by S. Massery
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod.
He scoots backward, all the way off the bed. I watch with my brows furrowed.
“Spread your legs,” he says softly.
I do it without hesitation.
He grips one of my ankles, then yanks. I flatten on the mattress, my arms straightening. He kisses my ankle. My calf. The sweetest slow torture.
“Luca,” I pant. How can his lips on my leg twist me up inside?
“I haven’t touched you in weeks,” he says to the corner of my knee. “I’m making up for lost time.”
I whimper when his teeth scrape the inside of my thigh.
“Do you know what I see when I look at your scar?” He thrusts his finger into me, curling slightly.
I arch off the bed. My skin is overly sensitive. His breath on my thigh is almost enough to unravel me completely.
“Ames.”
I smile. I can’t help it. And it prompts me to answer, “I don’t know what you see.”
“I see your strength. Your resilience.” He kisses higher, almost to the apex of my thighs. And still his finger moves in and out, playing me like a damn fiddle.
He’s going to bring me to the edge and shove me off it.
“I need to feel you,” I whimper. “Please. Luca.”
“I quite liked calling you wife,” he mumbles. “Fiancée is nice, though. Betrothed. Beloved.” His tongue swipes through my slick folds, and I barely bite back a scream. I wiggle, trying to get away, but he latches on to my clit and sucks.
I see stars.
“Which do you like?”
He sucks again, then his tongue plunges inside me. I buck against him, ready to break apart, but he pauses.
“Wife,” I blurt out. “I like wife best.”
He returns his attention to my pussy, his tongue thrusting in me as his thumb presses to my clit. I come violently, tipping my head back and yelling his name. I try to bat him away and yank my wrists, but the rope holds fast.
“Luca,” I demand. My chest heaves.
He rises, crawling over me. “Wife.”
My smile is huge. “I love you.”
He slides into me without warning, and we both groan.
“I love you, too.” His pace is slow, moving in and out of me in centimeters. Every withdrawal causes tremors to rack through my legs. My thighs quiver.
I heave on the ropes again. “I want to touch you.”
He obliges with a nod, undoing the binds. I bring my arms around his neck, pulling him flush against me. His weight is grounding, but I’ve let go of any connotations of being trapped. This is solid comfort. I hold him tighter and wrap my legs around his hips, and we move like that, completely connected.
His hand slips between us, flicking my clit again. He rolls his hips in a new angle. My eyelids flutter at the heady sensation, and then his lips are on mine again. Our tongues tangle, and he swallows every noise I make. His chest vibrates in a silent hum, and he picks up the speed. He leans back slightly to meet my gaze.
Another orgasm takes me by surprise, and I dig my fingernails into his shoulders. But I can’t look away from him. It’s rawer for him to see it. To see me. It crashes through me over and over, and he groans and stills.
We stay locked together for a few long moments, our hearts pounding in near-synchronization.
A small fear claws its way into my heart, but I think he sees it the moment it ensnares me. He cups my face, concern etched in his brows.
“Can he force us to go back?”
He being Luca’s father. What’s to stop him from coming here and dragging us back by our ears?
“It’s not in his best interests,” he says. “But if we go back, he might stop us from leaving.”
I nod, and a tear slides down my cheek. He leans forward and kisses it, his tongue catching the salty drop.
“I just wish Lucy had been here, you know? She has her own life, but she’s still my sister.”
Luca nods. “The wedding,” he suggests. “We’ll fly her out.”
I hug him tightly, burying my face in his neck. It means more than I can say, so I don’t. I just hold on to him a moment longer.
The sun creeps far enough across the sky that it shines in through the side window, and it’s only then that we head back onto the deck. We collect our clothes, and I hunt around the kitchen for food. Luca reels the anchor back up, and I pause on the lower deck to enjoy the sunshine.
When the engine rumbles to life, I go upstairs with the champagne in its ice bucket, the two glasses, and a brick of cheese and sleeve of crackers.
He grins at me as I set everything down to adjust my dress.
“I like you naked,” he calls.
I shake my head, scooping my hair back into a ponytail. “You would.”
“Come join me, Ames.”
There’s the nickname again. It brings another smile to my lips, and I hand him a glass. He guides me onto his lap, and I switch my hold on the cheese and crackers to loop my arm around his neck.
We ride the rest of the way back to the marina like this, close enough that the urge to climb into his skin isn’t quite as strong. We eat, we kiss. I rest my chin on his shoulder and watch the view of the mountains behind us fade into the distance.
“This would be a good forever,” I murmur in his ear.
He smiles. “I agree.”
Epilogue
Aiden
I slide into my car.
It’s been eight weeks since Wilder died, and my leads have all but dried up.
Until tonight.
On my phone is a voice recording of two men discussing my brother’s murder. They mention Colin West, the heir of the West empire. They talk about the house in Rose Hill where he hides.
Anger burns through me. It’s one thing to sow my brother’s blood across the chapel floor—it’s another to hide from the truth.
From me.
I step on the gas pedal, eyeing the speedometer as it creeps higher. Driving in itself is an adrenaline rush, but this urgency that’s captured me is something else entirely.
For the first time in weeks, I’m fucking eager.
My phone beeps at me, alerting me of the upcoming destination. I kill the headlights and roll to a stop a bit down the street. I’ve got a killer instinct, honed from years of training, and something feels… off.
