Lorenzo POV I looked at her like a man trying to make sense out of an inebriated woman’s request.
Something moved through my face, complicated and quick.
My jaw tightened.
My hand on the wall pressed slightly harder, like the stone could hold up what my legs were no longer fully sure of.
I knew what was wrong with me before she did.
It had started during the meeting, somewhere between Mr Victor’s second sentence and his too eager smile.
A warmth that climbed too high, too fast.
Wine did not behave that way.
I had built fifteen years of tolerance against ordinary wine.
Whatever was moving through me now was not ordinary.
I had set my glass down the moment I understood that.
Mr Victor had looked pleased.
Far too pleased for a man I had just dismissed.
I had filed the look away and said nothing, because a man like Mr Victor needed to believe his plan was working for as long as possible.
Confronting him there would only warn him to run.
He left the table with the excuse that his assistant just reminded him of his already forgotten meeting.
I did not care what his business was.
So I stood up when he left.
Carefully.
My legs had taken the order with a delay I did not like.
“Sir.” My assistant’s voice, close to my ear, was careful.
“Are you okay?” “Book a room.” He had peeled away to make the call.
I had not waited for him.
“I am not going home like this,” I thought to myself.
He dared to drug me, knowing full well that nothing got past me.
That was when she walked into me.
I caught her before either of us understood what was happening, my hands moving on some instinct that apparently still worked even now, finding her arms before she could fall.
“You,” she had said.
“You,” I had answered, my own voice rougher than I wanted.
And now she stood in front of me, swaying slightly, her face dripping of water like she washed her face and those mesmerizing hazel, telling me she wanted to sleep with me like the words cost her nothing at all.
They were not costing her anything.
I could see that much even through the haze still working through my blood.
Whatever she was running from tonight had not finished running through her yet.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” I said.
“I know exactly what I’m asking.” “No.” I shook my head, slow, careful, the corridor tilting slightly with the movement.
“You don’t.” My phone buzzed once against my palm.
Room 401.
Booked under Moretti.
Quiet floor, sir.
I looked at the message.
Then at her.
Room 401 was three floors up.
Past the lobby.
Past the front desk.
Past a dozen people who would see a man in my condition walking a half-conscious woman through a hotel corridor, and I did not trust myself to make that walk without something going visibly wrong along the way.
There was a room on the first floor that I always use for my business meetings.
Closer than the 4th floor.
The room has always been left empty and clean.
I should have not listened to her.
I should have walked away but I need to relieve myself since she is offering.
I should have walked away from her completely.
That was the version of tonight that made sense, the version that protected fifteen years of careful distance I had built between myself and every woman who had ever stood this close to me.
But the drug had taken something with it.
Not my decisions, not entirely.
The wall I usually kept between what I wanted and what I allowed myself to want, that wall was thinner now than it had been an hour ago, and she was close enough that I could smell vanilla still caught somewhere in her hair.
“Come with me,” I said.
Something settled behind her eyes.
Not certain exactly.
A decision arrived anyway.
“Okay,” she said.
I took her hand.
Not the way I had wanted to a moment before.
Carefully.
The way you hold something you intend to be responsible for.
The room held one lamp, a king’s size bed, the building’s noise filtering faint and far away through the wall.
I shut the door behind us and the rest of the night disappeared with it.
She looked up at me.
I reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from her face, slowly, giving her every chance to step away from my hand.
She did not step away from me .
“Last chance,” I said quietly.
“Tell me to stop.” She did not tell me to stop, rather she seemed to enjoy the closeness.
What happened after that was quiet.
Not loud, not rushed, two people who had each lost something that night, finding something neither of us expected in its place.
Her hands tightened on my shirt while my hands lay loosely on her waist, like she might come apart if I held her too hard.
The lamp threw soft gold light across the room, across her face, and for the length of that hour I forgot completely about Mr Victor, the drug, the empire waiting outside that door.
There was only her.
Her breath against my throat.
A name I still did not know, a hazel eyes that would haunt me forever.
By the time the room went quiet again, she was asleep against my chest, her hand curled loosely over my heart.
I lay there, with my back against the bed while watching the ceiling, feeling the last of whatever Victor had given me finally loosen its grip.
Mr Victor.
I thought of his smile again.
Too satisfied.
Too settled.
A man who believed his plan had worked exactly as intended.
He had no idea it hadn’t.
Somewhere above us, in Room 401, his daughter was almost certainly still waiting in a bed that had never once held me.
From what my assistant would tell me later, she had not waited alone for long.
I closed my eyes, her steady breathing the last thing I registered before sleep pulled me under, and made myself one quiet promise before I went.
Mr Victor would learn, very publicly, what it cost to drug a Moretti.