by Penelope Sky
He stopped raising his hips and sank deeper into the couch. He was a man who liked to always be in control, to do all the fucking when we were together. But he enjoyed it when I took the reins and gave a good performance. His jaw tightened as he felt me push my tight pussy down onto his length over and over. I was wet, and every time he was fully inside me, he winced like the pleasure was too much.
I pressed my palms into his hard pectorals. “I love you.”
He gripped my waist tighter, squeezing me while an animalistic growl came from his mouth. He didn’t repeat the sentiment back to me, choosing to enjoy listening to the words rather than repeating them.
My arms circled his neck, and I pressed my tits against his chest, my nipples dragging against his hard muscles as I moved up and down. I pressed my mouth against his and kissed him, my lips trembling as I felt the mouth I fantasized about when he was gone. I took his bottom lip between mine and moaned in his face, my nails cutting into his neck. This was the only man I could ride like this, who had such a big dick that I could be right against him and still enjoy most of his length. I was sitting on top of a warrior, a man with so much power that nothing could ever hurt me again. The head of his cock hit me in the right spot over and over again, and I already felt my thighs shake against his hips. I didn’t want to come so soon, but every time I exploded around his dick, it always pleased him.
I rode his dick a little harder, my hips making all the decisions now. I breathed into his mouth because I couldn’t kiss him anymore. All I could think about was the small explosion happening between my legs. A cosmic blast that set the world on fire, my orgasm made my hips buck instinctively. I held on to him so I wouldn’t slip away, and I moaned right in his face while I enjoyed the amazing things his cock did to me. “Griffin…I love your cock.” I’d never been with a man with a more impressive size. Not only was he big, but he knew how to use his size in the best ways possible.
His hands palmed both of my tits, and he flicked his thumb across my nipples, making them pebble in agitation. “He loves you too, baby. You’re going to come for me one more time before I fill that pussy. That’s how I want to come, watching you come for me.”
I pressed my forehead against his and continued to move up and down, my clit dragging against his hard body during my movements. I’d just clenched his dick with my powerful orgasm, but I could feel the arousal course through my body all over again. My nails dug into him, and my pussy smeared his length with my cream. The sexual passion between us was overwhelming, packed with chemistry and insatiable lust. But there was an undeniable connection between us, something even more powerful than this combustive attraction. It was deep and pure, full of love, devotion, and loyalty. Nothing could come between us, not the war between our families, the time we spent apart, or the other men and women who came before us. We were so different, but we fit together so perfectly. This was love, real love. It was the thing that some people searched for their entire lives and never found. But Bones and I had it. We had it the moment we met, even under terrible circumstances. Neither one of us could deny it, and gradually, something very ugly grew into something painfully beautiful.
Nineteen
Crow
It was hard to believe I was happy just a few hours ago.
My son was living under my roof with his pregnant wife, and I got to see him every day. He was stuck in bed, but I still got to spend lots of time with him. We watched sports, had every meal together, and had conversations deep into the night. I also got to know Sapphire better, and of course, I grew to love my new daughter even more.
My family had avoided death, and I lived every day with gratitude in my heart.
Gratitude for the man who had saved all of us.
Then he pounded on my door and told me off.
Now I sat on the black leather couch in my study, a bottle of aged scotch on the table along with two glasses. The fireplace hadn’t been used in months because we were in the hottest part of summer. The curtains were open because the sun was about to set. The gentle light reached the inside of my study, and in a few minutes, I would have to flip on the lights because it was getting too dark.
Button sat across from me, her legs crossed and her lips pressed tightly together. She was having a glass of scotch with me, something she rarely did. When we first met, she didn’t drink much, but soon she adapted the Italian ways and drank five glasses of wine every day—at a minimum. But she’d never been a big scotch drinker.
I’d told her everything, every word Griffin said to me.
I mean, yelled at me.
Button had her hair pulled over one shoulder, her beautiful brown locks still vibrant in color despite her age. Her face was still gorgeous, despite the gentle crow’s-feet in the corners of her eyes and mouth. I saw my daughter when I looked at her, along with my son. Her body still had the signs of childbirth, old scars. But those scars aroused me because she’d given birth to my children. Her body did exceptional things to produce new life. She’d always been a warrior, and becoming a mother was a different way of being a warrior.
She stared at the cold fireplace for a while before her eyes settled on me.
I’d been looking at her the entire time, her face always giving me a sense of peace. She was the light to my darkness, the hope in my despair. But this time, her qualities couldn’t cure the anger sitting in the pit of my stomach.
Button finally said something. “What are you going to do?”
“There’s nothing I can do.” I grabbed the glass and took a drink, finishing off the scotch before I refilled it. “He meant what he said. It’s done.” Just when I thought peace had been established between our two families, I realized I was wrong. The past wasn’t buried. The resentment and anger still hovered just under the surface. “I guess Vanessa told him about Antonio…and he didn’t like what he heard.”
