Page 41 of Playing the Sicilian's Game of Revenge

Her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SAVERINA HEARD THE car door slam. She jumped at the surprise of it in the quiet night. She really hadn’t expected him to...change his mind.

She didn’t let herself turn around to look at him. She didn’t let herself run for him like she wanted to. He had to choose. He had to put his wants above his plans. She had to let him do that.

But it was hard to keep walking. To reach out to put her key in the lock. To pretend she did not hear or feel him approach. She unlocked the door, even turned the knob, but before she could push the door open, his hand clasped over her arm.

He turned her around, and she wanted to close her eyes. The punch of him in moonlight would be too much. She had invited him in because she wanted him, but she needed him to want her too. If it had taken a little unnecessary jealousy to get there, so be it. But she needed some give, or she was just throwing herself at the same brick wall, hoping for different results.

That would only leave her shattered. She couldn’t allow herself delusions now. She was mature. She was strong. She could fight, but she couldn’t sacrifice herself at the altar of his jealousy for nothing.

She needed more.

She looked into his eyes, and she was lost. His mouth crashed to hers and she welcomed it, throwing her arms around his neck, kissing him back with wild abandon just as she had in her office the other day.

He’d told her she was weak that day, and maybe she was. But if it felt like this, she would be weak. Just for a few seconds. The dark, dangerous taste of him. His hands in her hair. The way his heart pounded against hers.

Because his heart was involved. His wants existed beyond his revenge—this had nothing to do with Dante. How could it? But she needed to hear him say it. Admit it. Out loud. To them both.

She pulled her mouth free, pushed her hand to his chest. Her breathing was ragged, and her heart felt a bit like an open wound, but she had found herself in all this mess. She wouldn’t go back now. She would not turn into someone she wasn’t any longer.

She met his gaze, cloudy with desire and tinged with anger and fear.

But she would not be afraid. “Say it,” she demanded. She’d set a boundary. He’d respect it or perish. Because this wasn’t weak. This was a step toward whatever lay beyond revenge.

He’d made his decision already, she knew. That was why he was standing here. Touching her. Still she watched the war play out over his face. When he spoke, it was little more than a growl. “I want you.”

She threw herself at him then. The desire working through her like a potent, heavy liquor, or maybe like that drug she promised herself love wouldn’t be. It was wild and dangerous.

His hands slid over her skirt. Then his fingers curled under the hem of the fabric and began to lift up. Cool air swirled around her now bare legs, but the heat of him, of their kiss, kept her from fully feeling it.

She expected him to touch her, to take her here, so much like the last night they’d been together. Back at his apartment. His anger and frustration biting at his control. She wouldn’t refuse—couldn’t. This was him at his truest, and that was what she wanted.

But instead he lifted her, smoothed his hands up her legs, and she needed no further urging to wrap them around his waist. To let him carry her inside, arching against him with a needy whimper.

He stepped inside, some mix of a groan and growl vibrating low in his throat. She raked her hands through his hair, reveling in the strength of him, the perfect, tense muscle required of every step. She didn’t care who saw, who reported what to Lorenzo. She only cared that she felt his skin on hers.

He walked straight to the staircase, one kiss bleeding into another. Teeth and tongue and his lips never leaving hers. He carried her all the way up the stairs, and there was no sense that his breath was ragged from the effort of doing so. No, that was all from what they made each other feel.

He kicked her bedroom door closed but didn’t put her down. Though he did stop kissing her long enough to speak. “Your room is a disaster.”

She laughed, incapable of controlling the breathless feeling running rampant through her. “Mostly I like things neat, but the room I sleep in I like to feel lived in.” Live. Oh, how she wanted him to live. With her.

This would solve nothing. This was temporary, physical. An explosion of all that chemistry. Or maybe it was an expression of her love. He wouldn’t accept that, not yet. But maybe it could be a chip in that brick wall. One he looked back to and realized it had been more, meant more.

Maybe he could believe she loved him, and that it would matter that she did, before it was too late. Maybe he couldn’t ever get there. But she’d know she gave it her all. She’d given her love before she’d called it quits.

She gentled the kiss, her arms. She unhooked her legs and slid down his body until she was on her own two feet again. She didn’t let him go, didn’t break the kiss. Instead, she called on all the tenderness she’d ever possessed and put it in her kiss, her touch, even the press of her body against his.

There was a moment, so brief, when she thought she felt him simply...relax. Give in. Lean in. Like someone starved of touch...but in this case what he was starved of was love. And she had so much to give him. So much.

He withdrew. First the kiss, then his body. He went so far as to take her by the arms and set her back...just a step. But he didn’t release her arms. They simply stood there, now a little space between them, winded and staring at each other.

He said nothing. Didn’t move. Didn’t let her go. Whatever warred within was something he was determined to be his and his alone.

She, on the other hand, was determined he share it. So, even with his hands still gripping her elbows, she reached forward. He didn’t stop her. She smoothed her hands up the lapels of his jacket, and his hands dropped from her arms.

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