Prologue
No More Anything
I woke up naked, in a motel, with a man behind me.
We were spooning.
Ren always spooned me.
No, that wasn’t right. He didn’t always spoon me. Sometimes he tucked me into his side when he was on his back. Sometimes he tucked me to his front when he was on his side and I was on my back. Sometimes I spooned him. But when I did, he held my hand to his chest, even in his sleep, so I couldn’t escape.
He was a maximum contact sleeper.
I loved that.
Secretly.
The problem was, as far as I was concerned, he was just a fuck buddy.
Lorenzo “Ren” Zano didn’t feel the same way.
We’d been dancing this dance for over a year now. Ren trying to convince me we had something. Me disagreeing.
Nope. Again that wasn’t right. Ren wasn’t trying to convince me we had something. He was simply convinced, and for the last eight months had been acting like he was my boyfriend. If boyfriends were bossy, annoying and in your face all the time, telling you what you could and couldn’t do (in my case, it was mostly what I couldn’t).
The months before that, Ren had been trying to convince me we should explore what we had.
I guessed he just gave up trying to convince me and decided to be my boyfriend even if I didn’t agree.
The problem with me not agreeing was I tended to do a few things when Ren was around. One was argue with him like he was my boyfriend. Another was to have the occasional meal (or maybe not so occasional) with him and shoot the breeze, like he was my boyfriend. Another was sleep with him, and spend the night, like he was my boyfriend.
“I know you’re awake.”
I rolled my newly awakened eyes.
Ren always woke up before me in the mornings and always sensed when I was awake.
Except once.
Our first time together.
But what happened after I woke up that time nearly killed me, so I didn’t think about that.
Always when he sensed I was awake, he commenced with The Talk (necessitating capital letters because Ren considered these Talks gravely serious and took them that way; again, I disagreed).
Usually these Talks centered around what we argued about before I jumped him. Or before he jumped me and we went on to have hours of mind-boggling, soul-enriching, life-changing sex, then passed out and Ren instigated Maximum Contact Sleep.
Today, I could tell by his tone, was not going to be different.
“I need coffee,” I told him.
“I’ll get you coffee after we talk.”
See?
There it was.
The Talk.
And bossy.
I sighed and stated, “Zano, I don’t wanna talk.”
He put a hand in my belly, slid away and pressed me to my back so he could loom over me. Then he proceeded to press deep into me with most of his body, but some of it up on an elbow on the bed, and loom over me.
Exhibit A. Ren assumed dominant positions regularly and often in order to best be bossy, annoying and in my face; like, say, pressing me to my back in a bed and looming over me after I said I didn’t want to talk.
I caught his eyes.
God, he had gorgeous eyes.
To block out those eyes, I closed mine.
Still, I saw him, all of him, in my mind’s eye.
His eyes, his face, his hair and other parts of his anatomy (that would be all of it) usually were my undoing, and thus I would end up jumping him even in the midst of a fight. Or, alternately, I wouldn’t struggle too much if he jumped me.
He was Italian, straight up, no other blood in him. He might be American—fourth generation American to be precise—but other than not speaking a different language, I was pretty certain his entire family thought they still lived in Sicily, even though most of them lived in Englewood, Colorado. With the exception of Ren and his cousin Dominic Vincetti. They both lived fifteen minutes to the north in Denver.
