"Never," he snarled. "If that's what she told you, I'll kill her myself. Nobody else, Samara. I've never felt this right with anyone but you."
I nodded, dropping my head to his forehead as I looked down at him. A hesitant, disbelieving smile bloomed on my face when he treated me to the full force of his grin. "You're mine, woman. All fucking mine. You know that now?"
"Yes, Lino," I murmured. "I think I get it now."
"Good," he groaned, tugging me down to him for a devouring kiss that set my blood on fire. My hips ground against him, totally lost to the sensation and not caring one bit that we had an audience. The hand that swatted at my ass said Lino wasn't quite as lost in me, that he still had some kind of common sense to stop me from grinding on his dick with Georgio in the front seat.
His hands at my waist steadied me, and I rested my head in his neck, breathing him in as if I could take him into me. As if I could take the words he'd said and somehow make myself believe they were real permanently. As if he could heal the wounds Connor had left in his wake.
By the time we pulled into the driveway, my resolve had hardened. I wasn't the pathetic woman Connor had made me. Loving Lino didn't change who I was or who I could be, because I'd always loved him. He was a part of me, the best part of me.
As soon as the car pulled up in front of the house, Lino had me out of the car and in his arms. His phone rang as we hurried up the front steps to the door, and he tugged it out and answered it gruffly while he unlocked the door. "Busy, Matteo. Talk to you tomorrow."
All I heard was the sound of Matteo and Ivory's laughter on the other side of the line before Lino hung up and swung the front door open. We didn't bother to head for the stairs, didn't even pretend like we would make it to the bed for what we had in mind. He peeled off his wet clothes as he walked, and I closed the door behind me. My jacket pooled on the floor when I stripped it off, stepping out of my heels simultaneously. By the time I'd made it out of the entryway, Lino stood naked and waiting for me. After I unzipped my skirt, I shoved it down my hips along with my underwear. Lino drew me into his arms to guide me where he wanted me, his hands grabbing the fabric of my shirt and pulling it apart harshly so that the sound of the fabric tearing filled the air. Only a too brief kiss landed on my lips before he spun me around and bent me over the counter. His nimble fingers divested me of my bra, and it fell down my arms until I shucked it off.
The hand that slapped against the globe of my ass shouldn't have come as a surprise, given what I'd put him through. But as the pain of Mia Romano's accusations and lies faded, I couldn't help but love Lino more for all the trouble he'd gone to. All I'd done was be out of his sight for a few hours, and he'd been mad with worry.
I tried to remember the last time someone had worried for me that way and came up empty.
There was only Lino. Always only Lino.
"You ever do that again, and I'll put a tracker in your ass," he hissed, slapping my ass again even as he reached a hand around to stroke my center. His movement was impatient, like he couldn't decide if he wanted to punish me for running or pleasure me for finally letting him in. I knew the feeling.
"You'll do no such thing!" I gasped, tossing my head back when he shoved inside me with one brutal thrust. He buried a hand in my hair, tugging me back until my hands supported me on the counter and his breath rasped against my ear.
"Ask Ivory if she would ever take hers out now, Samara. It saved her life."
"Shut up and fuck me," I grunted, wincing when the hold on my hair tightened and his hand came down on my ass again. It changed to a moan when his hips shifted to stroke over that perfect spot inside me, my orgasm building quickly under the force of his strokes and the fingers that worked my clit in a delicious roll of tight pressure.
I panted as I strove for it, and then I whimpered when he pulled out of me so suddenly that everything that had built just faded into the wind. "Lino!"
"On the counter, Little Dove," he murmured, and the harsh edges of his anger had faded to leave only the gentle man who loved me. I turned, letting him help me up so that he could slide inside me. "I need to see your eyes when you come." The height of the counter put us almost eye to eye, the tip of his nose rubbing against mine with every stroke of him inside me.
