Page 55 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
The pale light of early morning crawls across the floorboards of my bedroom, entirely insufficient to pull the haze of slumber from me.
I open my eyes anyway.
Sleep never holds me long; not in this life, not with the things I've seen.
But today, there's a different kind of unrest slinking through my veins, one that drifts somewhere between hunger and fury.
I stretch my arms above my head, spine cracking.
The sheets are tangled around my hips, warm with the ghost of a dream that refuses to let go.
A dream of soft skin and stormy eyes.
A dream that tasted like Aria.
She's in every corner of my mind this morning.
It isn't subtle.
It's not delicate or careful like the way good men think of the women they want.
No, she slips into me like a blade between the ribs.
That mouth, those defiant eyes, the way her body arched under mine like she'd never known pleasure before I gave it to her.
God help me, I'm not sure I'll ever forget the sound of her voice when I had her pinned to the mattress, breath caught somewhere between a plea and a curse.
And now, of all things, I'm hard. Again.
I shift beneath the sheets, hissing as the memory of her mouth, warm and open beneath mine, coils low in my gut.
She moved like she wanted to ruin me and let me ruin her right back.
We had shared the kind of sex that makes a man forget his own damn name.
And the worst part is not the way she felt, but the way she looked at me afterward—like she saw something she wasn't meant to see.
Something I thought I'd buried long ago.
My hand slips lower, and I let it.
There's no point fighting it.
She's already in my blood.
And I need this ache gone before I face Luca.
I close my eyes and let the memory unspool.
She was wearing that pale silk dress, the one with the thin straps and the open back that showed off every inch of skin I shouldn't have been thinking about in a room full of power-hungry men.
But Aria wasn't built to be ignored.
She walked through that estate like sin dressed as grace, every line of her body a silent challenge.
I remember the sound she made when I first touched her.
That gasp, like her whole world had shifted beneath her feet.
