by M. Robinson
I extended my hand to him for the first time and watched as he took it in a firm, cold grip. When we shook, I had that feeling in my gut I got sometimes when I met someone I felt a kindred connection with. It didn’t surprise me I felt that with Tiernan, it seemed we were cut from the same black sheep’s wool.
“I did get you a present,” he reminded me as he pulled away to reach into the breast pocket of his bespoke suit.
I laughed when he pulled out a bar of Bonnat chocolate wrapped with a bow. When I took it, I saw two tickets to see the best concert pianist of our time, Louis Lortie, tucked beneath the ribbon.
“You did your research, I’ll give you that,” I told him.
His eyes sparkled in the low light, but he didn’t smile. Instead, his gaze cut to a place over my shoulder and he jerked his chin up in acknowledgment.
“Happy Christmas, Elena Lombardi, I look forward to working with you.”
“Happy holidays, Mr. Morelli.”
“Tiernan,” he pressed with a sour expression. “I prefer Tiernan.”
I watched him walk away, but didn’t turn even when a second pair of footsteps echoed under the patio roof.
I’d know Dante was close even if I was blind, deaf, and dumb. I could feel the energy in the air shift as if to make way for his presence.
When he stepped up behind me and pressed his torso to my back, all I felt was warmth and security. I tipped my head back and up, tucking my nose under his chin to catch the scent of him, lemons and musk.
“Tiernan clearly doesn’t know it is bad manners to give a married woman a Christmas gift,” he groused, but there was humor in his tone as he wrapped his arms around me.
“Anyone with working eyes can see there’s no man for me but you,” I replied.
It still shocked me that I could make declarations like that when once I’d been so guarded with my heart that I sometimes forgot to feel at all.
A low growl worked through his chest, vibrating into me. “You know I can’t resist my fighter when she’s sweet.”
“We can go home now,” I suggested, the words breathy because his lips were at my ear, teeth nipping the lobe.
One of his big hands splayed across my belly, fingertips almost at my clit.
“Can’t wait,” he mumbled against my neck as he bent to lick at my pounding pulse. “Want to take you right here. Seeing you so perfect brings out the heathen in me. I want to stain you with bruises and mark you with my cum so when we walk back through the party all those stronzi will know you are mine.”
“Dante,” I tried to admonish but the edge of his name was lost to a moan as he sank his teeth into my neck and sucked. “There’s a party of hundreds of New York’s elite going on steps away from us.”
“Hmmm,” he hummed as his hand moved down my belly to cup my sex through the thick velvet fabric. “Better not make a noise then.”
I gasped as he tugged me backward and moved us down the patio in the deep shadows at its farthest edge. It was colder there, the breeze bitter from the snow, but when I shivered, it wasn’t because of the temperature.
It was because this gorgeous, powerful man couldn’t wait a minute longer to get his hands and mouth on my body and nothing was headier than that.
He pushed me up against the house with a hand splayed between my breasts while the other dipped to gather the fabric of my dress in his hand. He lifted it up to my hip and tucked it through my underwear on one side so my sex was partially exposed to the night and his questing fingers. When he cupped my pussy, he groaned at the wet he found dampening the lace.
“You like knowing someone could walk out and find us,” he noted on a dark purr as one finger hooked under the material and slid through my wet slit.
I watched, panting, as he pulled his hand free and raised his glistening fingers between us. A moan leaked out my mouth when he pulled them into his mouth to suck off my juices.
“Deliziosa,” he praised before dropping to his knees on the cold deck.
He had my left leg up and over his shoulder, my panties pushed to the side with two fingers and his tongue plunging into my pussy before I could protest. My head thunked against the wall as I threw it back to groan, fingers delving into the thick hair on top of his head.
He ate me with single minded determination, sucking at my clit, nibbling at my folds and fucking my grasping entrance with his tongue until I was a mess of whimpers and sighs.
“Hush,” he demanded, biting into my tender inner thigh. “Be silent, Elena, or people will see you about to cum on my tongue.”
A violent shudder rolled through me and when he rasped the hood of my clit with his teeth, I groaned so loudly my teeth chattered.
Immediately, Dante pulled away, his hot mouth replaced by wintery air.
“Dante,” I protested, but my mouth went dry when he stood and began to pull off the bow tie around his neck.
My man looked sinful in a tuxedo, but the sight of him unravelling that black silk tie was almost incendiary.
“Take off your underwear,” he ordered calmly, arching a brow when I didn’t immediately obey.
My legs were shaky as I bent to peel off the damp material. He held out a broad palm for me to drop them in.
“You can’t be quiet so I will make you quiet,” he told me. “Can you take it?”
My head was nodding before I could think it through.
Dante didn’t give me a chance beyond that to object.
“Open,” he demanded, waiting for my red lips to fall open before he careful rolled up my wet panties and stuff them inside.
A shiver rippled down my spine, but it wasn’t one of fear. To think I used to believe such things were deviant and wrong.
There was nothing wrong and everything sexy and empowering about Dante gagging me with my own underwear, carefully using his discarded bowtie wrapped around my head to secure it.