Over the past few weeks, the Wests have been slowly and methodically evacuating their women from New York City. I’ll hand it to them, it took me a long time to realize it. They moved slowly, one or two at a time, until nearly all of them were gone.
The contact who sent me the voice memo suggested Gemma West would be next on the list of women to leave.
The only reason you get the women out of town is when things turn vicious. I didn’t realize they assumed we were at that point—I certainly didn’t escalate it. Neither did my father. No, we’ve been riding low while we looked for confirmation of which West killed my brother. And Dad let me take the reins.
This has been my pet project, and I hope to finally close it.
Manhattan in the summer is stifling, and I’ve been trapped in the public eye for too long. That’s my role now—the imposter heir.
That’s stifling, too.
I keep my gaze on the house Colin is supposed to be hiding in. It’s fancy, a light-colored stucco with the front covered in ivy. A fence adjoins the house on the side I can see. All the windows are dark, and I can’t spot any movement. No sign of life.
It seems the universe is determined to prove me wrong, because immediately following that assessment, a dim light illuminates one of the upstairs windows. A shadow crosses in front of it, the light stuttering, and then it all goes still again.
I climb out of the car and release my gun from its holster. I approach the front of the house and keep my weapon at my side. In my other hand, my thumb hovers on the on button of a pen light. The front door is unlocked, and I push it open by my fingertips.
A loud clat
ter rings in my ears, and I drop into a crouch. If that was a surprise attack, I’d probably be dead. I curse my laziness and shine the flashlight in. I hold it aloft with the gun, snapping myself into precision technique to clear the downstairs.
Nothing moves.
I click the light off again and move to the stairs. My foot lands on something, triggering a snap-snap-snap in rapid succession.
My anger surges higher when I discover this setup: mouse traps.
I grunt and nudge the snapped ones aside, leaving enough space for my foot. I launch up the steps, on full alert. If he’s not here, then this whole house is a trap—and my contact is a dead man.
A slight glint of reflected light ankle-high catches my eye, and I freeze. I bend down, touching the fish wire stretched across the hallway. It’s attached to a bucket of water balanced precariously on the edge of a side table. Shaking my head, I step over it and continue on.
The lamp is lit in the first bedroom I come to, and I peer into the room. I do a quick inventory, then step fully into the doorway.
And when I see who waits for me, my heart stutters to a stop.
“Gemma.”
Her name is out past my lips before I can stop it. My whole world has screeched to a halt, mirroring my heart. She can’t be here. She can’t be the one waiting for me. I prepared for anything except this.
The wild, uncaring part of me wants to stomp forward and drag her by her hair out of here. How dare she? Does she not care about her life?
Her brother is responsible.
Her brother will pay.
But it’s Gemma who squares off to me now, her expression trying hard to be indifferent. There’s a little fear in her eyes, though. Like she can’t possibly predict what’s going to happen next, even though she’s here on purpose.
She knows she’s the sacrifice. It might have even been her idea to plead for Colin’s life.
But she doesn’t know that this sacrifice doesn’t matter. That the feud between our families doesn’t even matter when it comes to her.
I’d never kill her, because she’s been mine for years.
That possessiveness strikes a chord in my chest. Her family has given her to me. The girl I claimed when she was sixteen, the one I’ve watched hungrily since then.
She stares back at me, waiting for me to say something. Anything.
And I will, as soon as I know what the fuck I’m going to do with her.
No one knows the depths that I will go to keep her.
Not even me.
THE END
Aiden and Gemma’s story is coming!
Grab it here.
Acknowledgments
2021 is ushering in so many fabulous things. New friends, new series & characters, new adventures.
I am SO thankful to be able to write for a living. It’s been my dream for… well, it feels like forever. But I never thought I’d get here before I turned 30. (By the skin of my teeth, though!)
And you know what? I get to do what I love because of you.
I absolutely adored Luca and Amelie’s story. It was so much fun to write and dive into the Mafia world (two worlds, I suppose, if we’re being technical). And I had two fantastic cheerleading alpha readers along the way—Rebecca (AKA my ride or die) and my lovely PA, Ari. To my other early readers, Tara, Erica, Amber, and Jo: the fact that you take time out of your day to read my stories and give me feedback truly means so much to me.
To my team: Ari, Emmy at Studio ENP for editing, Cassie’s beautiful cover design, and Paige for the proofread—you guys are worth everything. I’m so lucky to have found you all. And sorry, I’m never letting you go.
Thank you for reading. For your kind notes and reviews and interacting with me. Onward to the next story!
Also by S. Massery
Fallen Royals
(Dark Bully Romance)
#1 Wicked Dreams
#2 Wicked Games
#3 Wicked Promises
#4 Vicious Desire
#5 Cruel Abandon
#6 Wild Fury
DeSantis Mafia Series
(Mafia Romance)
#1 Ruthless Saint
#2 Savage Prince
#3 Stolen Crown
Broken Mercenaries Series
(Romantic Suspense)
#1 Blood Sky
#2 Angel of Death
#3 Morning Star
Standalones
(Contemporary Romance)
Something Special
Something Sacred
About the Author
S. Massery is a dark romance author who loves injecting a good dose of suspense into her stories. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her dog, Alice.
Before adventuring into the world of writing, she went to college in Boston and held a wide variety of jobs—including working on a dude ranch in Wyoming (a personal highlight). She has a love affair with coffee and chocolate. When S. Massery isn’t writing, she can be found devouring books, playing outside with her dog, or trying to make people smile.
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