He’d never felt more conflicted in his life.
“Why would Sammy the Ox have something against you?” Mick asked him.
Monk had to regroup in order to focus, once again, on what was actually before him. “My old man snatched his daughter,” he said.
Mick stared at Monk. “Why would he do that?”
Because he’s a dumb ass, Monk wanted to say. “He claimed Sammy snatched some of our weapons a year ago. He just found out about it, so he decided to avenge that wrong.”
“Sounds like bullshit to me,” Mick said.
“That’s his story and he’s sticking to it,” said Monk. “But regardless, he snatched the daughter and sent me out to find her. When I found her, she was with Vinny Blanks at this abandoned motel.”
Big Daddy shook his head. “Vinny Blanks. Sammy the Ox. The names,” he said. “And you think I’m going to let my daughter be a part of this kind of life?”
“What happened when you found her?” Mick asked.
“Sammy’s people apparently found her at the same time because they came in with guns blazing.”
“And the daughter? Was she hit?” Mick asked.
“I’m not sure. She managed to get away while the gun battle was raging. She got away. I don’t know if they snatched her back, or if she got away on her own.”
“What you going to do about it?” Mick asked.
“About the girl?”
“Fuck the girl! About my niece,” said Mick bluntly. “About the fact that one of DeGarno’s men tried to ice my niece.”
“Me and Pop are meeting with DeGarno Thursday night. At Pop’s diner. I’ll see where we go from there.”
“Yeah, you have your meeting,” Mick said. “He tried to take out my niece. I’ll take out a couple of his.”
Big Daddy was appalled. “Don’t you dare, Mick!” he said. “Are you insane? Frankie said he’s going to meet with the man. Let him meet with him first. Then we’ll see. Give him at least time to get more information.”
Mick exhaled. Nobody but Big Daddy could get him to change his mind. “Call me after the meeting,” he said to Monk. “Regardless.”
Monk nodded. “I will,” he said.
Ashley came down the stairs. She was now dressed in jeans and a tucked-in tank top, but instead of having her luggage, she just had a sweater across her arm. Which gave Monk some hope that it wasn’t the end of their relationship. That she had every intention of one day coming back to him.
Both Monk and Mick stood up when she walked downstairs. But Big Daddy gave Monk one more parting shot before he headed toward Ashley. “I’m disappointed in you, Francis,” he said, and then made his way toward his daughter. And Mick followed him.
Ashley, however, was as conflicted as Monk was. Although she waved and told him bye, and even hurried over and hugged him, there was a sadness there that Monk could barely handle.
He didn’t go outside to see her off. He wasn’t sure if he could do it. After they walked out of his front door he, instead, went over to the big bay window and looked out. They placed Ashley in the middle of the backseat, sandwiched between the two brothers, as their driver began backing out of the driveway. And Monk realized he couldn’t even handle that. He turned away from the window.
Inside the SUV, Ashley was even more tortured than Monk. She sat between her father and her uncle, both of their big arms jamming against her, as if they were saving her from a very bad scene and a very bad man. But was it true? Monk treated her better than any man ever had. Yes, there was an incident at the rink. A horrifying incident. But it wasn’t Monk’s fault. He didn’t even want to go skating. That was all her idea. Just because some whacko followed them there wasn’t Monk’s fault.
And they were so certain she was targeted because of her association with him, but why were they so certain of that? Why couldn’t she have been the target because she was Mick the Tick’s niece, or even Big Daddy Sinatra’s daughter? Everybody in Jericho knew how hated Big Daddy was simply because he was rich and powerful and owned half of the county. Uncle Mick and her father had boatloads of enemies. Way more than Monk probably could ever dream of having. But they were blaming him.
As the SUV began to pull away, she turned around, to see Monk one last time, but he wasn’t even at the window anymore. And it broke her heart because she had already figured out how sensitive he was. Most people thought he hid behind that Addams Family-looking house because he didn’t want to be bothered. But Ashley knew that wasn’t it. He just didn’t want to be hurt. And the only thing people ever did to him was hurt him.
Now she was hurting him too. A man who had been nothing but kind to her. A man who treated her like a queen. The only man she’d ever been involved with who claimed her even without her having to beg him to. That was why, she was certain, he was no longer at that window.
And her father and uncle wanted her to just dump him? The best man she’d ever been with? Her Aunt Roz took a chance on her Uncle Mick. Her mother Jenay took a chance on Big Daddy. And neither one of them were easygoing, fun-loving men either. But they didn’t want her to take a chance on Monk.
But as they pulled out of the driveway, and as her father and uncle began taking her back to her life in Jericho, a life that only netted her loneliness and pain, as man after man broke her heart and left her loving herself less and less, and as everybody else left her alone, too, because she just wanted love and had no clue how to find it. Until Monk came along. And he was the one they were shielding her from?
But that wasn’t their decision. That was her decision. And she decided, for the first time in her life, that she was going to stand up for herself and do what all of her aunts and even her own mother had done, and take a chance on love with a longshot.
“Stop!” she yelled to the driver and the SUV slammed on brakes at the end of Monk’s driveway.
Big Daddy frowned. “What is it?” he asked her.
