Page 5 of Lorenzo

He believes her.

Maybe that is the mistake.

The room is beautiful in the cold way expensive hotel rooms are beautiful. Pale walls. Dark furniture. City lights beyond the window. A bed made too perfectly to look inviting until Genevieve crosses to it, turns back, and lets one strap of her red dress slip down her shoulder.

Then everything else becomes irrelevant.

Alessio goes to her.

The first kiss is slower than he expects.

He means for it to be easy. Heat. Want. A gorgeous woman and a night that asks nothing beyond itself.

But Genevieve kisses like she has been waiting too long to be touched without being handled.

That undoes him a little.

His hand slides to her jaw. Her fingers curl in his shirt. She makes a sound against his mouth, small and hungry, and something in Alessio’s chest tightens before desire cuts through it.

He is careful with the zipper of her dress.

She laughs breathlessly when he takes too long.

“You are patient,” she murmurs.

“I have other qualities.”

“So I’m hoping.”

She turns to face him, and the dress falls to the floor.

He forgets whatever answer he meant to give.

***

Later, with the city glowing beyond the windows and Genevieve warm beneath him, Alessio understands he has miscalculated. Not about wanting her. That part was obvious from the moment she raised her glass across the club.

He miscalculated the rest.

The strange comfort of her hand sliding through his hair. The way she laughs when he says something ridiculous against her throat. The quiet that settles after, not awkward, not empty, but intimate in a way he does not usually let happen with strangers.

She lies beside him with the sheet draped low across her body, her dark hair spread over the pillow, the red dress a discarded pool of silk near the chair.

“You are looking at me like that again,” she says.

“Like what?”

“Like you are thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.”

“For men?”

“For me.”

Her mouth curves, but her eyes stay on his face. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I wish I had met you earlier in the evening.”