by J. L. Drake
“No. Not tonight. Tonight…” She licked her lips, and I barely held back a groan. “Everything is too charged. Neither of us is thinking clearly.” When I held up my hand, she shook her head, ignoring the gesture. “I’m not thinking clearly. I’m still wound up from what happened tonight, and I don’t want to make a decision I’ll regret.”
Nodding, I mentally pulled my shit together and took a step back. “You’re right.” She was, but that didn’t mean the urge to press myself against her again and claim her mouth had magically disappeared. Physical awareness still buzzed through me, crackling and snapping. “Go to sleep. You’ve had a hard day. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Her shoulders fell, and she stared at me for a second then smiled faintly. “All right. Tomorrow.” She jumped off the counter and darted past me like she didn’t trust me not to stop her.
By the time I changed out of my suit, she was in my bed, curled on her side, with her back facing me and the sheet tucked around her neck like she couldn’t stomach revealing an inch of skin. With a resigned sigh, I opened the door and went to find Tony.
A few minutes later, I located him in my study. He sat behind my desk, twirling a glass of amber liquid.
“Feel free to make yourself at home.”
“Oh shit, Gian.” He jumped out of his seat and waved a hand toward the two leather club chairs. One held my briefcase and the other had my jacket draped over the back. “I didn’t want to touch your stuff.”
My eyes narrowed, and I leaned against the doorjamb. “Uh-huh.”
He took a deep drink of his whiskey and set the glass on my desk. A loud clunk echoed through the quiet room. “So what happened tonight?”
“I think Evie’s told you the gist of it. A car rammed us, and someone took a few shots at us. A window is shattered, and the back of my car is fucked up. That’s it.”
I bridged the distance between the desk and me. I scanned the surface to see if Tony had riffled through my papers. He wouldn’t find anything. My father had taught me better than that, and tonight had opened my eyes to one cold, hard fact: I couldn’t trust anyone, including Tony. A few days ago, I would have sworn he had my back. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
He’d accepted my promotion without complaint even though both he and Carlo had more experience than me. Sal hadn’t blinked an eye either, but that was different. He was two years younger than me, so he didn’t care that I had leap-frogged over a few guys. However, I couldn’t take anything at face value. Not anymore.
Tony rocked back on his heels. “Do you think it was random?”
“I don’t know.” I picked up a pen from my desk and clicked the top a few times.
“It could’ve been. Have you told Dominick?”
“No, and I’m not sure I will.”
His brows pinched together. “He’d want to know. You’re a capo and his nephew. He wouldn’t like someone fucking with you.”
I tossed the pen on top of a stack of papers. “What can he do?”
“Well, if it was the Russians—”
“What the fuck would the Russians want with me? I don’t push their shit. I don’t have anything to with them.”
“Exactly, and that pisses them the fuck off. You kicked one of their guys out of your club last week, and Sal roughed him a bit.”
“What?” I growled. “Why didn’t somebody tell me about that? You need to keep me in the loop, otherwise I look like a dumb ass.”
Tony shrugged. “It wasn’t too bad. He took a swing at Sal and grazed his chin. Sal landed a few good punches, but the guy didn’t end up in the hospital or anything.”
I studied at him, unblinking until the silence became uncomfortable. He jammed his hands into his pockets and rolled his neck in a circle. I stared down my nose at him.
“Don’t keep things from me ever again. I want to know everything. Everything. If I find out you’re hiding shit from me, I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp. Your face won’t be recognizable when I’m done with you. Got it?”
His lips tightened, and his muscles crawled up his shoulders. He vibrated with indignation. “Whatever you want.”
I kept my face neutral. “Great. Now get the fuck out of my house. I want to go to bed.”
He drained the last sip of whiskey and took a couple of steps toward the door then paused. “By the way, what window was shattered?”
“The rear driver’s side. Why?”