He was so hard, filling me so perfectly that it felt like there was nothing left. Like our bodies fused together and became one. He didn't kiss me except for brief touches of his lips to my lips, my face, my nose. Mostly he held my eyes and breathed the same air as me, and somehow it felt even more intimate for it. When he tugged me forward, I thought I'd fall off the counter. But he held me there, supported my weight with his body and his hands and rocked my hips to take him even deeper. "Fuck," he groaned.
"Oh God," I moaned, tossing my head back, but his hand buried in my hair, tugging my face back to his so that he could touch his forehead to mine. His eyes blazed with heat, but the undeniable presence of love in them was what sent me spiraling over the edge into my orgasm. Holding his eyes, when he roared out my name and followed me over the edge was the most intimate moment of my life.
A moment I knew I'd remember for the rest of it.
And as I caught my breath, I murmured, "I love you."
"I love you too, Little Dove," he whispered back, lifting me into his arms to carry me to bed.
I didn't remember getting there, didn't remember anything but how good Lino smelled as he carted me up the stairs.
Then I was out.
Forty-One
Samara
I woke to the feeling of warmth in bed behind me. I didn't bother to open my eyes, snuggling back into Lino's broad chest and enjoying the groan he gave me in response. "Good morning, Little Dove," he murmured, his voice sleepy. I almost regretted waking him up, however unintentionally it had been. I wanted nothing more than for him to get some rest after what I'd put him through so stupidly the day before.
I couldn't imagine the kind of fear he must have felt if he really loved me, and I'd convinced myself that it was okay to believe him. That Lino wasn't some stranger who owed me nothing and wouldn't think twice about hurting me. Lino had never wanted to see me hurt, even if I'd been too emotional to see that when the blind panic had taken over and sent me running.
The walls, the self-preservation, the fear. I knew realistically that all of those things were a natural reaction to the kind of betrayal Connor committed against me, but I didn't want to let him ruin my life. I didn't want him to influence my decisions and keep me from what could make me happy.
Lino probably wasn't a good man. He'd likely done horrible things that I'd just turned a blind eye to and wanted to pretend didn't exist, and I was sure he had more crimes ahead of him. Especially since Connor had yet to be caught.
"Good morning," I sighed back, rolling onto my stomach so that I could look over at him. I loved the way he looked when he first woke up. Loved knowing that after so many years of him being my first good morning, I finally got to hear that sleepy voice. I finally got to see the way his hair stuck in all directions, and he looked so much younger and more carefree before the realities and pressures of his day settled over him and the businessman took over.
"Promise me you won't run again, Little Dove," he whispered, and the anguish in his voice damn near broke my heart. "My life isn't safe. You can't slip your security like that."
"I can't promise I won't test you, but I promise I won't slip security and disappear," I said in response. His hand touched my back, trailing his fingers up and down the spine at the center as he watched me. I smiled shyly. "But I won't deny that it's addictive to know you looked so hard for me. That you tried to find me, and that you were so angry with me."
"You like that I was angry with you?" His brows raised, and his fingers paused on my back.
With a swallow, I tried to explain the thoughts churning in my head. Tried to find a way to explain what it meant to me that he cared enough to do those things. "Mom always gave me freedom, you know that. Yavin is real
ly only interested in being a brother when it suits him, and as much as I love him, he's too busy with work to ever really be there, you know?" He nodded, and a frown pursed his lips. I had to hope that eventually things between the two men in my life would settle down, and my marriage to Lino would eventually bring my brother and I closer. "He keeps me at a distance, because he can't ever tell me about his day. He thinks I'm so innocent that I've never been to a strip club, or I would be horrified by whatever he could tell me. With nothing in common, there's just not much there." I paused again, letting him consider that. I knew he and Yavin were close, but Yavin had never made as much of an effort as Lino.
Now it made sense why.
"He loves you," Lino responded.
