by Bethany-Kris
“I am right now.”
Siena’s floury hand patted his cheek, and left powder behind. “You’re lucky I like you, Johnathan Marcello. I don’t particularly care for spoiled men most of the time.”
“Maybe you’ve been around the wrong kind of men, then.”
Her blue eyes traveled over him once, and then twice.
“Most definitely.”
John wasn’t sure what did it for him—the way she was looking at him with those clear, honest eyes of hers, or the way her tone echoed with sin when it reached his ears. It could have been the way she looked in his shirt, too.
Whatever it was, it made the need for food come second to the need he felt for her.
John reached for Siena, and had her backside up on the counter before she even blinked. His mouth was on hers as his hands skimmed under the hem of the dress shirt covering her body. Soft, smooth skin met his warm palms while her tongue danced with his.
Something fell off the counter—the smaller bowl she had found, maybe. He didn’t even care.
Her flour dusted hands left marks down his chest while her fingernails raked over the same spots. She widened her thighs as his hands slipped higher under the shirt, and found her pert tits. Hard nipples rolled under his thumbs, and then her teeth sunk into his bottom lip.
She promised.
She teased.
She gave.
She took.
Siena didn’t have to say a thing, either. It was all in the way she touched him, how she kissed him, when she looked at him, and the way he felt from it all. The sensations clashed together like a wrecking ball coming through to tear down what little walls he had left for control, and there he was, pieces of a mess on the ground.
Her mess.
John yanked open the dress shirt to expose more of her body to him, and likely ruined three buttons in the process. Her skin heated and pebbled under his touch. She tipped her head back, and let him ghost kisses over her throat while his exploration went lower. The taste of her skin on his tongue was unlike anything else. He found one taste was not enough.
It never was.
Silky smooth, wet flesh met his fingertips between her thighs. Her little gasp when he stroked her sex with the pad of his thumb made him grin.
“So fucking responsive,” he murmured against her throat.
Siena’s throat bobbed with her hard swallow. “Something about you, John.”
“That what it is?”
“Something,” she echoed again.
He was more than happy to get her making more of those sounds. Nothing made him harder, or got him fucking hotter. Pulling back, he kissed her once hard.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“Promise I won’t.”
Siena stayed like a sexy little statue on the counter while John dug through the junk drawer on the other side of the island. Anything he had extra of, he just shoved it in there. Soon enough, he found what he needed.
A condom.
By the time he was back between the heaven of Siena’s thighs, she seemed to have decided to take the lead. Her deft hands snuck beneath his sleep pants, and found his cock. The way her palm circled him, and stroked him even more awake was damn addicting. He handed over the foil packet when she reached for it.
Pants shoved down around his hips, and latex rolled onto his length, John figured he had waited long enough. He yanked Siena to the very edge of the counter when he first heard the phone ringing upstairs.
His cell phone.
The familiar tune—one he used for the boss—echoed in the back of his mind.
John ignored the call, and kissed Siena instead. The heat of her mouth tempted him while the wet slit of her cunt teased him. She rubbed the head of his cock along her pussy, and rocked her hips back and forth at the same time.
The phone call stopped ringing upstairs damn near to the second John flexed his hips forward. He found himself buried nine inches deep into Siena, and instantly without air. It all rushed from his lungs with the wave of relief that slid down his spine.
A heat like no other filled him.
A satisfaction like he’d never known slipped through him.
A want he had never known thundered inside him.
Her soft voice in his ear, and her fingernails dragging down his back urged him on. Every please, and there, God, there mixed in with her high and breathless cries. The prettiest music he had ever heard.
The phone started ringing again.
John was lost in something far better.
His fingertips dug into Siena’s ass as he pulled her into every one of his thrusts. He could feel the tremor working its way through her legs when she tightened them around his hips. Her pussy squeezed him tight, and sucked him deeper.
It was in her eyes, though—a high, crazed look stared back at him.
He knew that stare.
It looked far better on her than it did on him.
Especially like this.
“Jesus Christ,” she breathed.
John bit her jaw. “It’s John, actually.”
Siena’s breathless laughter was interrupted by the clenching of her muscles. Her orgasm came on quick, and left her raking lines down his naked back.
John wasn’t even close to being done.
“This better be fucking good,” John grumbled when he walked in his uncle’s office.
His steps faltered at the many men who waited inside the space. His uncles, father, and Andino. His gaze skipped to the most important man in the room because the boss was always the first one to be respected before anyone else—Dante.
“What’s going on?” John asked.
Lucian spoke up first. “Have a seat, son.”
John straightened his suit jacket. “Nah, I’m good. I kind of want to know why I’m here, though. I don’t like to be interrupted, you know.”
Those phone calls didn’t stop coming until John forced himself away from Siena to answer one. His uncle said nothing except to get to the fucking mansion. Just like that—nothing else.
