“Even in light of what you told me this morning, I’m still here.” She sniffled. “I’m willing to risk my heart for you,” she declared in a soft voice as her eyes returned to mine. “I’ll take the chance you break it if it means you’ll give us a chance.” She was being vulnerable with me, possibly even forgiving me for murder. And I was standing there like an idiota, unsure what to do or how to react to that.
I promised her father long ago to protect her and Natalia. But I’d made a promise to myself, too: never let anyone I care about feel anything close to the kind of pain I lived with daily. And if I gave in to my desires, gave in to my feelings for her . . . what if the horrible scenarios that crossed through my mind like a deadly storm came true? What if I hurt her? Lost her forever?
“Maria.” Her name came out like a rough plea from my lips. Of course, I had no idea what I was begging her to do. Stop wanting me or never stop?
“I tried to open the door to my heart for you on my birthday, and you slammed it shut.” Her voice trembled this time. “I’m opening it again for you tonight. Right here in this parking lot. It’s up to you whether you want to walk through. This is your last chance. I’ll stop being stubborn if you reject me tonight. I’ll face reality and move on.”
Was this my shit-or-get-off-the-pot moment, as my brother had so eloquently called it?
“You’d risk your heart, but what about Chiara’s?” I cut straight through to the meat of what I knew would be the main problem for her. The only counter defense I had left in my arsenal to use against her, to keep this woman from breaking me down to the point where I stopped fighting this thing between us, and I tried to be happy.
“No.” She shook her head, tears in her eyes. “You’d kill yourself before hurting my little girl.”
Without question. “And you already know what I’m willing to give up if it means keeping you safe.” I reached for her, cupping her cheeks, unable to think straight.
Her glossy eyes unleashed a few tears. “Yeah, you’re already doing it,” she whispered. “Breaking your own heart so you don’t risk breaking mine.”
My hands slid to her hair, and I set my forehead to hers, playing with the locks by her face as I mustered the strength to keep fighting her on this.
She was offering herself to me, doing what I begged her not to do, but this went way beyond sex. She was offering all of herself to me. Not just her body. Her whole life.
“Maria, what are you doing to me?” My voice broke that time, and her hands covered mine.
She shifted back to stare into my eyes as her lower lip trembled.
“After what you learned about me, I just can’t wrap my head around why you still want me,” I bluntly said, no point in sugarcoating anything now. “But I need time to think things through before I . . .” I let go of a ragged breath. “Can you give me that?”
Her lips rolled inward, and it took all my strength not to lean in and suck that bottom lip, to not taste her for the first time in six years.
“Okay.” The word was more like a breath of air passing between us as she eased her body a bit closer, and my hand brushed against her breast with barely any space between us. “I wish you’d kiss me,” she cried like it was meant as a confession for a priest. Only I was far from worthy of hearing anyone’s sins. I was a man incapable of redemption, and my soul wouldn’t wind up with hers on the other side when my time came.
I pulled my hands free from hers and brought the pad of my thumb along the seam of her lips, and her eyes closed at the contact. “The next time my mouth touches these lips,” I began before reaching between her thighs with my other hand, “or these lips,” I added in a low voice, and her pussy arched into my palm, “you’ll first know the truth about me. But not tonight.”
She wanted my walls down? Then so be it. But I was terrified that once they came crumbling down, she’d hate me and build them back up herself.
“Give me something,” she pleaded, peeling her eyes open. “Either a bit of hope. One of your secrets. Or, at the very least, touch me. After the day I’ve had, especially with Chiara being out of town, I need something.”
My shoulders slumped at her request. Hope? That wasn’t in my wheelhouse. And my secrets weren’t meant for being shared in a parking lot.
I looked around, finding us still alone, so I snatched her wrist and guided her so her back was to my Tahoe on the other side of Ryan’s F-150, which served as our shield from the back door of the restaurant. “You want my touch? You want it out here? Like this?”
She licked her lips and nodded.
Of course you do. It disturbed me how easy it was for her to break through my defenses, to get me to do things I’d vowed never to do. “Unzip your pants for me, then,” I ordered.
Her palm slipped between us, and she did as she was told.
Hoping like hell no one walked outside and witnessed us, I spun her around so her hands landed on my SUV, and her eyes caught mine in the reflection of the glass.
I set my hand on the window alongside hers while my other wrapped possessively around her body as I’d done last night, pressing my hard length against her ass.
Her parted lips slammed into a tight line the moment my hand dove beneath her pants and panties. I nuzzled her neck with my nose, nearly losing control at how soaked she was. “Fuck my hand,” I demanded, wanting her to take from me all that I could give her right now.
She rocked against the heel of my palm; my finger slid up and down her wet sex, and I swept the pad of my thumb in circular motions at her sensitive spot as she moved. But her ass rotating against my cock was going to destroy me, as it’d nearly done last night.
“Why is it that when you touch me, when you’re this close to me . . . I feel unstoppable? Powerful somehow? Being with you makes me feel . . .”
Complete?
“You hold the power, Tesoro. With me you do. You always have,” I admitted, somewhat terrified by that truth.
“Then why won’t you give me what we both want?” she begged. “Promise me you will one day.” She was on the verge of coming already, I could tell by her shaky inhalations and the way she moved faster against my hand. “Please.”
That cry mingled with her desire had me opening my stupid mouth and doing something I hoped I wouldn’t regret. “I promise,” I whispered.
More breathy moans left her lips; worried someone would come out and hear her, I reached around and covered her mouth with my other hand. Her tongue skirted between her lips, licking my skin, and I nearly unzipped my pants and took my bad girl right there.
I felt the shudder rip through her, and she came so hard, she bent forward and would’ve whacked her head against my Tahoe if I hadn’t caught her.
She had to be dripping down her leg, and I wanted nothing more than to take her inside and clean her up myself. Lick that pussy and see how she tasted.
Frustrated in more ways than one, I snatched a fistful of her hair instead, angling her head to the side to look back at me. “Feel better?”
She nodded, licking her lips, and I was far too tempted to kiss her. I released her hair and stepped back as she fixed her zipper and faced me. “That should’ve been on my list.”
“What list?” I asked as she tucked in her blouse.
“The naughty things I want to do with you,” she responded, her tone going shy, which was adorable given what she’d just let me do to her.
My hand went to the SUV over her shoulder, and I was prepared to ask her to elaborate, but her gaze snapped to our left, and her eyes widened.
I turned at the realization we weren’t alone, hating myself for not noticing sooner. This woman was a distraction, that was for sure.
“Am I interrupting?” A man stepped into the light. Although shadows crossed his face, it took me less than a second to recognize him, and a sharp, stabbing pain of worry cut through me.
“And you are?” Maria asked once I’d aligned myself alongside her.
“I’m an old friend.” The blast from my past finally spoke.
“From?” Maria pressed.
“The army.” His lips quirked as if realizing Maria wasn’t someone he could lie to and get away with it.
“Why’d that sound like a question?” Maria didn’t back down from anyone, did she? Not even me. And that made me nervous. What if she crossed the wrong person one day?