Page 46 of Beautiful Villain
Instead, my pulse roared in my ears and every instinct I had went feral.
She stood there in nothing but a towel, skin still warm from the shower, hair damp and curling at her shoulders.Her eyes were too bright.Too open.Like she was standing at the edge of something she didn’t fully understand but wasn’t backing away from either.
Dangerous.For both of us.
I saw the moment it hit her too—that split second where she realized what she’d done and didn’t take it back.Where her breath stuttered and her fingers curled into the fabric at her chest like she needed something solid to hold onto.
I told myself to stop.I didn’t.I closed the distance in one step and backed her into the nearest wall before my mind could catch up with my body.Her gasp was soft but startled, her back meeting the plaster, my hands bracketing her before she could slip sideways or think better of what we were doing.
I didn’t kiss her again right away.I hovered there, breathing her in.Soap and heat and a scent so unmistakablyher.My forehead dropped to hers, my breath heavy, uneven.
“This is a mistake,” I said quietly.
She swallowed.“So was kissing you.”
“Do you really believe that?”
My hand slid to her waist without permission, fingers splaying against warm skin just above the towel.She inhaled sharply, chest brushing mine, and the sound snapped the last thin thread of restraint I had left.
I kissed her again.
This time it wasn’t careful.
It was deep, demanding, like I was trying to ground us both and at the same time, trying to wake us up with the force of our collision.Her mouth opened under mine, tentative at first, then answering.Her hands came up, clutching at my shoulders, her body pressing into mine like she needed the contact as much as I did.
I felt it everywhere.The tension she carried.The grief humming just under her skin.The way she trembled under my fingers.
My grip tightened at her waist, anchoring her there, my thumb brushing slow, deliberate arcs like I was reminding both of us that she was alive.Here.
She broke the kiss to breathe, forehead resting against my jaw, her breaths coming fast and shallow.
“Gianni,” she whispered.
My name left her lips like a confession she hadn’t meant to make—soft, unguarded, and devastating.The sound slid through me in a single, precise line of heat, a spark that traced my spine and settled in my groin, unwelcome and undeniable, reminding me exactly how close my control was to breaking.
I pressed my mouth to her throat instead, to the place just beneath her ear, my breath hot against her skin.I didn’t bite.Didn’t mark her.I forced myself to keep it restrained even as my body demanded more.
She tilted her head anyway.
Invited it.
My control slipped another inch.
I pinned her there with my body, solid and unyielding, my hand sliding up her back, fingers spreading between her shoulder blades like I was holding her together.She made a soft sound—half breath, half moan—and it echoed straight through me.
This was wrong.I knew it.And I didn’t stop.Not when her hands slid into my hair.Nor when her breathing matched mine, fast and unsteady and full of need she’d been trying to tamp down.
I rested my forehead against hers again, forcing myself to pause, to breathe, to keep this from tipping into something I couldn’t take back.
“We shouldn’t do this,” I said, low.
She laughed softly, broken.“We shouldn’t.”
I was thinking about the way Archie Popovich would tear the world apart to get his hands on her again.About the blood on my doorstep.About how every instinct in me had shifted fromprotecttoclaimwithout asking permission.
I eased back just enough to look at her.Her cheeks were flushed.Her lips swollen from my mouth.Her eyes dark and searching, still sad, still raw—but alive with something fierce and wanting.
I cupped her face gently this time, grounding us both.