He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Just wondering. It’s probably nothing.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Evangeline
I didn’t know what woke me. It was still dark outside, and the full moon cast a silvery glow mixed with lengthy shadows over the room. If I squinted, I could make out the slanted roofline and streamlined edges of Gian’s dresser across the room.
A soft breeze from the ceiling fan wafted across my exposed flesh, raising tiny goose bumps on my arms. My heart thumped in slow, steady beats. I squeezed my injured hands, testing for pain. Other than a slight twinge, it seemed fine.
I flipped to my side, and my breath splintered mid-exhalation. Gian lay on his side, facing me. His thick, midnight-colored eyelashes looked like dark fans beneath his eyes. Without question, they were the kind that motivated women around the world to buy mascara and fake lashes.
Dark stubble covered the lower half of his face. His lips were parted, yet they still managed to curl up at the corners. The white sheet rode low on his hips, exposing his gold-dusted skin, the mouthwatering contours of his chest, and the sharp angles of his stomach.
When he was awake, his lips were wickedly sinful, his eyes were mischievous, and his jaw hard and unforgiving. Right then, I didn’t see any of those things. I saw a gentle, boyish beauty that took me off guard. It made him authentic and approachable, and liked it.
Without thinking, I traced the inside of his arm from the bulge of his bicep to his wrist. As strange as it sounded, I loved the inside of an arm. It was one of my favorite parts of a man’s body. Smooth and pale, the skin there was untouched by the harshness of the sun and life. The bluish veins peeking through the skin reminded me we were all vulnerable and real no matter how tough or impervious we pretended to be in front of others.
His eyes popped open, and then his brows slammed together. I yanked my hand back so fast I was surprised it didn’t hit me in the gut. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” I flopped onto my back and folded my arms over my chest. “I woke up, and I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Actually, I haven’t tried. I rolled over and saw you next to me, and honestly, it surprised me. I didn’t realize you were planning to sleep in the bed with me.”
“Where did you think I was going to sleep? I told you Tony commented on our living arrangement. I couldn’t exactly sleep in a guest bedroom. That would’ve defeated the whole purpose of putting you in here in the first place.”
“That fuzzy rug on floor or maybe one of those chairs in the corner. All of them look appealing. Soft even. Hell, you could slide those chairs together and toss that rug over it.” I squeezed my lips together to suppress a snicker. The sheepskin rug at the foot of the bed couldn’t have been more than four or five feet long and three feet wide, and the black leather-tufted chairs didn’t have arms. He’d roll off in a matter of minutes.
He raised his head, surveying his room. “Not happening. I’m good here. Besides, I hate that rug. It looks like there’s a dead animal on the floor.”
I giggled. “I think that’s the point. Why did you buy it if you hated it?”
He dropped his head back on the pillow. “I let Carmela decorate the place, which was a major miscalculation on my part.”
“You don’t like it?” I leaned forward to brush his dark hair from his eyes but froze halfway and let my hand drop to the bed.
“No. It’s fine. I hated the process,” he grumbled. “The more opinions I offered, the more options she gave me. She dragged shopping bags into my house every night with sticky notes outlining the pros and cons of every pie
ce. Boxes showed up on my doorstep every day. She demanded we meet every morning to discuss her selections. After a week, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I handed her a wad of cash told her to buy whatever she liked.”
I patted his shoulder. Being with him like this felt so natural. Too natural. It was easy to forget we were enemies with a common goal, not friends. I pushed the thought aside.
“How cute. She manipulated you.”
“No.” A hundred mega-watt grin spread across his face, and my heart clenched. “My sister tortured me with discussions of texture, color trends, and the advantages of warm or cool tones.”
“Sounds like Carmela. I can see you holding up dainty fabric swatches making nonsensical comments,” I said between fits of laughter that quickly increased in volume when I saw the look on his face. Carmela wanted to be an interior designer. She enrolled in a few online classes last fall—though, nothing came of it. While she claimed she didn’t have time, I didn’t believe her. She’d been stuck in a rut since her fiancé died, and she couldn’t bring herself to move forward.
