Nico

by Sarah Castille

  Nico didn’t need to hear more than that.

  “Frankie. Luca.” He tipped his chin in the direction of the unwanted audience. Words weren’t necessary. They would have his back and watch over Mia, too.

  “Scusa, bella.” Pool cue in hand, he walked over to the two men, assessing their size and strength. The blond had an inch over him in height but little in the way of muscle, whereas the skinhead in his muscle shirt, his arms covered in tats, looked like he knew how to fight. “Gentlemen. You seem very interested in our game.”

  “It’s a free country. We can watch anything we want.” The blond sipped his beer while the skinhead smirked beside him.

  “Watch something else.”

  The skinhead tipped his neck from side to side, a universal sign of challenge that the primal side of him could not ignore. “You gonna make us, suit boy? You afraid your hot friend’s gonna leave you for a real man? I’ve had a taste of that pussy … “

  Nico didn’t hear the rest of his words. Overwhelmed by a possessiveness that was both savage and fierce, he slammed his pool cue over the skinhead’s skull, breaking the stick in two.

  “Holy fucking shit. You’re gonna pay for that.” Seemingly unaffected by the blow, the skinhead leaped from his chair so fast it toppled behind him.

  Frankie came up beside Nico to deal with the blond as Nico plowed his fist into the skinhead’s smarmy face. Fuck. It felt good to unleash the beast. He countered an incoming jab with a left hook and traded punches until he saw an opening to sweep the skinhead’s leg. Following him down to the ground, Nico let loose, oblivious to everything but the need to ensure the bastard never looked in Mia’s direction again. By the time the skinhead was groaning on the floor, his face covered in blood, Luca had paid the bouncers to clear the crowd and look the other way, and Frankie had taken care of the blond friend.

  “You don’t look at my girl.” Nico kicked the man on the ground, careful not to get blood on his Italian leather shoes. “She’s not a fucking piece of meat. You don’t come back to this pool hall. You don’t come to this end of town. You do, and you’re dead. Get the fuck out.”

  His heart thundered in his chest as he straightened his jacket and tie. “Follow them out,” he said quietly to Luca. “Take their phones. If the cops show up, call Charlie Nails. He knows what to do.”

  Nico had a bead on the top brass in every police station in the city. He’d given the details of the corrupt cops on his payroll to Charlie Nails who could handle both the bribes and any legal problems that arose. Unless the feds were involved, no member of Nico’s crew ever spent a night in jail.

  He half expected Mia to be gone when he returned to the game, but she was still there, leaning against the table, casually sipping a drink, like she was just waiting for him to come back from the bar.

  “I should be disgusted by that brutal display of violence, or at the very least, terrified.” She bent over the table, took her shot, left him with a tough bank.

  “Are you?” He didn’t want to know, but he did.

  “Make that last shot, and I’ll tell you.” She chalked her cue, one hand twisting back and forth over the polished knob while the other slid up and down the smooth, wooden stick almost as if she were pumping …

  “Mia.” He gave a soft growl of warning before easily making the bank. With adrenaline still pumping through his body, and the object of his desire close at hand, failure wasn’t an option.

  “What? Feeling distracted because you’re in a sprint to the finish? Do you prefer it long and slow before you sink your balls? Or are you off your game because you just finished beating a guy to a pulp because he was checking out my ass?

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” He threw his stick on the table and yanked her against him, driven by a primal need to conquer and claim. The moment their bodies touched, lust, wild and raw tore through him, and his voice, when he uttered his demand, was thick with desire. “Tell me.”

  She licked her lips, slowly, sensuously, her tongue sweeping the lush pink bow until it glistened before she whispered in his ear. “I don’t know if it’s because it was you, or because you did it for me, but it was so fucking hot, all I want to do is get you alone, tear off your clothes and—”

  And he couldn’t wait. Not one more second. He had to have her.

  Now.

  TEN

  She knew she was in trouble even before he grabbed her hand.

