Chapter 7: Her Door

At midnight, I stood in the hall in my socks and a T-shirt with my heart going.

The house was dark.

A strip of light showed under his door.

I had told myself all day that I was tired and that it was only the cold.

I had told myself a kiss in a cemetery didn't have to mean anything.

I had lied very well, and I had not believed a word.

I knocked once.

"It's open," he said.

He was sitting on the edge of a big dark bed in grey sweatpants and nothing else, with a book face down on his knee.

His chest was lean and hard, dusted with black hair, and there was a long pale scar down the center of it.

I stopped in the doorway.

"A knife," he said. "I was nineteen. The man who held it is dead."

He wasn't pretending he hadn't seen me look.

"Okay," I said.

"Noelle."

"I'm warm," I said.

His eyes closed for a second, and when they opened they were black.

"I told you," I said. "This isn't the deal. This door is mine."

"The paper has nothing to do with this door," he said, very steady.

"If you leave through it tomorrow, Pippa's place stands."

"If you walk out of this house, Pippa's place stands."

"I know."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I want to be," I said. "Because I thought about your mouth all day, and I'd like to stop thinking and start."

He let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost something else.

I crossed the room.

I took the book off his knee and set it on the nightstand.

Then I stood between his legs and put my hands on his shoulders.

His skin was hot.

I felt the muscle move under it, and the pulse in his throat jumped.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

"I want to be the one who decides how this goes."

"Then decide."

He put his hands on the mattress behind him and tipped his head back and looked up at me.

It was the most dangerous thing I'd ever seen a man do.

I pulled my T-shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor.

I had nothing on underneath.

His gaze went over me slowly, all the way down, and I watched his throat work.

"Christ," he said, hoarse. "Look at you."

"Keep looking."

I climbed into his lap, one knee on either side of his hips, and kissed him.

It wasn't like the cemetery.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Mafia Boss & His White Rose from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.