aurora.”
I stood. Aurora took half a step back, then looked annoyed at herself for doing it.
“You hungry?” I asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “You kidnapped me, let me escape, sat here like a smug gargoyle waiting for me to come back, and now you’re asking if I want breakfast?”
“Correct.”
“You’re insane,” she said with exasperation. “Not hungry.”
“So you keep saying.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
I walked past her toward the stairs leading down into the garden. “Come on.”