Page 16 of The Kiss that Captured a Billionaire (Heart & Soul #2)

Ten

Theo closed his eyes and counted to ten.

It didn’t work.

Give her a moment. Let her enjoy a shower. You know what will happen if you get in it with her, he scolded himself.

He groaned when his body disagreed. He glared at his wayward cock that was already tenting the jogging pants he had pulled on.

“You’re not helping,” he muttered to the lower half of his body.

Rose, bare beneath the streaming water, burned in his mind like molten gold. His fleeting chivalry died a hasty death.

“I agree, she should pick out what she wants to eat.”

He gave up the pretense of trying to resist, turned, and retraced his path to his bedroom.

He entered the bathroom to find a goddess shrouded in steam.

Through the clouded glass, Rose’s silhouette moved with a grace that stopped his breath. He pushed the loose jogging pants off his lean hips, kicked them to the side, and made a beeline for the shower.

The door slid open on a wave of heat. Rose looked over her shoulder, her eyes lighting in welcome and her lips parting with promise.

She reached for him, her small hand closing around his aching shaft in a touch that was both possessive and reverent. Her fingers flexed.

“Come here,” she murmured, tugging him inside. “It took you long enough to come back.”

Pleasure punched through him, sharp and immediate. He crowded her against the wall, letting the warm spray soak his hair and run down his back.

Her lips brushed his chest, soft and teasing. She tweaked his nipples with her tongue before she began a slow descent down his body.

Theo’s breath left him in a harsh groan.

Before she could kneel, he caught her wrists, pulling her back up and pinning her hands above her head. The move made her laugh, the sound low and throaty in the confined space.

He was about to claim her mouth when his gaze fell on a small mark just inside the bend of her elbow.

He cupped her wrists in one hand and brushed the water from his eyes, frowning. Leaning closer, he studied the birthmark.

Water slid over the faint shape. Italy; the boot, even Sicily.

His grip tightened as he felt a sudden, brutal twist in his chest.

“What is this?” he asked roughly, his thumb brushing the outline.

She tilted her head, the corners of her lips curving. “A birthmark. My grandmother said my mother had the same one. Why?”

Her teasing tone barely registered. Theo swallowed hard, his mind churning.

No. Impossible. And yet, the shape…

Mother and daughter… her last name…

It was too much of a coincidence.

She wiggled her nose at him. “If you don’t let me go, I’m going to shrivel into a prune before we get anything to eat. For some reason, I’m suddenly starving!”

He caressed the mark once more before he kissed her and forced himself to release her, schooling his face into something close to normal.

“I’ll feed you,” he promised, though his voice came out low and uneven.

She rewarded him with a smile and rose on her toes to kiss him, warm and unguarded, before slipping beneath his arm and stepping out of the shower with a playful slap on his right buttock and a giggle.

He stood there for a moment, water streaming down his body, while his world tilted on its axis.

By the time he turned off the taps and stepped out, she was wrapped in a towel, already disappearing toward the bedroom. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she called.

He reached for his own towel—but his gaze snagged on the bathroom counter.

Her silver locket sat there, delicate and unassuming.

He picked it up.

The weight of it was light in his palm, but something deep inside him felt heavy. He caressed the seam with his thumbnail before applying pressure.

The locket snapped open. For a split second, guilt pierced him—he’d opened what wasn’t his. But the guilt drowned beneath the tidal wave of certainty.

Lost in the shock of his discovery, he didn’t notice the tiny scrap of color that slipped free and fell to the tile. His attention was locked on the two smiling faces inside.

The image of the dark-haired woman with Rose’s mouth struck him in the gut. He knew her face as if it were his own. He had been studying it for the past three months.

Livia Alliata.

The air left his lungs in a curse. He braced a hand on the counter, his hip digging into the edge as the room seemed to spin.

It couldn’t be.

But… it was.

Rose… my Rose… is Livia’s daughter.

The thought echoed through his mind.

He had found Lorenzo and Sophia’s missing granddaughter. She was his lover.

He closed the locket, his hand tightening around it. The ripple of realization cut both ways—one part shock, one part something far more dangerous.

This changed everything.

Not only had he found her… he’d crossed a line there was no coming back from.

He had touched her, claimed her, wanted her in ways that went far beyond the boundaries of his godfather’s trust.

And yet?—

No, he hadn’t betrayed Lorenzo’s trust. This only made things inevitable.