“Yeah, I bet,” Giovanni muttered.
John gave his youngest uncle a look. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“John,” Dante said, his tone thick with a warning. “Show some respect, huh?”
He checked his attitude, but not because he fucking wanted to.
“Yeah, all right.” John gave the boss his attention. “I’m here—what’s up?”
“You didn’t think to tell any of us that you were going to be having dinner with the Calabrese boss and his family last night?” Dante asked.
“I was invited,” John replied, shrugging. “Tell me how to refuse that without breaking the rules we live by, and I will do that next time.”
“You still didn’t tell anyone,” his father said.
John didn’t see why that mattered. “I didn’t need to. It was a dinner.”
“With the Calabrese boss. You know how the Marcellos feel about that family, John,” Giovanni put in.
John’s attention was still only on the boss. “I couldn’t be disrespectful, and refuse. So, I went. It’s over.”
“You cannot trust a Calabrese,” Dante murmured.
The familiar green eyes of his uncle bore into John. For some reason—not one he could pull forward right away—he didn’t think Dante was only talking about Matteo and his sons.
“I don’t trust the Calabrese boss, or his shithead sons,” John countered. “I remember what they did to my father’s family.”
Lucian cleared his throat, but said nothing.
“Why didn’t you answer my calls this morning?” Dante asked quietly. “You were fine with telling me you couldn’t disrespect Matteo, and yet you made me call you ten times before you finally answered. What was so important this morning that you couldn’t answer me, Johnathan?”
“I was busy.”
His answer was not good enough.
He knew before he said it.
Dante nodded, and leaned back in the chair
. “I know you took the Calabrese girl home with you, John. See, I found out about the dinner invitation, and thought just in case, you should have someone follow behind. I don’t trust snakes like those ones in Brooklyn, and in no way will I allow a man of mine to confer with them without some kind of backup.”
John only heard one thing in all of that.
One thing that made him enraged.
One thing that burned him like betrayal.
“You fucking had someone follow me?” he asked, deathly still and dark in his heart.
“I—”
“Someone tailed me?”
“John,” Andino said, pushing off the edge of the desk. “He thought it would be best considering how the Calabrese are sometimes.”
John’s vision blackened.
His lungs ached with every breath.
All over again, he was left feeling like he did when he was first released from prison. Like a fucking wild animal that nobody trusted. Like he couldn’t do his damn job because someone always had to be looking over his shoulder.
“Because I can’t look out for myself or be trusted, right?” John asked. “That’s funny, boss, considering the Calabrese didn’t make any effort to hide fuck all about their intentions when they invited me to dinner. Except my own family does exactly that instead of just fucking asking me. But they’re the ones I have to watch out for, huh?”
John let out a bitter laugh.
“It’s not a big deal,” Dante said, “and it’s not like you’re making it out to be, John.”
“Or is it exactly that, boss?” he asked. “Have you gotten someone to follow me before this time, too?”
No one answered.
John didn’t need them to at that point.
“Why?” he asked.
At least, his family was honest.
Brutally so.
“Andi mentioned you had an interest in the Calabrese girl,” Dante said.
John’s gaze flew to his cousin—bitter and full of anger. “What, you ran to tattle on me like a fucking baby, or something?”
“No, I—”
“Screw you, Andino.”
Andino stepped forward, but John pointed at his best friend to keep the new little underboss back a step. A silent warning that Andino knew all too well.
John’s father, on the other hand, had never cared. Lucian came closer, and John’s jaw clenched so hard his molars might have cracked.
“John, they cannot be trusted, and you know that,” Lucian said. “Not the men, and certainly not one of their women. No matter who she is.”
That probably stung the worst.
They didn’t even know Siena.
It was just her last name that colored her bad.
Like his disorder left them assuming shit about him.
It was all the same.
“Fuck you all.”
The three words slipped out of John’s mouth easier than he expected them to, and he let them escape before he really thought it over.
Dante stood from his chair.
Lucian came one step closer.
Giovanni didn’t move.
Andino just frowned.
John shook his head, and turned for the door. He was done with whatever this was. He was done with them for today.
“Yeah, fuck every single one of you.”
TEN
John’s place was spotless …
Siena kept that thought in mind as she finished up washing the last few dishes from the pancake mess she had made. A plate of pancakes sat on the cupboard, untouched and getting cooler by the minute.
She remembered the night before that Johnathan’s bed had been perfectly made before they climbed in it, and messed it all up. Then, when he left this morning, he had taken five minutes to fix his bed again before he left the house.
For a bachelor who lived on his own, Siena expected Johnathan to be at least a little untidy. Like most men who lived alone were. A few clothes scattered somewhere. A floor that could use a sweep. Knickknacks or mismatched treasures spread out on shelves or tables.
Nothing.
Johnathan had none of those.