  He’d been like a caged lion when he returned from the fight, only half-focused on the game, the other half on her. If he hadn’t been so good at the game, she could have used his distraction to her advantage, but he wasn’t just good, he was amazing. Professional level. Not a straight shooter like her.

  Now she owed the mobster a favor, and as he tightened his arm around her waist, she was in no doubt what that favor would be.

  “Anyone in your office?” His breath was hot against her neck, making her shiver despite the heat in the room. Her stomach knotted, her arousal soaring as his free hand glided over her curves. His fingers toyed with the hem of her shirt, bunching it up the back as he slid his hand beneath the cotton, exploring her bare skin with a whispered caress. Possessive. As if the rest of the evening was a forgone conclusion. Which, after he’d just beaten a man to protect her, it was.

  “No.” She wanted him, had wanted him since she walked into the pool hall, and she wasn’t afraid to let him know it. Usually she kept her hook-ups discrete and short-lived to protect her dates from her father. But this wasn’t a man who needed protection. This was the man her father feared.

  With a groan, he spun her around, dropped his hand to her waist and ground his hips into her ass, as the hot, sultry sound of Peder’s “The Sour,” played over the speakers. She was wet as much from the knowledge he wanted her, as from the way he handled her body, like he knew exactly what he was doing, like he was totally and utterly in control. And yet only a few minutes ago, he had been lost in a battle frenzy, a predator subduing his prey.

  She tilted her head to the side and looked over her shoulder at him. His face was dark with desire, and she felt his low rumble of pleasure in every inch of her body. She wiggled against him and his free hand snaked under her shirt, moving upward with obvious intent. Mia slammed one arm over her breasts. Yes, she wanted him, but not with everyone watching.

  “Don’t deny me.” His words held a dangerous, primal undertone, one that sent a thrill of fear through her body.

  “I have no intention of denying you, or myself.” But one of them needed to exercise some restraint, and it clearly wasn’t going to be him.

  He gave a grunt of satisfaction, and swept his fingers over her shoulder, pushing her shirt aside. His mouth was warm against her skin as he kissed her shoulder, licking and tasting her, teasing her neck with the scrape of his teeth. Her blood turned to molten lava and streamed through her veins.

  “Not here, Nico. I know most of these people.”

  “Upstairs.” He slipped to her side, one arm around her waist, paused to say a few words to Frankie. She grabbed her bag and her boot, and he guided her through the pool hall to the back stairway leading to her office.

  It was dark, but she didn’t turn on any lights, letting the faint glow from the pool hall, and the exit lights guide her up the stairs. When she reached the door to her office, she turned. “Should we tell—?”

  His hands wrapped around her ribcage and he lifted her, shoving her back against the wall. Hot and hard, his body pressed against her, forcing her thighs apart to accommodate his hips. He was rough, demanding, and as wild as she had imagined he would be.

  Before she could catch her breath, his hand fisted her hair, and his mouth was on hers, ravaging her with a kiss that turned her body liquid. Her bag and boot fell to the floor as his tongue plundered her mouth. Fierce and hard, he took everything she gave him, and demanded more.

  “Bare yourself to me,” he demanded against her mouth as he pushed up her shirt.

  Mia unfastened her bra, freeing her b
reasts from their restraint. Nico gave a low feral growl and shoved a thick thigh between her legs, pushing her up so he could wrap his hot mouth around her nipple.

  This was what she fantasized about at night, alone in her bed. A man who knew what he wanted. A man who could take control. A man who feared nothing and would never yield. A man who would never hurt her.

  Need coiled deep in her lower belly as he sucked her nipple into his warm mouth. She squirmed against him, her pussy slick with want. But there was no escape. He had her pinned, his body hot and hard against her, his rock hard shaft branded into her hips.

  “Don’t move.” He turned his attention to her other breast as his hands dropped to her ass, fingers digging into her flesh as he rocked her over his thigh, teasing her clit with small jolts of pleasure.

