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“I can just sleep here.”
He shook his head. “That’s not necessary.” A moment later, those capable, broad hands were scooping her up off the sofa, carrying her upstairs, towards the bedroom she’d been in earlier. He placed her on the edge of the bed then strode to the other side and peeled back the sheets, pressing a fist into the pillow to soften it before stepping back, as though the bed were an active volcano making spluttering noises.
“Thank you,” she said, crisply.
He stared at her long and hard and she felt as though the world was tipping and his mind was spinning. The air around them seemed to hum and thicken and her gut tightened in response until she could hardly breathe.
“Dante—,” she said, again, though with no idea what she wanted to say.
He closed his eyes, standing straighter, taller, chest puffed out. “Good night, Georgia.”
He knew sleep was a wild dream. There was no way he’d be able to achieve any level of relaxation with Georgia in the bedroom next door. He was attuned to her every move. Every shift she made in bed, every little sigh in her sleep, every movement. Why the hell hadn’t he taken her to a different bedroom, one on the other side of the villa, or ideally upstairs?
The answer was obvious.
She was injured.
Her ankle, while not broken, was badly sprained and if she needed anything in the night, he would be the only person who could help. He might resent her intrusion on his privacy, he might hate being relied upon, but he also wasn’t going to see a woman suffer because of his own plentiful issues.
So he lay there and stared up at the ceiling and remembered every promise and pledge he’d made to Bianca over the years, every single determined moment of solitude, and willed his body to stop it. To stop yearning. Craving. Wanting. To stop his mind from remembering what it had felt like to have Georgia’s warm, sweet-smelling, soft flesh so close to him. To forget how delightful she’d looked in his clothes, that were far, far too big for her. To stop imagining her in the bed next door, and wondering if she was thinking of him.
With a groan that was dredged from the very depths of his soul, he rolled onto his side, staring at the wall that separated their rooms as though it had done him some great wrong.
And then, he heard it.
A soft curse. A yelp of pain. He was moving even before his brain could activate, his body jerking to alert on autopilot. He was at his own doorway within seconds, then through it, taking the two paces down the hallway and knocking once on her door before pushing it inwards to find Georgia standing just inside it.
She screamed at his intrusion, so he stepped forward, putting his hands on her arms, seeking to reassure her. “Georgia, it’s me. It’s me. It’s okay. You sounded hurt.”
Her breath was coming fast, and she was trembling. The light cast by the hallway was dim, but he could see her eyes were wide, her features tight.
“I didn’t—I—,” Her tongue darted out to lick her lower lip. “I didn’t mean—I was trying to be quiet.”
“What is it?” Was that his voice, so hoarse and broken? “What do you need?”
She lifted a hand to his chest, curling her fingers in his shirt. For support, he told himself. Because of her ankle. It was nothing more than that. This was not a betrayal. He was just looking out for her.
“Dante—,”
For the third time that night, she whispered his name as if she was trying to find an answer in the syllables. She said it questioningly, unfathomably, and each and every time, his gut had licked with a feeling he was now forced to acknowledge as desire.
He closed his eyes, long, dark lashes fanning his cheeks.
“What do you need?” He asked again, but bleakly this time, with the hint of a plea. Silently, he implored her to say something simple, like a glass of water. A task he could easily perform. Because if she were to ask for anything more, he knew he would have to cross the very fires of hell.
“I want—I?—,”
But she wasn’t going to ask. She wasn’t going to articulate what she was thinking. Did she need to? He knew what was going on between them. It had been a long time since he’d had sex, even longer since he’d flirted with a woman, dated one, but the awareness of those rituals was ingrained in Dante. He felt her desire, felt her need, and though he knew it was something he would hate himself for in the clear light of day, Dante could no longer resist.
“Damn you, Georgia,” he ground out. “I knew you were trouble the second I saw you.”
She tilted her face to his, defiance in her eyes, but something else too, and her lips parted, so it was the work of an instant, the simplest thing in the world, for Dante to lean down and brush his mouth over hers.
Fireworks exploded. Not literally, but for Dante, they were everywhere, little echoes inside him of the lightning crashing outside the villa.
He had not kissed anyone since Bianca.
He hadn’t known this pleasure. Closeness. Desire.