His gaze slid through the open bathroom door to the rumpled sheets where she’d lain with him only minutes ago. He wasn’t going to lose her. If anything, this made his course of action clearer.

Tomorrow, he’d call Mimi. He’d tell her Rose needed to be free of the theatre. That she needed to come with him to London.

He would need to arrange a DNA test—it would just be a formality, undeniable proof for Lorenzo and Sophia’s protection—but he already knew what the results would be.

Rose was Livia’s daughter.

Which meant Lorenzo wasn’t just about to gain a granddaughter, he was going to gain a new grandson-in-law.

Theo wasn’t going to let anything—past, present, or future—stand in the way of that.

“Hey, are you okay?” Rose asked, pulling him out of his daze.

“What? Yes. I’ll be right there,” he said, closing his hand over the locket and bending to retrieve the jogging pants he had discarded minutes ago.

“Okay. I wasn’t sure if you had fallen asleep in the shower,” she teased.

His gaze softened. She looked so beautiful wearing his dress shirt from earlier and nothing else. A fierce sense of protectiveness swept through him. His beautiful Rose’s life was about to change—drastically—in a very short amount of time.

“Let’s eat, then I think we should get some sleep,” he suggested.

She laughed, turned, and gave him a sexy smile over her shoulder. “Considering it is almost three in the morning, I agree. I’m going to be part of New York’s walking dead tomorrow. But, God! What a way to go. Oh, I think I heard the microwave ping. I call dibs on the first round.”

He pulled on his jogging pants and chuckled when she twirled and disappeared. He paused again, picked up his cellphone, and shot a quick text to Nikos.

Need to see you first thing in the morning.

Yeah, same. See you early.

“Theo, dinner!” Rose called from the kitchen.

“Coming.”

“You will once you see what is for dessert,” she replied.

Theo laughed and shook his head. He replaced his phone on the nightstand and headed for the door.

“Yes, my lovely Rose. Life is about to get very interesting,” he murmured with growing excitement.

The low, insistent vibration of a phone pulled her from the edges of sleep. She reached blindly across the bed, her fingers brushing over cool sheets instead of warm skin. Her eyes blinked open to the soft gray light of dawn.

Theo’s side of the bed was empty.

Somewhere beyond the bedroom door, the shower ran in a steady, distant rhythm. She squinted at the clock on the nightstand. Six o’clock. Barely.

Groaning, she rolled over, dragging his pillow against her chest. The scent of him—clean soap, warm skin, and a faint thread of something darker and masculine—wrapped around her, and she buried her face in it.

God, she was tired.

Every inch of her felt tender, in the best possible way.

Her lips still tingled from his kisses, her body thrummed with the echo of his touch.

She hadn’t known it was possible to make love so many creative ways—slow and reverent, fast and desperate, playful, teasing, and everything in between.

The memories sent a traitorous flicker of heat spiraling through her belly.

The bathroom door opened, releasing a wave of steam into the bedroom.

Theo stepped out, dressed in charcoal slacks and a crisp white shirt, his hair still damp. Even this early, he looked like he was about to close a million-dollar deal.

She peeked up from the pillow, a happy smile curving her lips. “Where are you going at this hour?” she asked, her voice husky with sleep.

“Nikos is on his way over,” he said, leaning down to brush his lips across her forehead. “We need to discuss a few things. It shouldn’t take long.”

She groaned and dropped back against the pillows. “It’s barely morning.”

His fingers slid through her hair, pushing it back from her face in a touch so tender it made her chest ache. “Sleep in,” he murmured.

She nodded, the soft pillow molding to her cheek as he left. She listened to his footsteps, a faint whisper against the plush carpet. The muffled click of the closing bedroom door brought a sigh to her lips.

She lay there, eyes closed, desperately trying to recapture the peace of sleep, but her traitorous mind was wide awake.

She was accustomed to the theatre's early mornings, to the expectant hum of tasks waiting to unfold.

Despite the deliciously boneless, almost melting feel of her body, the thought of the empty stage tugged at her, a hollow echo in her mind.

With a sigh, she pushed the covers back and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She quickly made the bed before she gathered her discarded clothes from the night before.

She padded into the bathroom, breathing in the fresh scent of Theo’s aftershave. With a low groan of pleasure, she turned on the shower. The warm water washed away the lingering ache in her muscles, but the heat only seemed to sharpen the awareness still humming through her.