But Aliyana sitting here now, telling me she loved the piece, that it was her favorite out of all my sculptures, made me feel… proud… humbled… fucking floored. Floored that out of everything I’d created, Aliyana loved my mamma’s dedication most.

“I was in Austin, Texas, at The Blanton Museum of Art, but when I learned that your piece would be at the Met, I jumped on a plane and flew out for a whistle-stop stay of forty-eight hours just to see it up close.” She laughed. “The same thing I did to get this job actually.”

That blush was back on her cheeks, only this time I enjoyed every dip of her eyes, the flush of her cheeks, the quiet sighs she exhaled. I was just enjoying Aliyana, period.

“It sounds stupid, Elpi, but seeing your angel changed me. I don’t know what it was, but… but… ah, it doesn’t matter,” she said in embarrassment.

“Tell me,” I ordered gruffly. I really needed her to finish that fucking sentence. I needed to understand what she saw in my sculptures that had her so moved.

Aliyana took a long, drawn-out swallow but met my gaze with her brown eyes and said, “I felt you. I felt you in its every curve. I felt like I was looking straight into your soul. I felt the love you poured into that sculpture… It made me reassess everything in my life… It made me want more… it’s difficult for me to explain.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, my hands moving upward to rub over my eyes. “Aliyana…” I growled out, but not from anger, but from the fact that she was telling me things I didn’t deserve… that she didn’t want to get wrapped up in.

“Did I say too much?”

I drew my hands down my face. “Aliyana… if you saw the real me… if you saw straight into my soul, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me now.”

Aliyana’s eyes widened. “What do you mean by that?” Her voice was now shaking. I’d scared her. Good. She should be scared of me. I wasn’t the right kinda guy for her. I’d only just met her, but I knew she should be setting her standards a fucking mile higher than me.

“Exactly what I said. If you knew the real me, what I’ve done in my life, you’d be running away right the fuck now.”

“Wh-what have you done?” Her eyebrows pulled down to form a frown. “Why are you so hard on yourself?”

“Penance. A whole lotta fucking penance I need to pay.”

“But I can’t believe that of you.”

“You’re wrong.”

She shook her head adamantly. “But—” She went to argue.

Slamming my fist down on the table, I gritted my teeth, cutting off whatever she was gonna say. “You know fuck all ‘bout me, girl,” I hissed, my voice too low to be anything other than a rumbling threat. “You might think you know my art, but you know shit about me.”

Straightening in my chair, I waved to get the server’s attention, motioning for the check.

Aliyana didn’t say anything else. In fact, she picked up her purse and walked straight out of the café.

The servers watched her go, nudging each other as they stared at her ass. I jumped from my seat, pulled out a fifty, and pounded over to where the Italian punks stood gaping and slammed the note on the countertop.

As soon as they laid eyes on me, they backed off, hands held high. Their faces drained to white, seeing how much they were fucking me off and I marched out of the café to see Aliyana beside my Camino. I pulled out a smoke and, as always, placed it between my lips, taking a soothing drag. For once, I embraced the shower of rain that was pouring from the always-gray sky.

As I reached the car, Aliyana kept her head down and slid silently into the passenger seat.

My stomach rolled.

I’d really fucking hurt her.

By the time we got back to the gallery, I’d burned through three smokes and a shit ton of guilt. But it was for the best. I was no one a girl should get with, especially one as good as her.

As I pulled the car to the shadowed side entrance, I waited for her to get out. But she didn’t move. The air in the cabin of the Camino seemed to crackle with electricity, and the heat of the stagnant tobacco-filled air built until it was unbearable. I could hear every single breath that came out of Aliyana’s mouth, and with every soft inhale and exhale, my cock seemed to harden more and more, the feel of it trapped under my jeans almost painful. I risked a glance to the right. Aliyana faced forward, gripping her purse tightly on her lap with both hands.

It was only meant to be a glance, one last look at her before she left my car. I was only intending to drop her off here at the gallery, leave, and never come back.

“I need the title and information about the angel sculpture. Could you come by one night to get it done?” Aliyana said. I couldn’t fucking stand how sad she sounded.

I nodded mutely, unable to speak, and turned to stare out the windshield again. But as Aliyana started to reach for the handle on the door, something inside of me snapped. I couldn’t take how upset she was at me. I couldn’t take her leaving and not knowing how she fucking tasted.

Before I knew it, my hand reached out to my right, and wrapping my fingers around Aliyana’s arm, I pulled her against my chest, only briefly catching her eyes widen and her mouth suck in a shocked gasp, before I crushed my lips to hers.

Moving my hands from her arms, I wrapped one at the back of her slim neck and the other to fist her hair. As I forced my tongue into her mouth, both of us groaned at our tongues clashing together.