The instant Carolyn asks me where I was before I came back to New York, my heart clenches within my chest and my hands and feet go cold.

I don’t want to talk about this.

I bite back the urge to get up and leave. It’s almost as strong as the urge to wrap her even more tightly in my arms.

The conversation has already been heading in a direction that makes my heart hammer against my rib cage, even though I’m doing my best to stay calm and relaxed in the cocoon of blankets with Carolyn.

Please, I think. Don’t do this now.

“I’m still right here,” I say, arching an eyebrow and throwing myself into the performance of flirting…which turns out to only be half-false.

She swallows.

“I mean, before you were here. Before you…came back to New York City.”

I have a few options. I can choose not to answer. I can choose to do something else with her—to her—right now. I can get up and leave.

Or I can tell her the truth.

What is it about her that makes me want to tell her the truth more than I want to protect myself? There’s going to be hell to pay for this eventually. What’s the good in starting now?

Because if I lie to her in this moment, I’ll never be able to stop myself. It’ll be too easy.

“I was in Italy.”

Her eyes go wide for a split second while she searches my face.

“Italy?”

“Yes.”

I almost can’t believe that she doesn’t know that already, but I didn’t exactly advertise my new address when I left the city two years ago. Back then, I had no idea I was going to end up in Italy with Elisa. I had no idea what was going to happen to me—to both of us—before I returned to the city.

Carolyn swallows hard. “Why were you there?”

Maybe she does know more than she’s letting on. Maybe she’s digging to see if I have a wife back in Italy that she doesn’t know about. Maybe, like me, she’s been burned before.

But she doesn’t say.

“Business.”

The word comes out with a tone that’s far less convincing than I hoped it’d be, and Carolyn looks away, toward the massive headboard of my bed. When her eyes meet mine again, she’s got a little smile on her face that almost—almost—makes me forget everything we’ve talked about.

“I’m asking way too many questions.”

“I agree with that.”

Carolyn sways her hips underneath my arm, and the movement sends a shock of pleasure straight to my spine, my mind blanking out. Does it matter if she’s prying a little? In the long run, do I care, if it means I can keep my hands on her for a little while longer?

Not today it doesn’t.

On the next sway under the covers, I slide my hand lower, between her legs.

She’s already wet.

We don’t come out from under the covers for another hour.

* * *

Carolyn laughs over her plate of sushi, fork halfway between her plate and her lips. “Stop. That can’t be true.”

“Afterward, my entire torso was red. It looked like I’d been slapped by that guy from Harry Potter.”

“Hagrid? The half-giant?” she says, her voice rising with every word. “Ace Kingsley, I would never have imagined you to be the Harry Potter type.”

“I’m not.” I shrug, then take another sip of miso soup. It’s delicious, and I’m starving after what was essentially an entire day with Carolyn in bed.

When we emerged from the bed, the sheets a complete wreck, she ran naked into the master bathroom and turned on the shower. That evolved from a quick rinse to very nearly another round. I had her wrists pinned against the marble tiling on the wall, hot water rushing over my back and my lips pressed hard against hers, but she turned her head to the side, gasping, a huge smile on her face.

“I want to. But I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

I pressed my lips against the smooth, wet skin of her neck.

“You—oh, my God, Ace,” she groaned. “If we—” She could hardly get the words out, and it was so hot I wanted to turn her around and take her right there. “If we do this again, I’ll be wrecked for a week.”

I pulled back, leaving her with a wicked grin.

She stuck her tongue out at me and soaped up her unbelievable body, rinsed off, then reached for one of the towels on the hooks next to the shower.

“I’m starving.”

“I’m starving for you.”

She eyed my cock, standing straight out from my body under the jets of water, and gave me that same wicked smile right back. “I can see that. But I’m hungry.”

“Sushi?”

“Is that becoming a theme?”

Now I’m looking across the table at her in some hole-in-the-wall place with impeccable service three blocks away from our building. How did we ever start talking about the time I belly-flopped into the pool in front of every girl in the ninth grade? How did she draw that out of me? I’m used to being a little cold, a little aloof, when I’m out with women. All except Elisa.

When her name comes to mind I still feel it—that jagged pain, the wrenching worry—but when Carolyn is in front of me, it’s dull, distant.

Am I using her so that it doesn’t hurt?

Or am I falling for her?

In the end, will it matter?

“Then how do you know about the giant in Harry Potter?”

“I saw the movies.”

“You watched the movies?” She stares at me, open-mouthed.

“In Italy.”

“Oh,” she says, shaking her head slightly as if I’ve told a joke. “You would do that.”

“Yes.”

Good save. I can tell she doesn’t want to steer the conversation in that direction.

“My turn. One time, I was at the pool with every guy worth knowing in my college classes and all of my girlfriends, and I did an incredible dive off the diving board.”

“This isn’t like my story.”

“No. Because at the end, my top came off.”

She’s so graceful.

I never want her to leave.