  Through the partially open door in the hallway below, she could hear the murmur of voices, laughter, the clack of pool balls, and the faint strains of Hozier’s “Take Me to Church,” But in the dark, secluded stairwell she could only hear the rasp of their combined breaths as they moved against each other, and the thunder of her pulse in her ears.

  “We should go inside,” she whispered.

  He lowered her to ground, but instead of releasing her, he tugged at the button on her jeans.

  “Nico!”

  His hand slid into her panties, over her soft curls, stroking through her labia, slick with her juices.

  Mia moaned softly, and Nico captured her clit between two thick fingers, fuzzing her brain with need.

  “They wanted you,” he said roughly. “If you’d walked out of the pool hall alone, they would have followed.”

  She rubbed against him, her hips twisting and grinding for the climax he held just out of reach. “I can take care of myself.”

  “You don’t have to take care of yourself when you’re with me.” He pushed his fingers inside her, curled them to rub against her sensitive inner tissue. His powerful body surrounded her, pinned her, his muscled chest blocking her view of everything but him.

  Mia tried to fight the orgasm that was rising fast, unstoppable. But he was relentless, his fingers working her without mercy until her climax hit her in a rush of white-hot heat. She bit his shoulder to muffle her cries as her hips jerked against him, and an exquisite wave of pleasure crashed over her senses.

  He continued to stroke her, drawing out her orgasm until she sagged against him, panting her breaths. “Well…” She rested her forehead against his shoulder. “I guess we don’t need to go inside.”

  Nico tipped her chin up, and she saw the answer in the darkness of his eyes.

  Her heart skipped an excited beat. “Maybe we do.”

  Hand shaking, she opened the lock, and willed herself to calm. That had been incredible, but unsettling just the same. Some primitive part of her liked the idea of being chased, caught and ravished by a man so dominating, so utterly in command of himself and the people around him, that he had only to lift a finger to have them do his bidding. And yet giving up her control went against everything she had fought for with her family—recognition of her worth, a status equal to her brother. Respect. An end to the violence that had overshadowed her life.

  She needed to regain some control of the situation. Make sure she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life by giving in to the chemistry that burned between them.

  The lock opened with a click, and Mia walked inside and turned on all the lights. “How about I show you around?”

  *

  Nico let out one slow, ragged breath after another as Mia showed him around her office. Although he tried to pay attention, his mind wasn’t on the exposed brick walls or the finished pine floors. He needed to pull it way back, calm the fuck down. Never had he been so aggressive in his pursuit of a woman. Never had he come so close to losing control. But hell, when she appeared in the pool hall, his plans to drop off her boot went out the window. She was the most sensually alluring woman he had ever met—beautiful, brave and strong—and he wanted her, wanted to touch her more than he needed to breathe.

  What was it about her that turned him inside out? It was more than her physical attributes that got to him. So much more. And that made her dangerous.

  For reasons other than the obvious, he needed to stay away from her. It wasn’t just because she was the daughter of his enemy or because she distracted him from his goal, but because she reminded him that he had a heart. After watching his father die in his arms, he’d locked that part of himself up tight. He’d lost both parents and he wasn’t prepared to go through that kind of pain again.

  “So this is where Jules and Chris, my two on-site staff, work,” she said, unaware he was only half-listening. “I have six online hackers who help me as well from remote locations.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “Over here.” Mia walked into an office, hidden behind a sheet of frosted glass. Nico followed her and listened patiently as she described her set-up with four screens and three hard drives as well as the bits and pieces she had picked up over the years.

  “So you can test my system from here?” Nico settled in Mia’s chair, welcoming the moment of respite to gather his thoughts.

  “Yes, but I would need that USB I brought to the casino put back into your hard drive to finish the test. Your security guard, Louis, took it from me.”

  “Nico pulled out his phone and typed a quick message to Louis a.k.a Mikey Muscles. “Five minutes. It will be done.”

  She gave him a puzzled frown. “You want me to test your system now?”