"I know he does, and I love him. I hope now that I'm a wife of the family he feels like he can be more candid with me, but we'll see how he does with the marriage first. Anyway, Connor didn't want me to leave the house. But it wasn't because of safety, he disguised it as him wanting to be with me. But then he'd ignore me. Eventually I just stopped going out, unless I was with you. He'd guilt trip me about it when I got home, but he never showed any interest in calling me or finding out where I was. He never cared if I was safe." I cut off the ramble, because I really didn't want to go into too much detail about my marriage to Connor. No more than was necessary anyway, but some of it felt like it was important to make Lino understand what it meant to me that he looked for me. "So having you drop everything you were doing, call in a team to find me, call and text Yavin, all those things. It's endearing. It makes me feel loved. It feels good to know that someone worries about me. It makes me feel like maybe for just one second, I'm the center of your world."
"You are the center of my world, Samara. You're everything to me." I choked back tears at the declaration.
My fingers trailed over the tattoo of the eye on his chest, feeling as if I saw it for the first time. The words he’d said about it, his everything, weeks ago.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes, Little Dove. It’s you. Matteo and I got them together. The tattoos that reminded us of the women we thought we’d never be able to have. So that we could carry a piece of you with us always,” he explained. I’d never seen Matteo’s tattoo, never seen the brutal man out of his suit, so I couldn’t know what tattoo he had for Ivory.
I just hoped it was as beautiful as Lino’s.
“You tried to tell me how you felt, and I didn’t listen,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“You weren’t ready. That’s not something you need to be sorry for, Little Dove. Our lives and our relationship haven’t been easy, and they probably never will be. Not with the life I lead. I'd walk away from all of it for you if you asked me to. Now that Matteo's in charge, we could go and it would be safe."
"I would never ask you to walk away from your family. They love you, and you love them." I rolled to my side, feeling his hand settle on my hip as he smiled at me.
"I know you wouldn't, and I love you even more for it. You accept me, all of me. Just the way I am, even though you know I'm not perfect. That I'm not a good man." I wrapped my arms around his hips, snuggling into his bare chest and loving the way he smelled like him, but also like me. Like I was a part of him, right down to his scent.
"You're a good man to me. That's all that matters."
His lips touched mine, and he murmured against them with a smile. "I love you, wife."
I smiled back, jumping up from the bed and going to the closet to pull out the box I'd kept tucked behind my shoes. I had to toss the shoes out of the way to grab it, but soon had my little box of memories in hand. When I went back into the bedroom, Lino had sat up in the bed. The sheet pooled around his waist, hiding his legs while he leaned against the headboard and looked at me curiously. "I—I wanted you to have these. So that you know how I felt. You don't have to read them, but—"
"What are they?" he reached forward, tugging the small box from my hand.
"My journals. From the day we met to the day you graduated. I stopped journaling that day. I gave up on us, and I realized that I'd been chronicling our love story, or what I'd thought was our love story, to look back on one day." He took one of the purple notebooks out of the box, opening up to a random page, and I winced at the massive Mrs. Angelino Bellandi that I'd scrawled at the top of the page. It had to have been middle school for me to be that open about my feelings, that convinced that our marriage would happen. My confidence had waned as I'd gotten older and Lino dated other girls in school. I swallowed, shuffling my feet nervously as he read whatever horrifying and humiliating declarations of love were on that page specifically. When he grabbed a second and a third notebook from the box and flipped through the pages, skimming them with rapid eye movements and absorbing all my humiliating memories, I wanted to die. Wanted to crawl into a hole, but I forced myself to crawl into the bed instead.
His eyes finally turned up to meet mine, heat blazing in them briefly before he stood and strode from the room without bothering to cover up his nudity. I watched him go, staring at the box of journals and wondering if maybe I'd gone too far. If maybe they made me seem more like a creep than I'd intended given he confessed he'd had feelings for me all along. My eyes landed on the open notebook; on the sketch of our little family I’d envisioned for us. Lino and I, our four kids, and a dog.
He came back a moment later, something clutched in his hand and strode right for the bathroom. I followed with my heart in my throat, and he stood there with an arrogant, satisfied smirk on his face. Lifting the package in his hand, I felt my eyes widen on the sight of my birth control packet. "What are you doing?" I asked.
