Page 38 of Damon

Probably with his bare hands.

And he'd be justified.

I shift slightly, trying to ease the guilt crushing like a weight, and Viviana makes a small sound in her sleep, her arm tightening across my ribs. Even unconscious, she's holding onto me like she doesn't want to let go.

Which makes this a thousand times worse.

Because the smart thing to do would be to end this. Right now. Make it clear that what happened was a mistake, put some distance between us, go back to the professional boundaries that should have kept this from happening in the first place.

But looking at her now, hair spread across my pillow, lips slightly parted, looking younger and more innocent than she has any right to – I don't want to end it.

I want to keep her.

Permanently.

Make her mine in every way that matters.

Which is completely fucking insane.

She's Roberto Bonacci's daughter. The enemy's princess. In a few weeks, maybe a month, this will all be over and I'll have to hand her back to her father. Back to her real life, where she'll marry some nice Italian boy from an appropriate family and forget all about the dangerous man who held her captive.

The dangerous man who took her virginity and then convinced himself it didn't mean anything.

Except it does mean something.

Whether I want it to or not.

Being someone's first isn't something you walk away from unchanged. It creates a bond, a connection, a sense of responsibility in our world that goes deeper than just physical attraction.

It makes her mine in a way that has nothing to do with this fucked-up situation and everything to do with the most primitive parts of human nature.

And that possessiveness, that sudden surge of ownership I feel when I look at her – that's dangerous as hell.

Because it makes me want to do stupid things. Like fuck her every way I know how. Like tell her father the truth when this is over. Like burning down everything I've built my life on for a girl I've known for a week.

A girl who gave me something priceless without even telling me.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, pulling me out of my spiral. Text message. I reach for it carefully, trying not to wake Viviana.

It's from my father:Meeting tomorrow, 10 AM. Updates on the Bonacci situation.

Right. The situation. The reason Viviana is here in the first place, the reason we're working with her father instead of killing each other.

For a few hours tonight, I forgot about all of that. Forgot about the threats, the investigation, the temporary truce that's the only thing keeping both our families from going to war.

I forgot about everything except the way she felt in my arms.

I type back:Will be there.

Then I set the phone aside and look down at the woman sleeping against my side. In the moonlight streaming through the windows, she looks even younger than eighteen. She looks like what she is; a girl who should be worrying about college and boys her own age, not international crime families and men who kill people for a living.

Not men like me.

Definitely not dangerous men like me.

But it's too late for those regrets. What's done is done, and now I have to figure out how to handle the consequences.

I can pretend it never happened. Go back to professional boundaries, treat her like a job, hand her back to her father when this is over and never look back.