Page 24 of Ruthless Sin
Three years of keeping this locked down. Right now it won’t stay locked.
Fuck.
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
The heat does not stop.
I keep my hands flat on the wood where everyone can see them. I keep my expression where it needs to be.
I pick up my wine glass and drink.
I am going to lose my mind.
I am hard at my sister-in-law’s table. My pregnant sister-in-law, sitting four feet away.
I want to put my forehead against the table.
I do not move a muscle.
I drink my wine.
Dante is talking about the ports. Renzo isn’t laughing, but the muscle at the corner of his jaw twitches.
Mila finishes the meat, sets the fork down, and lifts her water, drinking once before setting the glass back down.
Her hand never leaves my sleeve.
She tilts her head toward my shoulder but does not lean against the fabric.
She turns her neck.
She looks at me.
It’s the first time her eyes have landed on mine in a room with the lights on.
Her gray-green eyes do not flinch. They stay locked on mine, and her breath hasn’t changed by one beat, and she holds it long enough that I stop wondering.
I stop breathing.
Her gaze holds me for a full count of five.
Her hand rests on my sleeve, and my whole arm tightens.
She knows what is happening to me underneath the linen.
She doesn’t pull away.
She holds tighter, her fingers squeezing by half a millimeter.
Cazzo.Cristo.
I want to put my mouth against her wrist, right where her own pulse is running faster than it should. I want to feel her breath catch when my lips land there. I want to ask her in Russian what she’s doing to me, want to hear what sound she makes when I ask it. I want to drag her up the stairs and lock the door behind us and find out how long it takes before she stops being afraid.
I am hard enough to hurt and she is holding my wrist and I am losing my mind at a dinner table.
I don’t.
Nobody at this table knows I haven’t been this hard in three years.