His place was meticulously clean. His floors were shiny enough that someone could probably eat off them. She noticed that morning even the clothes in his walk-in closet were carefully hung by color, and arranged by each type of item.
It was all a little OCD-like, in some ways. Except … Siena knew Johnathan likely wasn’t struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She only leaned toward that impression because she noticed him, too.
He didn’t say a word when she went through his kitchen, or made a mess. He didn’t have any strange rituals or compulsions, so to speak, for her to take note of. He washed his hands before and after he ate, and when he went to the bathroom, but that was about it.
Was it possible he just managed the disorder through tidiness and organizing every little thing? Sure, but she really didn’t think that was the case at all.
Siena was also quite aware that OCD could not be simplified in to strange habits and a compulsive need to do very specific things.
She really shouldn’t be speculating at all.
It wasn’t her place.
Those pancakes are going to be disgusting.
Siena scrubbed the massive bowl John had barely needed to reach for. She eyed the stack of three pancakes on the plate a couple of feet away.
She didn’t know what to do with them because she didn’t have the first clue when John was going to be back. The man had no plastic wrap in his house to put over food—she hadn’t even found containers for leftovers.
Whether or not that was because John didn’t eat leftovers, or perhaps it was something else entirely. Like the fact those containers always somehow magically lost their lids, made a mess in the cupboard, and were not at all very tidy despite how the commercials made them look.
Who knew?
Siena had also noticed in her search of the kitchen that Johnathan tended to favor healthy foods. Organic seemed to be a favorite of his, like the eggs in the fridge, and the honey she had used on her own pancakes. However, that corn syrup in the fridge was not healthy at all.
Seemed he made a few exceptions.
Like the Oreos in the pantry.
Siena smiled to herself as she rinsed off the bowl. For as fit as John was, she couldn’t exactly imagine him binging on a package of cookies.
But what did she know?
Siena went about drying the dishes and putting them all away. She opted to leave the big bowl on the cupboard beside the pantry where she had found it.
The clock on the wall said it was only nine, which meant she still had a couple of hours before she needed to be at her father’s dealership. It only really registered to her in that moment that her phone had been dark all night and morning.
No calls from Matteo.
No calls from her brothers.
None of them had even come downstairs when Johnathan left the night before, so she seriously doubted that they knew she had left with him. Except … her car was still at her parents’ brownstone, so they must have suspected.
Yet, no calls.
No check-in to make sure she wouldn’t be late today.
Nothing.
The cupboard over the fridge caught Siena’s eye. It was the only cupboard she hadn’t gotten the chance to check while she was prepping to cook earlier.
Maybe a container or something would be in there to store the food until John got back. Pulling a chair out from the table, she pulled it over and stepped up onto it. The half of a dozen cards and papers pinned to the fridge made her pause.
One in particular made her stop altogether.
Dr. Amelia Goodane, PhD and PsyD, the card read. It had an address and phone number printed on the plain, white card. Under the woman’s name, it said, Psychologist.
The appointment printed on the card was for January eighth, at eight o’clock in the morning.
Today.
Siena glanc
ed at the clock. Actually, an hour ago.
Had he blown off his appointment, or just forgot altogether?
Her gaze drifted back to the card as she took in the doctor’s qualifications once more. John was in therapy—but for what?
Siena figured it didn’t matter because it wasn’t her damn business to begin with. Had he wanted her to know, then John would have brought it up.
Besides, it wasn’t like they were a thing. They weren’t anything where he owed her something, and certainly not an explanation about his personal business.
She put the card aside in her mind, and reached for the cupboards. Better to get the food put away, and deal with whatever else later if John decided it was something she needed to know about him.
The cupboard did not have containers or plastic wrap.
It didn’t even have food.
Medication greeted her. Pill bottles with child safety orange caps stared back at her. She thought to close the door to the cupboard because this was—again—none of her business, but her gaze stiff drifted over the labels.
Johnathan Antony Marcello
His name was on every single one.
Lithium. Zoloft.
Another mood stabilizer.
Antidepressants.
Antianxiety meds.
It was a lot.
Some were obviously discarded meds, maybe ones he no longer used for whatever reason, considering the dates on the bottles and amount of pills still inside.
There were lots of rumors about the infamous Johnathan Marcello. Many of them passed Siena by because she only heard things from afar when made men gathered, and she happened to be around.
Some of them called John crazy. Some said he was just a little wild.
His arrest years ago that took him to prison had also led to lots of speculation about just what had gone down between John and his cousin in a restaurant. Apparently, some people that had been there said it was like John had fallen into a mental break or something.
No one knew for sure.
Siena had heard those rumors.
All of them.
She didn’t entertain whispered gossip and stories. Not when it came from the mouths of men who would only say something behind someone’s back, and never to their face.
And that was enough for her.
