Page 48 of Wicked Rivals

She nodded with her lips parted, her breath still rapid but her grip on me loosening.

“I know. Where should we go?” she whispered. “To talk I mean, and nothing more.”

I nodded to reassure her.

“Your room works. It's the closest.”

Val shook her head. “Somewhere without a bed.”

Under different circumstances, I would have told her she was being ridiculous and insisted. But considering my unrelenting erection and how I’d almost taken her right there in the hallway, she made a valid point.

I grabbed hold of her arm to drag her along with me… I didn’t want to stop touching her.

“Come with me.”

I took her to my study without letting go until I closed the door behind us. Even then, bed or no bed, I had to force myself to keep my hands off her.

The temptation was strong, and I had to turn away for a minute. I could have easily lifted her, put her back against the door, and fucked the hell out of her.

“What is wrong with you?” she hissed. “You can’t just drag me through your house like a caveman.”

Then I caught her full-length reflection in the window, and I could only think about how she looked under the robe, betting it was as beautiful as when we were kids.

Val noticed my stare and grabbed the edges of her robe, pulling them tighter to hide herself from me.

There they were again—the mental images of our past, her lying naked in my bed, inviting me closer, calling me to her.

I shook them from my head and went to the bar to make another old-fashioned for myself and an amaretto sour for her.

We’d only gone on one proper date, and I still remembered the drink she ordered.

It would have been better if I could say the memory had just then come flooding to the forefront of my mind. But it had always been there.

Every moment of that night existed on repeat in my mind. The best night of my life and the worst. The last night of the life I’d wanted before it died forever.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m making us a drink. I know I could use one. We’ll have a sit down and talk like rational adults.”

“Rational went out the window the minute you stepped back into my life, Stefano. Immediately followed by a storm of bullets. You put my son's life in danger, and now you want me to behave rationally?”

No other woman on the planet could turn arguing with me into the type of seductive strength I saw in her now. It only made me want her more.

That pissed me off more.

At the end of the day, though, it didn’t matter how much I wanted her or that she was my son’s mother, because no one talked to me like that.

No one.

Val would show me the respect I had earned.

Then there was the matter of that slap.

“Our son,” I corrected. “And you’ll watch how you speak to me.”

I pulled long from my glass with my eyes on her, warning her to keep her mouth shut.

“I’m not the one who put our son’s life in danger. You did that,” I said. “Whoever is behind this didn’t have to work hard to find him, since they knew about him before I did. You forget, Valerie, I could have let them kill you both.”

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