Catherine’s POV
He practically ran into that bathroom.
I stood there in the middle of the room, towel still in my hand, watching the door click shut behind him, and honestly, I had no idea what to make of it.
One second he’d been standing at the window with a glass of something dark in his hand, all still and quiet, and the next he was gone, muttering about needing a shower like the building had caught fire.
Maybe he was just tired.
God knew we’d both had the night from hell.
Cornered in an alley, running from loan sharks, all of it.
A man was allowed to want a shower.
I told myself that and let it go.
I dropped onto the edge of the bed and reached for the hotel hair dryer, and that’s when I noticed my phone lighting up on the nightstand.
Twelve missed calls.
I frowned and picked it up.
Elena.
Antonio.
Isabella.
Elena again.
Marco, twice.
My stomach did a slow, ugly turn as I scrolled through the list.
And then it clicked, and I actually laughed out loud, alone in that ridiculous room.
They weren’t worried about me.
Not really.
They were worried I’d gone off and done something with Marco that couldn’t be undone.
That was the panic behind every single one of those calls.
*Don’t sleep with him.
Don’t ruin things.
Don’t make this messy for us.*
Because that was always the real fear, wasn’t it?
Not that I’d get hurt.
That I’d become *inconvenient*.
I switched the phone to Do Not Disturb without listening to a single voicemail.
Watched the screen go black.
Felt something in my chest go black right along with it.
Then I plugged in the dryer and cranked it up loud enough to drown all of them out.
By the time I finished, the room was warm and my hair was dry and I felt almost human again.
And that was exactly when the bathroom door opened.
Steam rolled out first.
Then him.
He had a towel slung low around his hips and absolutely nothing else, and I forgot, briefly, how to breathe.
Because Lorenzo did not look like a man who worked some ordinary desk job. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
Not with a body like *that*.
He was all lean muscle and hard lines, shoulders that ate up the whole doorway, and his skin—
His skin told stories I wasn’t supposed to be reading.
There was a scar low on his ribs, pale and puckered, the kind that doesn’t come from slipping down the stairs.
Another one carved along his shoulder, thin and mean.
A third dragging across his forearm, old and silvered under the light.
My eyes tracked every one of them before I could stop myself, and something cold and curious crawled up my spine.
*Who are you?* I thought.
*What kind of debt collector leaves a man looking like he’s crawled out of a war?*
And then, God help me, I noticed the rest of it.
The water still sliding down his chest.
The cut of his hips above that towel.
The way the whole room suddenly felt ten degrees hotter and about half its size.
Heat pooled low in my belly, sudden and mortifying, and I felt my face go up in flames.
He caught me looking.
Of course he did.
One dark brow lifted, slow and knowing, and the corner of his mouth curled into something that had no business being that dangerous.
“You’re staring, Catherine.” His voice dropped, low and rough, sliding down my spine like a hand.
“See something you like?”
“I’m not—” My throat went dry.
“I’m not staring.”
“No?” He took a step closer, water still tracing that scarred chest, and I swear the whole room shrank another inch.
Another step.
The space between us evaporated, and I had to tip my head back to keep his eyes.
His gaze dragged down me, unhurried, lingering where the robe had gone see-through, then back up to my face, and something dark flickered behind them.
“Then why,” he murmured, close now, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin, “have your eyes been glued to my abs since I walked out of that shower?”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
“What are you thinking about?” Another step.
His voice went velvet, coaxing, a hook slipping right under my ribs.
“Do you want to touch it?”
Heat crashed through me so fast it made me dizzy.
My whole body was screaming *yes*, and I hated it, hated how easily he’d pulled that from me with nothing but a look and a voice like sin.
Which was exactly why I grabbed the first thing my panicked brain could throw at him.
“You’ve, um—” I gestured vaguely at his jaw without meeting his eyes.
“You missed some shampoo.
Right there.
On your face.”
It wasn’t even a lie.
There really was a little line of suds clinging to the edge of his jaw.
But I said it way too fast, too loud, like a woman clutching at a lifeline, and I saw the flicker of amusement cross his face that told me he knew exactly what I was doing.
He lifted a hand and swiped at completely the wrong side, then the wrong side again, still dripping, and I watched him miss it a third time and finally gave up.
“Oh my God, hold still,” I said, closing the distance to his side before I’d really thought it through.
“You’re hopeless.”
His skin was warm and damp under my finger, faintly rough where he hadn’t shaved, and that was when I realized how close I’d gotten.
Too close.
Close enough that I had to tip my head back to see his face.
Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his bare chest.
“There,” I said, and my voice came out smaller than I wanted.
“Got it.
I should—”
I started to step back.
His hand caught the small of my back.
It wasn’t rough.
It was barely anything, just a splay of fingers and a light pull, but it stopped me dead, brought me right back up against the hard line of him, and I felt every inch of it through the thin cotton of my robe.
My breath snagged somewhere in my throat.
*This doesn’t make sense,* my brain scrambled to remind me.
*He can’t want this.
He doesn’t work like that.
You are imagining—you have to be imagining—*
But his hand was still there.
Warm.
Certain.
And I could feel his heart going just as hard as mine.
“Mr.
Marino,” I whispered.
I don’t know why.
And then his mouth was on mine.
I should have shoved him off.
I meant to.
But my hands came up and fisted in the towel instead, dragging him closer, and he backed me into the wall with a low sound in his chest that I felt in the soles of my feet.
His hand found my waist.
The belt of my robe went loose.
I kissed him back like I’d lost my whole mind, because I clearly had, and it was warm and desperate and it made no *sense*—
He tore himself off me so fast I nearly stumbled.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice came out wrecked.
“That—that shouldn’t have happened.”
I yanked the robe back up over my shoulder, cheeks burning, heart slamming against my ribs.
“Right,” I said, too bright, too fast.
“No, obviously.
Adrenaline.
Long night.
Forget it.”
“Catherine—”
“I’ll take the couch,” he cut in, already stepping back, already reaching for the spare blanket.
“You take the bed.”
And he walked away.