He tweaked the bow he tied over my mouth, his voice wracked with desire as he said, “You look like the best fucking Christmas present.”
I groaned through the fabric.
It was impossible not to arch closer to him. To want to preen and pose for him so that he might better praise me for being beautiful and his. There was no room for insecurity between the tight fibre of our bond. No hesitation or worry, no inkling of shame.
Just love and passion so hot it seared me from the inside out.
Dante stepped back to study me, rubbing his hand over the slight dimple hidden under the five o’clock shadow of his scruffy chin. One hand reached out to tug the bodice of my dress down, propping my breasts up like plump offerings. He tweaked one nipple until it throbbed and reddened.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured as if in a trance, his eyes glossed with hazy desire. “Bellissima, donna mia.”
His free hand found my drenched pussy, cupping it for a moment before sinking three fingers inside. I choked on the drool pooling behind the makeshift gag, legs quaking from the sharp sting and pleasurable burn of being filled too much too quickly. He pressed closer, one thigh slotting between my thighs to push against my clit.
“You’re soaking my trousers, Elena,” he told me, not to scold me, but to praise me for being so wet for him. “Do you like it when I play with you like this?”
I nodded quickly, my skull knocking against the house.
“Do you need more?”
Another nod, my breath moving harshly through my nostrils as I fought to breathe through the lust clogging my throat.
I tipped my head down to watch Dante’s big hands undo his belt, unzip his black trousers and pull his thick, veiny cock from his boxer briefs. There was a pearl of moisture on the tip that made my mouth water. He ran his thumb over the head, correctly reading the look in my eyes, and raised it between us to show me his precum.
“If you’d been quiet, I could have given you a taste,” he taunted softly before rubbing that wet thumb against his own lower lip and sensuously licking up the salty residue.
A loud, unaba
shed moan ripped through me.
Dio mio, my man was sexy.
Without further teasing, he hooked my left leg over one arm and slotted his dick at my entrance, bracing himself against the wall beside my head so he could lean down to suck hot, bruising kisses along the column of my throat. The moment his teeth sank into my flesh, he pushed to the hilt inside me.
A scream tore up my throat and was muffled by the gag.
“That’s it, lottatrice,” he murmured, setting a brutal pace that targeted that tender spot on my inner walls that made my legs turn to butter. “Take me just like that.”
I canted my hips to take him deeper while my nails clawed at the back of his suit jacket, tugging him even closer. I’d never understood the concept pre-Dante of never being close enough to your partner. Of wanting them on you, inside you, surrounding you. Sometimes, I thought I would willingly drown in the scent, feel, and strength of this man.
This man I was lucky enough—no, strong enough—too call my own.
“I’m going to make you come all over me while all those uptight prudes socialize on the other side of the wall.” He thrust even harder, my body thumping against the building audibly. “Do you think they can hear how hard I’m fucking you? How deep inside you I plan to come?”
A shudder seized my shoulders and shook me violently. My pussy was being battered by the thick, long length of him, my nipples pleasantly abraded by the fabric of his dress shirt. An orgasm coiled inside my belly, ready to strike at the barest provocation.
“One day, I’m going to plant my seed so deep inside you we will make a baby,” he told me, expression fierce as a warrior while his eyes remained so tender. “I’m going to keep coming inside you every day until we make it happen. Pump you so full of cum, it will leak out of you for hours. I’ll be able to open your legs and feel my seed dribble down your thigh hours later.”
He paused, panting against my gagged mouth, and the hand on the wall tangled in my hair so he could tilt my head back, his black eyes darker than the winter night around us.
“You want to feel me fill you up, Elena?”
That was it.
The orgasm tightened my entire core until I was curved into him, arched so strongly my muscles ached. A moment later, I snapped free like a rubber band, every inch of me shaking then growing weak with the force of my climax. Vaguely, I was aware of the zig as Dante bit into my neck to muffle his own groans as he seated himself deep and came inside of me. Every jerk of his cock against my swollen folds heightened my pleasure, wringing it out of me until I was limp as laundry pinned against the wall by Dante’s heavy frame.
The hand in my hair loosened, working gently through the loosely curled strands. Tenderly, he lowered my leg and slipped out of me, testing the wet mess he’d left behind with careful fingertips. I shivered lightly at the feel of them against my oversensitive sex, but I loved the way he teased his cum out of me so it started to drip down one of my inner thighs.
He cupped my wet, raw pussy and used his other hand to untie the gag and pull it from my mouth. His lips were on mine instantly, soothing away any lingering discomfort.
“One day,” he told me solemnly, the way a Made Man took his oaths to the Camorra. “I will give you a baby, lottatrice, I promise you.”
Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I tipped my head up to keep them from spilling, but he grasped my chin and forced me to look into his beautiful face.
“It’s not something you can promise me,” I protested weakly.
I’d had surgery to increase the odds of conceiving naturally, but it was by no means guaranteed and we had been trying for years already.
“You doubt me?” he asked, brows raised, the haughtiness he’d been born with as a Duke’s second son rearing its head. “If you wanted the world, Elena, I would find a way to give it to you. There is nothing more important to me than your happiness. Yours and Rora’s.”