“Stop laughing at me.”
I buried my face in the pillow, my limbs trembling. It smelled like fresh, clean laundry and Gian. “I can’t help it.” My words were muffled.
“Oh, really?” His hands curved around my ribcage, and he tickled me.
“Oh my God.” I kicked my legs, squirming, wiggling, and twisting until I escaped his hold and flipped onto my back. My hair covered my face, and the t-shirt I found in his dresser had shifted up my waist, revealing a good slice of my stomach.
He pushed my hair away from my face. His body hovered over mine, his topaz-colored eyes glittering with some unknown emotion. “Do you have a brother or a sister?”
I raked my teeth over my lower lip. “A younger brother who I haven’t seen in years.”
“Where is he?” he asked, his fingers still playing with my hair.
“He joined the Army right after he graduated from high school, and he never has much time to talk. The four years before he left, he spent the summers at some camp on the East Coast, and I spent the summers dancing with my mom. Needless to say, we’ve gradually grown apart.”
He nodded. “What about your parents? Are you close?”
“Nah, not really.” I glanced to the side, feeling exposed under his heat of his stare. “My dad didn’t live in Nebraska with us. He visited us on occasion until I turned five, when he disappeared entirely.”
“What happened to him?”
“Who knows? My parents never married. I don’t share his last name. I’m pretty sure I could walk right by him on the street and I wouldn’t have a clue. He’d come around for birthdays and apparently with enough frequency to get my mom pregnant again, then one birthday he didn’t show up, and my mom never offered an explanation.” I rolled my eyes. God, she could be so stubborn. Thinking about her gave me a headache. “Even now, she won’t say anything about him other than he belongs in the past. As you can imagine, we’ve never gotten along very well.”
“Why’s that?”
“Maybe we’re too alike. She moved to New York when she was eighteen to dance professionally. When she didn’t land any role worth a damn, she took jobs dancing in clubs in the tristate area to survive. She got pregnant, and she moved home. Needless to say, she wasn’t very happy about me following in her footsteps.” I cleared my throat, my impending failure clogging my throat like a ten car pileup. “I guess she was right. She failed, and it looks like I’m going to fail too.”
Gian braced himself above me with one hand while the other brushed down my cheek to my collarbone. “I see.”
“What do you see?”
His eyelids heavy, he halved the space between us. His mouth idled close enough that I felt his balmy exhalations as they ghosted across my lips. If I focused hard enough, I could make out every sooty blade of his lashes and every honeyed starburst in his irises.
I splayed my unsteady hands on his bare chest, and they prickled with the contradictory urge to push him away or slip my arm around his neck and pull him closer. I closed my eyes and counted the powerful thumps of his heart against my palm because the look on his face was too hard to process. It stripped me bare. It made me crave bad things.
Push him away.
Push him away.
Maybe I would have heeded my unvoiced pleas if only he weren’t so close that his spicy, intoxicating scent filled my lungs. His hand skated down my side with a feather-soft touch, and goose bumps peppered my skin. Without warning, his mouth dragged down my neck to my shoulder, pausing for a beat, then skimming across my collarbone. I angled my head to the side inviting his touch, undeterred by the fact that somewhere in the back of my mind, buried beneath the fog of desire, I wondered how much I’d regret this tomorrow when the shroud of darkness lifted.
“A beautiful woman who has lost confidence in herself. A beautiful woman who will succeed if she pushes aside her fears and tries again. A woman too fucking perfect to be real.” His voice was deep and smoky next to my ear, and it ruffled the strands of my hair.
My breasts tightened in response. Heat inched up my face, and my eyes opened, powerless to shut him out any longer. Powerless to resist him. Powerless to deny myself despite knowing this was the king of all bad ideas. Though my surrender would surely result in heartbreak, I was starting to think he might be worth the risk.
“You think so?” My voice was husky. Too husky for my own good. Passion burned in his eyes, flickering like a flame in the wind. “I know so. It’s so clear, I can’t believe you don’t see it.”
