I captured her chin, bringing her face back to mine. I stroked her chin softly, thumb to jaw. “It’s nothing, Story. I’m Gray Crowne. I can make the world stop turning.”

“If the world stops turning, it ends,” she whispered, a darkness clouding her gaze. Something was off, and I had a feeling it had to do with whatever my mother said.

“So fucking what? I’ll move the earth for you, Story. I’ll make the sky fall.”

She touched my chest, my beating heart. “And you would be the one cut by the jagged blue pieces.”

What kind of fucking torture is it to wait years to fuck, to wait until you’ve found someone who won’t rip you to shreds, to finally find that girl, and then not be able to have her?

“I don’t fucking care.” I gripped her closer.

She twisted her lips into an adorable pout. Anytime she had that fucking pout on her lips it just made me want to bite them, which was pretty fucking distracting, considering I’d just promised to obey the boundaries we’d set.

“Tell me where you want to go first,” I said, voice rough.

She took a deep breath, then exhaled a blinding smile. “Can we get spaghetti?”

I laughed. “Yeah, Snitch, we can get all the spaghetti.”

Five different restaurants and I don’t know how many bowls of spaghetti later, we were back at the Crowne Hotel penthouse.

“I’m full,” Story said, clutching her stomach as she flopped onto a plush rug on the ground. The penthouse had a three-sixty view of downtown Rome, and St. Peter’s Basilica was aglow atop the twinkling lights.

I arched a brow. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

She stretched her arms above her head. The white blouse she was wearing came loose from her dark skirt, exposing a thin stretch of skin. She was so unaware of her effect on me. Of how sexy she looked, just lying on the rug.

I got to my knees, crawling beside her.

She rolled on her stomach, smiling. “It’s possible. It just takes a few bowls of spaghetti.”

I slid a hand under the thick cotton material of her skirt. For a moment I felt I was back in fucking boarding school, sliding my hands beneath those pleated skirts—but even the skirts at Rosey were shorter than this.

She gasped. “Y-You said we wouldn’t do it again.”

I loved her stutter almost as much as I love the raspy voice it came from.

I slid my hands farther up her thigh, just beneath the swell of her ass. “We’re in a different country.”

She laughed, burrowing her face into the rug. “Is this an episode of Friends? The rules still count.”

“Do they?”