"I didn’t run into anything," I snap. "I had lunch."
"You were out in the open. Anyone could have seen you."
"They didn’t."
"You don’t know that."
I make a little sound, frustration curling tight in my chest. "This isn’t just about today, is it?"
Marco doesn’t answer.
Because we both know it isn’t.
It’s about last night. About Mancini. About what I saw.
What I tried to stop.
And Marco—he doesn’t know what to do with that. With me.
He steps even closer, the heat of his body licking against mine, and before I can stop him, before I can take a single breath, he backs me up against the wall. The impact isn’t rough, but it steals the air from my lungs anyway.
Marco looms over me, his body caging mine in, his hand braced against the wall beside my head.
It’d be so much simpler if I could push him away, make it clear he can’t just erase our argument with proximity and heat. But then he grips my chin between his fingers, tilting my face up, forcing me to meet his eyes. "Tell me," he murmurs, his voice like gravel, "tell me you don’t love pushing me to the edge."
My pulse pounds against my ribs. "Marco?—"
His lips melt against mine, and then he’s kissing me roughly, furiously, like I’m the only person in the world who can keep him sane. Maybe I am. Maybe that’s why he’s like this.
It’s like he’s trying to brand me with his anger, with his possessiveness, with the desperation simmering just beneath the surface.
And God help me?—
I kiss him back.
His mouth is fire, searing through me, burning away the last of my resistance.
I want to push him away, to tell him I’m still furious, still unsteady, that the distance between us isn’t so easily closed. Butmy body betrays me, drawn to him in a way that defies reason, defies the wreckage still settling between us.
But none of that matters. Nothing else exists. Not with his hands branding my waist, dragging me into the heat of him, leaving no space, no air, no escape. Not with his mouth crashing against mine, fierce and unrelenting, like he’s chasing something he lost—like he’s starving and I’m the only thing that will ever satisfy him.
Not when I know—deep down, where the truth aches the most—that this might be the last time.
The last time I touch him like this.
The last time I let myself drown in him, in us, in the way we fit together despite the chaos, despite the blood, despite the war raging inside and around both of us.
Marco’s fingers slide into my hair, fisting it gently as he deepens the kiss, swallowing the soft gasp that escapes me. He’s not being careful.
This is a man who’s on the edge.
A man who’s just as lost as I am.
And I let him take me under.
Let him pull me into the storm.
Because tonight, I don’t want to think about what will happen next.
