Page 235 of Legacy
Normal.
I’m on the bed, half dressed, pretending to scroll through intel on my phone but really just listening to the sound of her moving.
She spits. Rinses.
“I think we should leave tomorrow,” she says, wiping her mouth with a towel. “Morning or afternoon. Doesn’t matter. The sooner we talk to Maksim and Luciano, the sooner we get Santo on board.”
I sit up, the comforter bunched around my hips.
“You don’t want to finish the week here?”
She shrugs. “We have a war to win, we laid everything on the table. You and I are on the same page. We got what we needed.”
No.
We didn’t get everything.
Not all of it.
Because once we go back to the penthouse, she gets her own room again. That brings distance. The maybe her silence again.
I can’t go back to pretending I’m okay with it.
She shuts off the bathroom light and I expect her to go to the couch while I wait for her to slide in here in the middle of the night, but instead she climbs into the bed, under the comforter and curls herself on to me.
I freeze. “What are you doing?”
She looks up at me eyes amused, but softer than I’ve seen them all day. “I’m hugging you.”
That shouldn’t undo me.
But it fucking does.
And for a second, I just hold her.
Quiet.
Still.
Safe.
And then I tilt her chin, and she doesn’t pull away.
And when I kiss her, she doesn’t hesitate.
And when I slide my hand under her shirt and feel her skin beneath my palm for the first time in five years she arches into me like she never forgot my touch.
I kiss her deeper, slower, like I’m starving but terrified she’ll vanish if I move too fast.
My hand moves beneath the shirt,my shirt,and I feel every inch of her skin like it’s sacred ground I thought I’d never touch again. She trembles slightly, her breath catching, and it kills me—because it’s not from fear.
It’s from remembering.
“Tell me to stop,” I whisper against her lips, even though we both know I won’t survive it if she does.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she breathes. “I want to stay.”
I groan, burying my face in her neck, my hand glides down her side as I shift above her.