He popped a single pill out and it splashed into the toilet.
"Lino!" I protested.
"I'm done waiting," he declared, holding my eyes as he popped out a second pill. There was another splash.
"You're done waiting?" I asked.
"I have waited my entire life to have you. I'm done. Just done pretending that I'm patient. Done pretending like I can wait for you to come around to where I am in this marriage." A sequence of more splashes sounded, and I looked at the packet to find it empty. There hadn't been many pills left, admittedly, but it still seemed jarring. He'd even shoved out the placebos, as if they were an affront to him too. He tossed the empty packet into the trash and flushed the toilet before stalking toward me. I backed away until the back of my knees hit the bed and he hoisted me up and onto it. Looming over me, he grabbed my knees and spread them wide so that he could come down between them. "I'm putting a baby in your belly."
"We—I," I paused, trying to gather my thoughts as my brain raced to keep up with him. "There are things we should talk about before we take that step."
"Nope. The answers won't change anything. You want to work; we'll figure it out. You want to stay home; I'll support that choice fully. All that matters is that I love you, and we're having a baby. Did you think I'd see you hold Luna and do anything but make it so I could see you hold our baby like that? It drove me fucking mad to think you'd make me wait."
"And if I don't want a baby?" I whispered, but even I could feel the smile on my face. It took some of the bite out of my words undoubtedly, because Lino gave me a mischievous grin and darted his head down to lick my nipple playfully.
"I think I can convince you." Those lips wrapped around it, sucking hard enough that my back bowed.
"Okay," I gasped. "Convince me then."
His eyes danced as he released me and brought his mouth down on mine for a deep kiss.
Then he set out to convince me.
Forty-Two
Samara
Lino had convinced me. Thoroughly.
And if it were determined by the amount of sex two people could have in thirty-six hours, I'd be pregnant already.
So the phone ringing the next evening drew us out of our pleasurable little cave where we'd shut out the world. I never wanted to emerge. Never wanted to go back to work even th
ough I knew I would need to go in the morning. Taking a day and a half off unannounced hadn't been fair to Jasper, and I was sure he would be furious with me.
Or Lino.
Or both of us.
The way that Lino's body went solid as he listened to the person on the other side of the line made me tense up, but I tried to continue with my cool down stretches after yoga. "He did what?" Lino growled, and everything in me clenched at the sound. He'd turned me into an addict, if just the sound of his savage side made me horny despite the endless supply of orgasms.
"Right. I'll be right there." He stabbed the phone with a ferocity that made me nervous. "I have to go. I don't know when I'll be home." He turned for the stairs, heading up to the bedroom, and I followed him.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Connor went to another one of the loan sharks in the city to get more money. Enough to pay off his debt with Tiernan, but he didn't have enough property for collateral. The guy he went to has beef with the Bellandi's, so he offered up revenge on us in exchange for settling his debt." Lino swapped out his sweatpants for a fresh pair of slacks, tugging them up his legs and buttoning them at the waist quickly.
"Revenge how?" I swallowed, hating that my life and my decisions were coming down on Lino's head. I'd always known the end of my marriage would have consequences for him, I just hadn't expected to take down Matteo and Ivory with him, and I'd let myself hope that maybe, just maybe, he could protect himself against whatever damage Connor could do.
"He says he has information from the time he was married to you. Told the guy that your connection to me gave him insights that could take down the Bellandi's.” The breath whooshed out of me, and I staggered to sit on the edge of the bed.
"How is that possible? I don't know anything! It's not like I could ever even tell him—"
"I believe you, Little Dove. I've always kept you in the dark. There's nothing you could have told him that's incriminating, but that doesn't mean he didn't use the connection to dig. I don't know, and I won't know until I get there." His shirt slipped on over his shoulders, and he buttoned it up hurriedly. I stood and reached out to help him, rushing through the buttons even though I needed the connection it gave me. I needed to feel like I hadn't fucked up everything.
Forgivable Sins: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 2) Page 29
