Page 87 of Mario
Her finger is still pressed against my chest, small and furious and shaking.
“Huh?” she continues. “Do you know what’s been keeping me up at night?”
“Your work—”
“No,” she spits out. “Not work. Work doesn’t keep me up at night.” She drills into my chest again. “I’m tired because of you!”
I narrow my eyes.
“Me,” I repeat.
“Yes, you! You,” she says, “have been keeping me up at night, Mario. I am tired because of you. So you don’t get to use that as an excuse.”
Her fingers dig into my chest every time she says the word “you.”
I grab hold of her hand and hold it still.
“Explain,” I growl.
“I have not slept a full night since I met you,” she says. Her words spill out now, breathless and furious. “The dreams are driving me crazy. I have been waking up in the middle of thenight thinking about your hands, your mouth, what you would feel like on top of me, inside of me.”
I still.
Everything in me stills.
The admission is so raw, so unexpected, that for a moment, I don’t know how to respond.
But she's not done.
"And you know the worst part of it? That it never even happens. That's right. I'm the only woman in the world having sex dreams without the actual sex! You come, you do… something, and then I wake up before it gets good. It’s the most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.
“So don't stand there and tell me we are not going to do this because I'm tired, because I am going to lose my goddamn mind. I've already lost it. This is me losing it. Right now. Do you understand?”
I stare at her, stunned into silence.
I think it might be the first time.
She is breathing heavily, her chest heaving, her eyes blazing.
The woman standing in front of me is not the composed, controlled lawyer from the conference room. She is not the exhausted, vulnerable woman from the garage.
She is something else entirely.
She is a force of nature.
A whirlwind of frustration and desire and need, all aimed directly at me.
And I am… floored.
She has been dreaming of me too.
She has been lying in her bed at night, thinking of me, wanting me, just as I have been thinking of her.
The knowledge is a punch to the gut, a jolt of triumph.
And a wave of possessiveness so strong it almost knocks me off my feet.
My grip on her hand turns from restraining to something else entirely. I yank her toward me, my other arm wrapping around her waist and hauling her against me.
