Chapter 9: Claim

He didn't say a word in the car.

The driver kept his eyes on the road, and the lights of McLean slid over Luciano's face and left it hard.

I sat with my hands in my lap and my palm still burning.

"Say it," I said, when we turned onto the river road.

"Say what?"

"That I was stupid."

"You were reckless."

"She had Lila's bracelet on her arm."

"She did," he said.

"And you would have been shot in a room full of witnesses if Silvio had been a worse man.

"I was standing eight feet from you with no gun.

"Do you understand what that was?"

"You stepped in front of me," I said.

His jaw moved.

"Yes."

"You said I was under your name in front of eighty people."

"Yes."

"Why?"

He turned his head.

His grey eyes were the coldest I had seen them, and underneath the cold they were burning.

"Because you are," he said.

The car crossed the bridge.

Neither of us spoke again.

In the house he walked ahead of me up the stairs, and I followed with my heart going.

He stopped in his bedroom and turned.

He said, "You could have died tonight."

"So could you."

"I'm used to it."

"I'm not," I said, "and I did it anyway.

"You should have let me.

"I'd do it again."

He crossed the room in two strides and caught my face in his hand.

His mouth came down on mine, rough, angry, a kiss with no gentleness at all.

I kissed him back just as hard.

I got my hands in his hair and pulled, and he made a low sound against my lips.

He pressed me into the door.

His knee pushed between mine, and his hand went to the zipper at my back and dragged it down in one long hiss.

The green silk fell from my shoulders and pooled around my feet.

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