But Ashley was already climbing over his lap and pulling on the door handle. “Open the door,” she said, pulling with desperation in her voice. “Open the door!”
“Why? What’s wrong with you?”
Ashley found the unlock button and pressed it, and then hurried out of the truck. Big Daddy got out behind her, and grabbed her by the arm. Mick got out on the other side and looked over at them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Big Daddy asked Ashley, refusing to release her arm. Tears were falling down her pretty face so dramatically that it stunned her father. And broke his heart. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked her, baffled. “You hardly know that joker!”
“You and Uncle Mick have known him for years.”
“So? What does that have to do with anything?”
Ashley looked at her silent uncle, who stood on the opposite side of the SUV. “Is he a good man, Uncle Mick?”
“No gangster is a good man!” Big Daddy yelled at her.
But Ashley’s eyes remained on her uncle, the most powerful mobster there was. The man reputed to be the boss of all bosses, not just in America, but around the world. He would know, she was certain of that, and he would tell her the truth. “Is he a good man, Uncle Mick?” she asked him again.
Despite the objections of the one man he loved and respected more than any man on earth, Mick was not going to lie to his beloved niece. “He’s one of the best,” he said to her.
And that was all Ashley needed to hear. She easily broke free of her father’s grasp and began running back toward Monk’s front door.
Big Daddy, stunned, looked at his younger brother. Was he insane? Big Daddy didn’t want his daughter falling for a mobster! A man everybody knew would be a boss one day!
But Mick wasn’t backing down. “I told her the truth,” he said to his big brother. Then he exhaled. He didn’t want Ashley falling for a mobster either, just as Mick didn’t want his own daughter Gloria falling for Oz Drakos. But she fell for him. And just like he already knew, it was a decision that only their daughters had a right to
make. “She’s a grown woman, Charles,” he said, and got back into the SUV.
Monk was in the kitchen, making himself a cup of coffee. His heart was so heavy it felt as if he had gained a hundred pounds in a matter of minutes. He knew it was best for Ashley. Her family didn’t want her anywhere near him, and he understood that. But it just hurt. He thought he was so close to finally finding somebody who just might want him for who he was, rather than what he could do for her. Somebody he could trust, and depend on, and love with all his heart. A heart, he knew but would never admit to anyone, that desperately needed to love.
But it wasn’t meant to be, he decided. She was better off without him. That was why he didn’t chase after her or beg her to not leave him, although every fiber of his being wanted to do just that. But it would be the height of selfishness if he did that. That was why he let her go.
Besides, he’d just met her. How could he be that deeply in love with somebody he just met less than a month ago?
But Monk knew how. Because he’d been looking for somebody with a heart like Ashley’s his whole life, and when he found that girl, he knew he wasn’t going to bullshit around. He was going to take that bull by the horn and ride that sucker until she, at least, wanted him too. That was why it hurt so bad. An assassin’s bullet, he believed, would not have hurt as bad.
“Lord have mercy,” he said out loud. He wasn’t sure if he could handle that kind of hurt.
And then his doorbell rang. And rang again and again.
Monk’s heart was too heavy to think anything positive was going on. He hurried to his front door and was about to grab the gun he had sat on the foyer table. Until he looked through the peephole. When he saw Ashley, still ringing his bell, he opened the door so fast it flew away from him and slammed against the wall. He was just that shocked. “Ashley?” He stepped toward her.
But Ashley had a look in her eyes that was as filled with hope as it was filled with terror. “You will look out for me, won’t you, Monk?” She said it as if she needed to persuade herself. She said it as if her entire future hinged on his answer. “You will take care of me, won’t you, Monk?”
Monk knew what she was asking. She wanted him to promise to never hurt her. She wanted him to promise to never let anybody else hurt her.
It was a promise he aimed to keep.
“Yes,” he said to her. “With everything within me, yes.”
And Ashley smiled for the first time since her family arrived on their rescue mission. And she fell into Monk’s welcoming arms.
Big Daddy was still standing outside of the SUV, staring at the couple as they embraced. He could see even from where he stood that Monk’s eyes were shut tightly, as if he could hardly believe she returned to him, and Big Daddy knew forcing Ashley back to Jericho was not going to work. Mick was right. She was a grown woman now. He allowed his sons to make their own decisions. He allowed her sister Carly to make her own decisions. He had to let Ashley do the same. And Ashley being Ashley, he already knew her road was never going to be smooth and easy. But bumpy and hard. It was who she was. It was baked in her cake.
He got back in the SUV. It was breaking his heart, but he knew he had to let her go. By her design, and by her own choice, she was in Monk’s hands now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The next morning, Ashley woke up smiling and stretching before she even opened her eyes. When she reached her hand over to the opposite side of the bed, so that she could feel that protectiveness she always felt when Monk was around, her eyes flew open. Because she felt nothing. And when she opened her eyes and saw that Monk wasn’t there, she panicked and quickly sat upright in bed, her bare breasts juggling.
And that was when she saw him, sitting in a chair beside the bed, in his bathrobe. And just like that the panic went away. She smiled, and laid back down. “How long have you been up?” she asked him.
“A few hours,” he said.