I slid my hand up his chest and around his neck like I promised myself I wouldn’t. I felt the chaotic drum of his pulse under the pads of my fingers and the warmth of his skin. We stared at each other, both of us caught in a miasma of lust and desire. If I tilted my head up a little bit, I’d eliminate any suggestion of space between us, and my lips would collide with his.
“Ti penso sempre,” he muttered along with a few other soft words I didn’t understand. Maybe I didn’t want to understand. It’d make the moment real rather than dreamlike, and I liked the castles-in-the-air feel of being with him. Being in his bed. Being in his line of sight.
I arched my pelvis into him, reveling in the solid yet satiny feel of him. Cupping the side of my face, he rubbed his thumb over my lips, hesitating for a second. I nipped him lightly. Playfully. Daringly.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he mumbled, and his lips crashed against mine. Taking. Seeking. Tempting.
Lost in the wickedness of his kiss, desire swirled inside of me. I clawed at his boxers, finally shoving them down his legs with the tips of my toes. He ripped my t-shirt over my head, his hands tangling in my hair in the frenzy to be skin-on-skin.
He slid my lace boyshorts down my legs, and a warning light flashed in my brain, begging me to stop and consider repercussions. Casual sex wasn’t my thing. Some people enjoyed the meaningless release and didn’t have problems erasing it from their memory and conscience. I wasn’t built that way. I had a hard time not getting caught up in the significance of being raw and vulnerable with someone.
As quickly as the reflection took root, my mind backtracked. A small part of me delighted in the idea of grabbing hold of the moment and seeing where this led if only to wipe away the stain of Kevin and our failed engagement and replace it with something new. Something for me. Something to reclaim my life.
I can do this. It won’t mean anything if I don’t let it.
With that little pep talk, the tug of war inside my mind faded. I wanted him. I needed him, if only for a few blinding moments of pleasure.
Sensing my capitulation, his finger slid through my folds, testing and teasing. His free hand cupped one breast then the other. I couldn’t look away from his face. His pupils were dilated with a golden rim that gleamed in the dim light. He flicked his tongue along his top lip like he wanted nothing more than to devour me whole.
A short, needy moan erupted from m
y lips, and any tiny lingering reservations cartwheeling through my mind came to an abrupt cease-fire. My hands moved up and down the muscles of his arms, and they rippled, bulged, and flexed like a sculpture that had come to life. I yanked on the roots of his coarse, wavy hair, not too hard, but not with much caution either. His lips smashed against mine for another kiss that seemed to last forever, yet not long enough to satisfy my simmering lust.
I tasted the mint of his toothpaste. I tasted desire. Best of all, I tasted him.
His talented fingers forged ahead, driving me crazy with every stroke and slide and flick. Tension magnified inside of me at a disquieting velocity. My limbs tingled. My chest heaved. My lips parted.
“I’m really close,” I muttered with disbelief, mostly to myself.
He pulled his hand away. “I know.”
“No. Don’t stop,” I whined in a way that would have made me cringe under normal circumstances. Not now. Not when I was five seconds from getting what I wanted.
“Jesus, sweetheart,” he groaned. “Nothing could make me stop. I’ve been thinking about this round-the-clock since the minute you walked into my club.”
He roughly nudged my knees apart and wedged his pelvis between my trembling legs. His hands clamped around my hips, pressing his thick erection against my sex in an unspoken petition for entry. A current of electricity circulated though me, raising the fine hairs on my forearms, and I shuddered.
Gripping his shaft in one hand, he moved inside me an inch. I blinked in shock.
Oh my God. No words.
One more inch and our synchronized groans meshed into one. One more inch, and I stopped cold.
“Wait.” My hands scraped down the sculpted planes of his chest. “Condom.”
His gaze raked up my body until it collided with mine. His mouth ticked up at the corners. Without a word, he leaned over, grabbed a foil square from the top drawer of his nightstand, ripped it open with his teeth, and rolled it down his erection.
