Page 93 of Valentino

He raises both hands, palms out. Surrender.

"Capisco," he says.

His hands drop. The almost-smile vanishes, tucked back beneath the operational mask so quickly I could've imagined it.

"I'll build the rotation schedule," he says, already turning toward the kitchen counter where he's spread a hand-drawn map of the surrounding streets. "Bruno's next call is in ninety minutes. I'll take it unless you want to."

"Take it." I scrub a hand over my face. "Tell him we're holding position. I'll brief him in the morning."

Amanda

The water drums against my shoulders and I tip my head back, letting it stream down my neck, my chest, pooling in the hollow of my collarbones before sliding lower.

I press my palms flat against the tile wall and breathe.

The thing about confessing a decade-old obsession to a man who kills people for a living is that there's no dignified recovery. You can't unsay I've loved you since I was fifteen. You can't take it back with a laugh and a just kidding and a redirect to something safe. I handed him every card I've ever held.

The bathroom door opens, and Valentino stands in the doorway.

The shower has a glass partition but it hides nothing. Not a damn thing. He knows this. His gaze starts at my face and stays there for exactly two seconds, long enough to give me the chance to tell him to leave. I don't. His eyes drop to my throat. The water running between my breasts in thin, shining lines.

Lower.

My throat has dried up despite standing under a stream of hot water, and all I can manage is to stare back at him while my pulse beats so hard I can feel it in my teeth.

He reaches for the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head.

Oh.

Oh.

The tattoos hit me first. Sprawling across both pectorals, dark ink against olive skin. From here, through the fogged glass and the steam, they look almost like flowers. Elaborate, layered petals spreading from his sternum outward, curving along the hard lines of his chest.

But as my eyes adjust through the water streaming down the glass, I realize they're not flowers at all. They're ornamental, geometric, something between sacred architecture and armor. Heavy black linework with intricate shading that follows the contours of muscle beneath. The kind of tattoo that takes dozens of hours in a chair.

Broad shoulders that taper into a hard waist, thick arms. A scar runs along his left side, pale and old, disappearing into the waistband of his pants.

His hands go to his belt.

The buckle clicks. The leather slides free. He holds my gaze the entire time, and the slow, unhurried way he unfastens the button, draws down the zipper makes me want to scream at him to hurry up.

His pants drop to the tile floor. He steps out of them.

I press my back against the cool tile. Water runs down my stomach and between my thighs, and I let my hand follow it, fingers trailing along the same path, fully aware that he's tracking every movement. My bottom lip catches between my teeth.

He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs and pushes them down.

I forget how to breathe.

He's—God. Thick, hard, heavy against his own thigh, bigger than I expected, and I expected a lot because I've been pressed up against this man enough times to have a working theory. He stands there in the steam like something carved from darker stone than the rest of the world is made of, completely confident, completely unbothered by the fact that I'm staring with my lips parted.

I curl my fingers toward him. Come here.

He crosses the bathroom and opens the glass partition.

He steps into the shower, and I put both hands flat against his chest. I drag my hands outward along the patterns, feeling the hard plane of muscle underneath shift as his breathing changes. His heart slams against my right palm. Steady and brutal.

"You didn't knock," I say.