“Can you really blame him?” she asked. “I never met him, but Conway told me he’s a nice young man. Fully approved of him. You liked him too. Vanessa obviously did as well. If they had more time together…maybe that’s who she would have married.”
“And he blames me for that.” I stared into my glass, looking at the various amber colors within the liquid. “The only way to move forward is for me to apologize…but that’s something I can’t do.” It wasn’t because of my pride or stubbornness. I had been protecting my daughter—and I would never apologize for that. “I had every right to do what I did. Any other father would have done the same. So that’s not an option. Even if it buried the hatchet, I still wouldn’t do it.”
She crossed her arms over her chest as she looked at me. “I understand. But let’s not forget what this man did for us. He saved our son. He saved you. He saved Cane and Sapphire. We owe this man everything.”
I would never forget what he did. It wasn’t something I would ever sweep under the rug. “I’ll never apologize for something without meaning it. I did apologize to him for the way I treated him, for my cruelty. But I won’t apologize for doing the right thing for my daughter. I won’t take back what I said, what I did.”
“I don’t think an apology would make a difference anyway. It doesn’t change the past.”
“Then what the hell does he want?” I took another drink and slammed the glass onto the table. The only thing he wanted was my daughter, and I gave her to him. Despite the way he lit into me, I wouldn’t interfere with his relationship with my daughter. I would tolerate him because I was indebted to him for the rest of my life. It was a small price to pay for what he did for me, saving my only son’s life.
“Maybe he doesn’t want anything,” she said calmly. “Maybe he’s just hurt. Maybe he’s just heartbroken. Maybe he doesn’t know how else to channel that pain. Maybe yelling at you gave him closure on what happened.”
“No. I think it opened the hostility again.”
“Think about it.” She scooted to the edge of the cushion and rested her arms on her knees. “Vanessa is the closest thing he’s ever h
ad to family. He resented her for the life she had. He wanted to kill us because of the life we took away from him. And then you did it again when you took away Vanessa.”
I wasn’t following her. “What’s your point, Button?”
“He’s a very strong man. He’s very powerful and successful. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who expresses a lot of emotions. But this is something that has always haunted him, that’s always bothered him.”
“What, exactly?” I asked.
“Family,” she whispered. “He doesn’t have a family. He doesn’t have somewhere he belongs. Maybe he doesn’t even understand that’s what’s missing, but it clearly is. He’s angry at you because you took his mother and father away. Then you took Vanessa. You keep taking everything away from him, and he can’t stand it anymore. He doesn’t want you to have that power over him. He wants you to…”
“What?” I asked.
“He wants to be part of our family.”
“As in, he wants to marry my daughter?” I asked, not following Button’s thought process.
“Well, yes. But that’s not what I mean. Crow, when I first came here, I was scared. I was in a foreign place, and I just wanted to go home. But as I grew comfortable here with you and Cane, I realized there was nothing waiting for me back home. You became my family. Cane became my family. And then we made our family grow.”
I understood that well. I understood that I gave my wife everything she’d been missing. When we had Conway, she told me that her life finally felt complete, that she filled the void she’d been carrying around. Once she became a Barsetti, she finally found the place where she belonged.
“He wants to be part of our family, Crow.”
I dropped my gaze and looked into the scotch again. “I told him I accepted him for my daughter. I shook his hand. I thought we moved on. Why is that not enough?”
“Accepting someone is the bare minimum, Crow. Make him feel like he belongs here.”
I squeezed the glass, wanting to shatter it. “I’ll never forget what he did for our family, but let’s not forget what he did to Vanessa. Let’s not forget the reason we hated him in the first place.”
“People change, Crow. I think he’s proven to us that he’s not the man we once despised. He’s proven that love changed him, that Vanessa made him into a great man. The two of you are a lot alike…whether you choose to see it or not.”
I finished the glass before I set it on the table. I didn’t deny her claim, knowing the similarities were striking. Griffin and I both were hard criminals who only turned soft when we found the right woman. There was no doubt in my mind that he wasn’t a threat to my family, that he would treat Vanessa right and protect her. But I refused to admit that fact out loud.
“You can’t apologize for what you did. But you can move forward and change the relationship.”
“Button, I don’t think he wants a relationship with me. He made his feelings for me very clear…”
“It won’t happen overnight. It’ll take time. But you need to start somewhere.”
I didn’t even know where to begin. I didn’t know how to talk to him. I didn’t know how to relate to him. It was easy with my kids because I’d raised them. They were younger versions of Button and me.
“Crow.” Button kept her blue eyes on me.
I met her look, my jaw tight.
“If you want to make this right, that’s what you need to do. After what he’s done for us…I think he’s earned it. It’ll finally end the blood war for good, and we can start a new chapter.”
If someone told me that my greatest enemy’s son would be part of my life, I would have said that wasn’t possible. If someone told me he would love my daughter, I would have refused to believe that. It was reality, but even now, it was still hard to believe.
“We all need to make him feel welcome in this family,” Button said. “But it needs to start with you.”
