Sir, you’re already inside my apartment, in my mouth memory bank, and about four seconds from getting ridden like a Peloton. Definestupid.
“Okay,” I manage.
He stands. Cracks his knuckles. Won’t quite look at me.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he says. “If that’s okay.”
“It’s okay.”
“And you’ll stay away from Dario’s. Until I figure out the Sal thing.”
“I’ll stay away.”
He finally meets my eyes. There’s something raw there. Something wanting. “Goodnight, Stevie.”
“It’s one in the afternoon.”
“Whatever.” But he’s almost smiling. “Lock the door.”
He leaves.
I lock the door.
Then I stand in my apartment surrounded by pizza boxes and cookie smell and the ghost of his body against mine, and I take a breath, and then clean up the pizza boxes.
I bake another batch of cookies, because it’s that or spiral into insanity.
And I wait.
For the knock. For the smirk. For Enzo with marinara sauce intel and opinions about fairy tale trauma.
Because he said he’d come back tomorrow.
Which gives me twenty-three hours to:
A) Clean the apartment.
B) Pick out panties I won’t be wearing for long.
C) Imagine all the ways he’ll take them off me.
Chapter Twenty
STEVIE
Enzo comes back the next day.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
I stop being surprised when I hear his knock. Three raps, quick and confident. The Enzo knock. I’d know it anywhere.
“You don’t have to keep checking on me,” I tell him on day four, already reaching for the door like Pavlov trained me with dick instead of dinner. “I’m being so good. Like, gold star, no felony, boring-little-housewife good.”
“I know,” he says, brushing past me into the apartment. “I brought wings.”
I nearly orgasm on the welcome mat.