  “I’m interested in what you do, bella. Not just what’s underneath your clothes, although I still plan to take them off you before the night is done.”

  Laughing, Mia gestured Nico to her spare chair. “Then you’ll need to move your dominant alpha self over to the side. I need to sit front and center to run the tests.”

  With a grunt of disapproval, Nico shifted to the side and draped his arm over Mia’s chair, trying to find a position that would not be too restricting for his painfully erect cock.

  “I see you have to lay claim to the chair, even if you’re not sitting in it.” Amused, she settled beside him and picked up her ear buds.

  “What are those for?”

  “I need music when I work.” She clicked an app on her screen. “It helps me focus. Do you want to listen?”

  Curious, Nico took the offered ear bud and placed it in his ear.

  “What do you listen to?” Mia asked, scrolling through her playlist. “You didn’t have anything personal in your office so I couldn’t figure you out when you dragged me there to give me a tongue lashing.”

  What would she say if he told her he loved the Rat Pack? The Old Vegas-meets-Hollywood style? He’d never shared his nostalgia for the old days with anyone; pushing aside anything that might distract him from his goals to be the man his father wanted him to be.

  When he didn’t answer, she tilted her head to the side and smiled. “Come on, Mr. Mob Boss. Just one song.”

  He loved her gentle teasing, her nickname for him, the way one side of her mouth quirked with a smile when she thought to cajole information from him when he would have told her almost anything she wanted to know. “Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night.’”

  A grin spread across Mia’s face. “You old romantic mob boss, you. So, you like the oldies?”

  “My mother collected old records. She used to play them for me.” He cut himself off abruptly. This wasn’t the time to get nostalgic for the days when he’d been a young boy who lived for his father’s visits, and the nights he and his parents danced around the small apartment his father paid for to keep Nico and his mother close by. Those days were gone, buried the night his mother died when she tried to take him away from Vegas to start a new life—a life in which she could be someone’s wife and not just a mistress. Love wasn’t enough, she tried to explain only moments before they were hit by an oncoming car, and his world turned dark.

  Mia reached over and squeez
ed his hand, a small gesture that conveyed both sympathy and understanding without demanding further explanation. He was grateful for her silence and for a few moments he just watched her scroll through her playlist.

  Finally, she looked over and grinned. “I’m going to introduce you to something new.” She clicked on the screen. “Welcome to the modern world of feminist punk rock.”

  Instantly, Nico’s ear was assault by noise. “What the fuck?”

  “Give it a minute,” she said loudly. “It’s ‘Rebel Girl’ by Bikini Kill. It’s about female bonds.”

  Nico didn’t know what a Mafia princess was doing listening to a song about female bonds, but he suspected she had never played it in her house when her father was within earshot. “It has a good beat,” he said, for lack of anything better to say about the music that was as far from Sinatra as music could get.

  Mia laughed as she typed on the screen. “You’ll like the next one even better. It’s ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours!’ by X-Ray Spex, about people who think girls should be seen and not heard and what women think about that.”

  “Does all your music make a political statement?”

  “I suppose it does,” she said. “I usually only share it with my close friends and the girls in my coding classes.”

  He endured a few more punk anthems while Mia typed, and then he recognized a tune. “I know this one. That’s Gwen Stefani. So they aren’t all political.”

  Mia gave him a mischievous look. “That opening riff is nothing short of iconic. She’s a punk queen. Her parodic takedown of misogynistic stereotypes is pure genius.”

  Nico tapped his thumb on the desk in time to the rhythm. He couldn’t remember the last time he had just sat and listened to music. The family business had consumed every waking moment of his life. Although a lot of wiseguys chilled out in the club, or hit the strip joints or brothels looking for some female entertainment, Nico worked. His father had told him at an early age that nothing good in life came easy, that success came from dedication and focus, that a man could lead only by example, and that example had to be one of hard work and sacrifice. He was a practical man. A good boss. Nico wanted nothing more than to be like him.