Page 41 of Just One More Night

It took her some time to compose herself. To gaze at the roses, let their scent fill her, and remind herself that she’d fooled at least one other person into believing she was fearless.

“How did you know that you’d be good at...what you used to do?” she asked.

The look Stefan shot at her was amused. “I did not know. I did it and did not die. Again and again. This is how I decided it was good.” The corner of his mouth kicked up, and she knew by now that it was his real smile. She could see the way it made his eyes gleam. “Also I made money. This was also good.”

“Some people have a calling, you know.” Indy sighed. “Is something wrong with us that we don’t?”

“If you want there to be.” He reached over and tapped her on the nose. “Yes, some people have a calling. But everybody has a life. You are not required to choose your path once, long ago, and never deviate from it again. Maybe those who live that way are lucky. But then again, maybe not. Maybe it is better to try many things, so that when you choose, you know you chose well.”

“Says the gangster who’s made himself an art dealer.”

His smile sharpened. “All art dealers are gangsters, Indiana. Ask any artist.”

That night, everything seemed hotter. Brighter.

She knew by now that the kind of intensity she’d been so afraid of was both better and worse than she’d feared. Better, because it didn’t wreck her and it made everything sing, in and out of bed. But it did ask more of her than she’d ever given before. It was the intimacy of this month together. It was staying put and more than that, letting herself enjoy what that was like. To relax into the time. To do it without daydreaming where she’d go next.

It was the conversations they had, rambling and endless, picking up and carrying on from one hour to the next. From one night into the next afternoon, making her think things likeforever.

It was Stefan himself. This wild thing they’d built between them.

And it was worse, too, because it had an expiration date.

But Indy didn’t like to think about that.

It was a long night. Stefan woke her again and again, taking her in every way he could, almost as if he was marking her. Imprinting himself on her and inside her, making her body his so that there would be nothing left of her that wasn’t his.

A thought that made her come all around him, screaming out his name.

The next morning he was there when she woke, looking down at her with a stark expression on that beautiful face of his.

She blinked, then moved closer, searching his gaze as she fit her palms to his jaw. His beard had come in and scraped at her skin, but she loved it. She loved the heat. She loved—

Careful,she warned herself.Be very careful.

“What’s the matter?” she asked him.

“Today is a naked day, foolish girl,” he said, darkly. And she remembered, vaguely, that she’d once complained about that endearment. When now it was like a song inside her, sweet and long. “And it will be intense.”

“Isn’t it always?”

But she had hardly recognized the smile he gave her then. It didn’t make it to his eyes.

“This will be different,” Stefan told her. “Because this will be the last.”

CHAPTER TEN

“STEFAN...”INDYBEGAN.

But he didn’t want to hear it.

Because their month was up tomorrow and the only thing she seemed to want to talk about was how to find her passion.

Meaning, clearly, it wasn’t him.

He was going to have to find a way to be okay with that.

Tomorrow.