Page 37 of The Boss
She nodded, trusting, and closed her eyes. He lay behind her and fitted their hands together again at her waist. Lion over lion. The heat settled, steady as adrum.
When the hour was up, he would call Cade. Then he would find the chapel. Then he would begin to decide what kind of man a lion made out of a Severin.
Chapter 11
LEIF WOKEbefore the skyline bothered to glow. Darkness pressed close to the glass, the city a low hum beneath the penthouse, but his body was already keyed up, nerves tight like wire. Sleep had been nothing but shallow dips and sudden jolts. His mother’s voice still lived in his head. So did the shape of the lion burned into hispalm.
Dante. The word sat like an iron weight in his chest, too heavy to carry and too true todeny.
A soft exhale brushed his shoulder. Mariah lay half on him, half against the pillows of her bed, his shirt riding high on her thighs, one bare leg tangled over his. Her palm rested on his sternum. His heart beat hard against it, asteady drum that gave away more than he’d ever say aloud. He looked at her mouth and wanted it. He looked at her throat and wanted that too. He looked at the pale glow pulsing in her palm and wanted everything the Brand promised and everything it threatened totake.
Her lashes lifted. Sleep clung to her eyes, turning the hazel dark. “You’re watching me.”
“I was thinking.” His voice came out low with the night. “And failing.”
“About the ledger.”
“Yeah.” He stilled. “How did you know about that?”
“You mumbled it,” she said, aghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Ledger. Mother. Dante. Proof.”
He caught her hand and pressed it harder to his chest like he needed the touch. “My mother told me there’s a book hidden behind the altar at the Dante chapel. Aledger that records every bloodline and vow. Ineed to see it. Hold it. Read it.”
“Then we go,” she said simply. “Together.”
He started to say it wasn’t safe. He started to tell her to stay. Both words died because neither was true. “With me,” he said instead. “Every second.”
“Agreed,” she whispered.
Her gaze flicked to his mouth. His to hers. The distance between them vanished. He kissed her once, abrush that should have been nothing. It wasn’t. Heat shot through him, aclean, brutal line. He deepened it without meaning to, angling her chin, opening her to him. She made a sound in her throat, soft and unguarded, and his control slipped for a beat before he slammed it back into place.
“Later,” he said against herlips.
“You keep promising me later.”
“I keep meaning it.” He stood, pulled her up, and didn’t let go of herhand.
She blinked at him, still flushed from the kiss, and smoothed her palms down his chest as if steadying herself. He coveredone with his own, holding her there. For a moment they just breathed together, the air between them humming with everything he kept promising for later.
Then he tugged her close to his side. “Come on. A quick shower and then we’ve got ground to cover before the city wakes. I’ll show you the chapel, and the ledger that proves everything my mother said.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “Then let’s go,” she whispered.
He caught the edge of a smile and tugged her toward the bathroom for their shower. His guards had already retrieved a selection of her clothes from the apartment below his, hanging them neatly so she wouldn’t have to keep wearing borrowed shirts.
After they’d dried off, she slipped into a fresh blouse and skirt while he buttoned his dark shirt, and they dressed quickly, stealing touches as they moved—his palm sliding over her hip as she smoothed the fabric at her waist, her fingers brushing his collar into place. Every graze of skin promised what he kept pushing to later. When they were ready, he laced his fingers with hers again and led her out into the waitingdawn.
THE CHAPELkept its own kind of quiet. Not holy so much as watchful, air heavy with old incense and older secrets. Leif pushed the door shut, the click soft, final. He set his palm to the small of Mariah’s back and absorbed the fine tremor in her spine. She wasn’t afraid of places. She was afraid of people. He knew the difference. He also knew she wasn’t leaving his touch until he saidso.
“Where?” she asked, voice muted so the place wouldn’t echo withit.
He walked her to the altar. Carved wood, smooth where hands had worn it down, anick where a candle had bled wax and someone had scraped it clean years ago. He found the seam by touch, based on his mother’s description. Pressure. Shift. The panel sighed. Acompartment slidopen.
The ledger looked like a thing made to outlast men. Thick leather. Hand-sewn spine. Pages with deckled edges and the faint scent of dust that had been part of church air for generations. He lifted it free. Mariah came closer until her shoulder pressed his arm. He didn’t move heraway.
He opened to the beginning because he needed the rhythm of it. Names, dates, witness marks, the careful precision of a family that wrote itself into permanence. He turned page after page until the world narrowed to ink and breath. Then he foundher.
Leticia Dante. The script tilted, elegant and steady. Anote in the margin in a different hand: severed on marriage, 19—. His jaw worked. He read it twice anyway. Beneath, one more line, tighter letters as if the writer had been fighting their ownhand.
