Page 97 of Last Shot

He buried his face into her clavicle and her arms reached up instinctively to cradle him, grabbing a fistful of hair and pulling him into her.

Greyson Hawke – turned on, vulnerable, only for her – was the last of her grip. The light shattered through her bones, shredding her open from the inside. She let go, his lips searing against her neck, her body spasming from her untethering.

She was left with the debris of two impossible thoughts.

She would never come back.

She had to tell him about the note.

32

Grey

‘Vittoria was playing you! How could you not see that?’

It was difficult to argue with Max when all Grey could think about as she bent over in front of him to rearrange her dress was fucking her again.

‘It couldn’t have been because she trusted me after I saved her family?’

‘No, Maxella.’ He narrowly missed a cataclysmic error of judgement as he zipped up his pants. Not quite ready to face the public yet. ‘Vittoria Barbarani does not dogratitude. Which you would know if you’d come to me with this information!’

What was wrong with them? How could they have gone from clawing each other’s clothes off to clawing at each other’s throats within the minute?

Guess it hadn’t been anything more than a casual mud room fuck.

Good. That was ... good. Made things simpler.

‘You’re not my boss!’ Max hissed. ‘This used to be my job, remember? You might not like it, but for all I knew, you could have been the one who wrote the note! I was trying to keep everyone alive, not tiptoe around your feelings!’

‘Don’t pretend this was ever about my feelings,’ he said. ‘I don’thavefeelings, remember? Wait.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You thought there was the possibility I’d written the note when we were waiting for Quinton to help Arnold?’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘When I—’

‘When you what? Thought I was attacking Nella?’

‘When I told you about Sophie? For fuck’s sake, I trusted you, and that whole time you were keeping that from me?’

‘You nevertold meabout Sophie! Vittoria told me I should ask you how she was. You gave some convoluted fake-ass apology without ever really digging any deeper than the surface, because I don’t think you actually know how to. When you’ve got the excuse that your problems are never as big as the Barbaranis, it’s easy to hide everything away, isn’t it?’

‘You’re right, Max. My problems’—he held her gaze—‘are not important. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find Vittoria.’

‘It’s not going to change anything!’ she yelled. ‘What are you going to be able to decipher from the note that I couldn’t? I might not be a billionaire wine heiress or a world-class investigative journalist, but you know Icanread, right?’

He pushed the door open with his shoulder, twisting back to look at her. Despite the anger coursing through him, desire still hadn’t completely left his system. Her hair was slightly messy from his hands, her lips plush and red from his mouth. A rush of possession, a primal need to shut the door and push her back up against the wall and do it all over again coiled inside. But he shoved it down. It was the only real thing he’d ever been good at.

‘Did you ever consider, Max,’ he said, arm against the frame, ‘Vittoria did not want me to see the note because she knew I would recognise the handwriting?’

For once Grey was grateful the Barbaranis treated these sort of events like a life-saving surgery they had to execute precisely, lest they succumb to the worst kind of death imaginable to the upper-class: social embarrassment. The inoperable kind.

The bigger the crowd, the better the gossip spread to those unfortunate enough to miss out on an invitation.

The crowd of guests clotting the entirety of the ballroom that would normally make him prickle with anxiety now felt like a comforting blanket. He could get lost in here, he had a purpose in here – eyes training up and down every individual as subtly as he dared – looking for Vittoria, for Skinner, for a murderer.

For all I knew, you could have been the one who wrote the note!

Fuck. He couldn’t think about her. Couldn’t think about that apple and cinnamon smell and those curves in that goddamn dress he knew Nella had given her to fuck with him.

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