Page 56 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

“Stay,” she says against my mouth.

“I will,” I say, and I mean it like an oath.

The room tilts the way rooms do when you have chosen wrong and right at the same time.

She backs into the shadowed doorway, bringing me with her by the front of my shirt.

ELISA

Ipress my back to the storeroom door and pull him in with me by the front of his shirt.

My fingers grip the cotton, knuckles tight.

I don’t kiss him right away.

I just hold him close, my breath stirring the collar of his shirt, our foreheads almost touching.

The silence between us is hot and slow, thick like the kitchen gets when the ovens have been running for hours.

My heart is still trying to decide whether it should be afraid or grateful.

I let it do both.

He doesn’t speak.

His hand finds my waist, just above the hem of my coat.

His fingers drag slowly upward, thumb brushing under the edge of my sweater, as if he’s trying to memorize me one inch at a time.

I lean into him and kiss the edge of his mouth—just shy of a real kiss—and he exhales like I’ve taken something from him.

“Bright lights or shadows?” he murmurs, his voice hushed like a secret passed in church.

“Leave them off,” I whisper. “Find me in the dark.”

He nods once and slides my coat from my shoulders.

It falls in a soft heap to the floor.

His hands return immediately, finding the edge of my sweater, tugging it up over my head in a single smooth motion.

I’m left in a bra and jeans, skin already prickling from the difference in temperature, or maybe from the way he looks at me.

Like he’s choosing hunger instead of salvation.

He steps back for a second.

Just enough to take me in.

Then he says, soft and quiet and not like a question at all, “Sit.”

I sit on the prep table behind me.

The wood is cool under my palms.

My legs dangle.