Twenty
Bones
When I woke up that morning, I rolled on top of Vanessa, fucked her, and then got out of bed. I did my workout in the living room, hopped in the shower, and then sat at the kitchen table in my sweatpants while I read the newspaper. A mug of hot coffee sat on the table in front of me, and I sipped it as the sunlight slowly filled the apartment with the rising sun. Now that the painting was out of our lives, I finally felt comfortable in the space. The painting she replaced it with was one she’d made of me.
I hadn’t had a chance to ask her about it yet.
A few hours later, Vanessa woke up and joined me. She usually grabbed whatever t-shirt I left behind and threw it on, looking sexy as hell in my oversized clothes. Her footsteps sounded against the hardwood floor as she approached me from behind. When she stopped behind me, she wrapped her arms around my chest, leaned down, and then peppered my shoulder with kisses.
I dropped the paper on the table and hooked my arm across hers until I gripped her hand. I watched her kiss me, her long hair trailing down my chest and tickling my skin. Her smell wrapped around me, the hint of shampoo and perfume. The grin stretched across my face, treasuring the moment to keep forever. This was what I wanted for the rest of my life, just the two of us, living a simple life. “Morning.”
“Morning.” She pressed her mouth against mine and kissed me. She gave my chest and shoulders a squeeze before she stood straight and walked fully into the kitchen.
My eyes moved to her ass, wishing my long shirt didn’t cover it. Her pussy was full of the seed I put there a few hours ago, and I wanted to look at my handiwork. She didn’t like to wake up as early as I did, so she always went right back to sleep once I was finished. With warm come inside her, she dozed off for another few hours while I worked out and made breakfast.
“Did you already eat?” She pulled a bowl from the cabinet along with a box of cereal.
“Yes.”
“I was going to offer to make you some cereal.” She poured the milk into the bowl and grabbed a spoon.
I cocked an eyebrow, full of amusement. “Make me cereal? Baby, you can’t make cereal.”
She carried the bowl to the table and sat down. She crossed her legs then dug her spoon into the bowl. “I beg to differ. This is one of my favorite recipes.”
I preferred to have a woman who could cook, but I loved Vanessa just the way she was. She could fight like a man and paint like a master, but she couldn’t work a set of pans if her life depended on it. “Not a recipe.”
“It has two ingredients,” she argued. “That’s enough evidence.”
I turned back to my paper again, the grin still on my mouth.
“I like it when you smile.”
My eyes moved back up to look at her, and once I saw the affection in her eyes, I dropped my smile. “You haven’t seen me smile enough to know if you like it.”
“Just seeing it once is enough for me.” She smiled at me before she turned back to her cereal.
Now I didn’t care about the paper anymore. All I wanted to do was look at her, look at those pretty eyes and those full lips.
She kept eating like she didn’t notice my look. “We should go see my family sometime today. I told them I would come by for dinner, but that didn’t happen. I’ll give them a call after I shower.”
I never told her I’d screamed at her father. My temper got the best of me, and I torched the new relationship we’d finally established. But after everything that man put me through, I didn’t regret it. Vanessa could have ended up with another man because of his decision. She should be with me—end of story. I didn’t like her father, and I would never like him. I didn’t expect him to like me when we first met, but I expected him to keep an open mind considering he wasn’t always the honorable man he is now. But he never gave me a chance. He was determined to destroy me right from the beginning. I’d proven myself a million times over, so now I didn’t need his approval. All I wanted was Vanessa, and now that I had her, I didn’t give a damn about him.
When I didn’t say an
ything, she looked at me. “Is that okay?”
“Yes.” Her family was important to her, so I would go through the motions to make her happy. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her I yelled at her father, or if I should give Crow the honor of telling her. It seemed awkward no matter how we confessed. Since he hadn’t said a single word or given me any kind of response, I had no idea how he felt about my speech. He didn’t punch me, so I guess he wasn’t that mad about it. If he ratted on me, I would know the answer—and respect him even less.
Just when I turned back to my paper, there was a knock on the door.
My eyes flicked back up and looked at her. “Expecting someone?”
She finished chewing her food as she raised her eyebrows. “No.”
If it was the painter, I’d punch him so hard he’d fly down the stairs. I set my paper down and rose to my feet.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll get—”
“No.” My authority burned through my gaze as I stared at her, my look keeping her pinned into her seat. “I’m the one who answers the door—not you.” I walked across the apartment and approached the front door, unsure who I would be faced with. It was eleven in the morning, too early for a random visitor. I opened the door and came face-to-face with the worst possible person.
Crow.
In a black t-shirt with dark jeans, he looked exactly the same as the last time I saw him. With his tanned skin and masculine features, he was still a good-looking man despite his age. He carried himself like a soldier ready for battle, his muscle tone still impressive because he lifted weights every day of his life. He could never compare to me, not when I had thirty years of youth on my side. We both knew that bullet would have killed him. My strength and vigor were greater, so I survived.
