V better slow blink at Santino at some point 😏😏😏
“What are you doing, cara mia?”
“Looking.”
Yes, you are. But you don’t look at him like that. Not ever. Not even when he wants you to. In fact, whenever you do get caught in his stare you always do your best to escape it as quickly as you can. As if it’s dangerous, as if looking at him is difficult.
Initially, he considered it to be indifference towards him—perhaps even disgust—but now. Now after all these years, he doesn’t know what to think. You skitter your way around him, and yet he still feels oddly bewitched, impossibly caught in the idea of you. The idea that one day you might stand beside him, side by side, as equals in everything there is to be had. The thought alone pounds through him ruthlessly and somehow manages to heat his blood every time he thinks about it. Which is often—so fucking often he curses himself every time those thoughts come slithering forward. Because they test his self-control to a frightening degree. Make him doubt the belief that there are some things he won’t do for anyone, not even you.
You lean closer suddenly, and the sight of you is so familiar—the smell and the warmth even more so—and he inhales deeply, sharply, completely caught off guard.
Your eyes open and close slowly as you lean your chin in your palm, grinning softly, and there is something so simple yet sensual in the act itself that he swallows. Everything you do attracts him on some deep, annoyingly persistent level, but this is something else. You don’t usually engage. You always pull back, wall yourself off from him. He hates that fucking wall between you so much. A wall called John Wick that refuses to crumble and disappear—to die already.
He always has to be the one to poke and joke and play and tease.
This is new.
This…
“If you keep looking at me like that, amore,” he purrs, all slyness and alluring heat that has brought and seduced so many into his bed, and leans closer too. “This lovely evening will end only one way.”
And oh what won’t he give for the taste of you, the feel of you, the promise of that future.
For all the finery in his life, he can’t help but think that you would be the greatest gift, the sweetest victory. He craves it—you—with an intensity that rattles his very bones and he often hates it, too. This desire, this need—this trust that you have stolen from him without even trying.
“Maybe one day,” you shoot back easily, your grin widening, and swipe your fingers over his forehead, pushing the unruly curls out of the way. “If you’re good.”
He blood warms at the casual touch, something sparking to life in his gut at your sly suggestion, and his fingers flex around the glass as he stares at you. Oxygen is suddenly harder to draw, too.
Yes. One day. One day very soon, he promises himself.
