Page 107 of Caterina
It does not help.
Nothing about this is acceptable.
Not the fact that I kissed her back. Not the fact that for one brutal second, I forgot every rule I have lived by for years.
Not the fact that even now, with a hole in my side and a house full of armed men around me, my body remembers the weight of her on my body for those few seconds before the pain in my side exploded.
Her lips had been soft.
That thought alone is enough to make my eyes close.
Bad idea.
Very bad idea.
Because the dark behind my eyelids is worse.
There she is again. Hair loose. Sleep shorts. Long, bare legs. Her hand on my arm as she helped me sit up carefully. Her knee sinking into the mattress beside my hip. Her breath against my mouth as she opened for me.
Warning bells went off in my head.
And I ignored all of them.
That is the truth I keep circling and refusing to touch for more than half a second.
She kissed me because she was scared. Because she had almost died. Because she saw my blood and felt fear and guilt and relief that she was alive. Because the body does stupid, primitive things after violence. It reaches for heat after cold. Skin after gunfire. Breath after shock.
It's a completely normal human reaction.
I know that.
I understand it better than she does.
Which means I should have turned my head the second her gaze dropped to my mouth.
I should have stopped it before it started.
Instead, I let her kiss me.
And then I kissed her back.
My hand in her hair. My thumb at her cheek. Her tongue sliding against mine. The soft catch of her breath when the kiss shifted into more dangerous territory. Hunger, danger.
I remember the feel of her waist under my hand.
I remember the way she tried to get closer without thinking through where my injury was, driven by fear and need and maybe the same thing that had been building under all our arguments for a week, whether either of us wanted to admit it or not.
I remember the hiss of pain that cut through it.
The immediate horror on her face.
That was worse than the pain.
She looked at me like she had become another weapon used against me.
I press my fingers carefully into the mattress and breathe through the flare in my side.
That is why this cannot happen.