She was surprised. “A few hours? What time is it?”
“It’s eleven.”
Ashley’s big eyes grew larger. “Eleven? Monk!
“You were sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t want to wake you.”
“So you just sat there for a few hours doing what?”
“Looking at you,” Monk said.
“Ooh, that’s creepy,” Ashley said, and they both laughed. And then Ashley yawned and stretched again, and then she kicked the covers off of her naked body, ready to get up.
But when Monk saw that body again, his dick immediately went hard. He honestly believed he was hornier in the month he’d known Ashley than in all the prior years of his life. No woman made him happier than she did. No woman got him going like she did. No woman got his penis up and ready like she did. Not that he had a lot of women in his day. He hadn’t. But the ones he did have couldn’t hold a candle to the way Ashley made him feel.
Ashley could feel him staring at her body. She didn’t have a knack for many things, but she had a knack for knowing when a man was lusting after her. And when she looked over at Monk, and saw his big, beautiful, hooded eyes looking down the length of her body, she knew her suspicion wasn’t wrong.
And when she looked down at Monk’s midsection, and could see where his erection was so great that his dick had tented his robe, she suddenly got wet herself. She suddenly realized that her desire for him, for a man who knew how to do her better than anybody she’d ever been with knew how to, was getting just as great as his obvious desire for her.
And when he stood up, untied his robe and let it drop to his bare feet, revealing his own chiseled body, she knew it was about to get real. And she opened her legs for him as wide as she could.
Monk’s heart was palpitating with desire for Ashley as he got on the bed, got between her legs, and began eating her as if he was starved for her nourishments.
Ashley closed her eyes and raked her fingers through his hair as he licked and sucked and bit her, and her body began to move as if his tongue had rhythm.
Monk was feeling it, too, as her sweet taste intoxicated him. So much so that he knew, if he kept going down on her, he was going to cum. Or she was.
He forced himself to stop and move up her body, kissing her stomach and her breasts and her neck and then her mouth as he moved all the way on top of her. He kissed her so long and so hard that Ashley was getting drunk on his skills. And then he moved his mouth from her mouth, and whispered in her ear. “You take birth control, don’t you, Ashley?”
“Always,” Ashley said.
“Since you’ve been here with me?”
“Always,” said Ashley.
“I’m going in raw,” Monk said to her. “Don’t worry. I’m good. I’ve never done it without a condom.”
“Neither have I,” Ashley said.
“Until now,” Monk said, as he began kissing her hard again, and as his fully aroused penis entered her raw.
Ashley leaned her head back when she felt him in full, and they began what amounted to a very long and very passionate lovemaking session.
And during the entire time that Monk was on top of her, pumping into her with all the force he had, and she was holding onto him for dear life with her legs wide open to feel the full effects of each and every one of his pumps, neither one of them thought about that skating rink shooting. Neither one of them thought about how in the world were they going to navigate their long distance relationship. Neither one of them thought at all about the fact that Monk was mob, and Ashley was now a mobster’s girl. All Ashley thought about was his dick in her. All Monk thought about was her pussy keeping his dick big, hard, and warm, as he fucked her and fucked her, until they both couldn’t take it anymore, and came.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
After showering together, and after Monk had dressed and made his way downstairs, Ashley finally got her hair and makeup and clothes together, and made it downstairs too. But as soon as she got to that bottom stair and the smell of home-cooked bacon whiffed through her nostrils, she smiled. And couldn’t
get to that kitchen fast enough.
But when she got there, she was shocked. She was expecting to see some chef in the kitchen preparing brunch for them. But there was no chef. There was only Monk, in his dress pants and dress shirt with suspenders, standing at the stove. He was putting the bacon he had just cooked onto two plates.
Ashley just stood there. Monk was a big man, with muscular thighs and biceps and the kind of masculine, hard body she wasn’t used to. It was as if she’d been with boys all her life, and now she had a real man on her hands. Before she slept with him, it seemed kind of overwhelming to be with a man like that. She always feared that somebody as muscular as Monk would crush her in bed. But now, after he made love to her again last night, after she realized how expert and gentle he was with her, she couldn’t understand why she ever liked boyish men to begin with. A man like Monk, she was beginning to realize, was more like her type than she could have ever imagined.
And she smiled. “Wow,” she said. “It cooks too!”
Monk laughed out loud and then glanced back at her. When he saw her looking so radiant in her mini skirt and sleeveless blouse, in her heels and beautifully done hair and makeup, he could feel his heart swell with emotion. And to avoid revealing too much, he just nodded his head. “You look very nice,” he said.
Ashley knew what he meant. She knew he didn’t want to expose how he really felt about her. “You too,” she said with a knowing smile, and took a seat at the table in his breakfast nook.
Monk brought over two plates filled with bacon, eggs, hash browns and English muffins. Ashley’s eyes went big when he sat one of those plates in front of her. “Who did you cook all of this food for?” she asked him.
“Who?” Monk asked. “Who do you think? For you. Who else?”
Ashley smiled. “I could get used to this,” she said, still staring at it.
“You’d better,” Monk said.
“I’ll get fat though.”
Monk Paletti: Taming Ashley Sinatra Page 15