My heart pulsed too hard in my chest. I winched at the ache.
I cupped the face dearest to me in the world and brought his forehead to mine so that my eyes were his entire world. “I don’t doubt you, capo. You changed my whole world and I know, if you want to, you’ll find a way to change it again. I-I didn’t believe in happiness for myself until you and now, it feels gluttonous to wish for more when I am so…incandescently joyful.”
“There is no such thing as too much joy,” he corrected, smoothing his thumbs over my cheekbones. “There is nothing too great for me to give you, least of all this. It’s not only your dream, capisci? To see you as a mother holding a baby we made together? I can’t imagine a greater gift. If we are patient, one day, it will be ours.”
“Is that your Christmas wish?” I asked, joking through the tightness in my throat and the heaviness in my heart.
“It’s a promise, for now,” he pledged. “And one day it will be a gift.”
As it turned out, Dante had already given me the best Christmas gift I had ever known because on that night, outside in the cold and dark where we had both spent so much of our lives, struggling and alone, together we had made our wish come true.
Nine months later, after twenty-eight hours of painful labor, our two Christmas miracles were born: Amadeo and Chiara Salvatore.
* * *
Thank you for reading Baby, It’s Cold Outside! If you were intrigued by the scarred Tiernan Morelli, DANGEROUS TEMPTATION is a brand-new book…
He arrives all dressed in black. Diamond cufflinks. A watch on his tanned wrist that cost more than we would ever see in a lifetime of work. He carries a single red rose for my mother.
Months later, Tiernan Morelli lays red roses on my mother’s grave. That same day, he tells me that he is my new guardian.
I should have known from the very start that he had more in common with the thorns than the rose. Now I know the truth: I’m a pawn in his dangerous game of revenge. I was too young and naive. Now it’s too late to save myself from his clutches.
Now I belong to him.
ONE-CLICK DANGEROUS TEMPTATION NOW >
And if you are curious about Elena and Dante, check out their forbidden love, mafia duet, Anti-Heroes in Love now, starting with WHEN HEROES FALL.
This Christmas
Theodora Taylor
Chapter One
The First Christmas
Josh
A heavy thunk ripped Josh out of a black sleep.
The enemy was here—his unit was under attack again. He reached for the P226 sidearm he kept fully loaded on top of his footlocker, adrenaline surging through his body.
“Don’t go pulling your gun on me again, man. I come bearing gifts.”
Bobkowski’s familiar voice stopped him from doing exactly that.
Christ. He’d almost pulled his sidearm on his bunkmate. Again. In the tent that was only sweltering because it was located in a Middle Eastern desert—on a well-guarded base safe from enemy attacks.
Even so, his adrenaline refused to back down despite the threat having been ruled out. His heart continued to pound in his ears like a drum, threatening to make him lose it again.
Instead, he focused on the source of the noise. Same as the last time. Bobkowski had dropped his pack on the room floor.
Nothing to kill here. Just the noisy guy he shared a tent with—one he wouldn’t have to put up with for much longer. He hadn’t re-upped, so he only had a couple of weeks left on his deployment.
His father, whose former constituents and sons alike still called him The Admiral, had decided that Josh completing a heroic mission that made the international news was service enough to their country. The Admiral had pulled him aside after the Navy Cross ceremony and ordered him back stateside to move on to the next phase of The Plan.
The Plan was basically service, then law school, then the founding of his own firm.
After that, Josh would be expected to make the right connections to better support his younger brother, Sawyer’s eventual bid for their father’s congressional seat. Then he’d lobb
y on his brother’s behalf until Sawyer made it to the ultimate seat of American power, President of the United States.
Somewhere between law school and founding his own firm, Josh would also have to acquire a wife and children. Then his life’s mission would be complete. Good dog.
“You got mail.” Bobkowski’s announcement ripped Josh from his cynical thoughts. The other SEAL held up a red card envelope. “Smells like a good-looking female with an even better-looking rack.”
Bobkowski was always saying weird stuff like that. Even stranger, he often turned out to be right. That’s why everybody in their unit except for Josh called him The Nose.
So even though it annoyed him that Bobkowski had literally been sniffing his mail, he sat up in bed and took the envelope with a polite enough, “Thanks.”
A Christmas Card…
And unlike all the fan mail he’d gotten after the orphan hostage story broke, no perfume clung to the paper. There was no address at all—not even on the back flap.
Josh tensed. The only mail he’d received without a return address had been from crazies and sickos.”
Bobkowski had been right a lot, but maybe he was wrong about this.
He opened the envelope carefully and read the card inside.
Dearest Josh,
You don’t know me, but I fear I’m in love with you.
I met you before…. before all the hero stuff, and even though I knew there was no way you could ever like a girl like me, I fell in love with you anyway.
I know that’s a weird thing to claim—especially since I’ve always been too scared to talk to you. But when I read about what happened, all I could think was, you could have died. You could have died without knowing that there’s somebody out there who loves you, who wants the best for you, even if she’s too shy to ever tell you her name.
I wish I could help you the way you helped those orphans. I know of a quiet cabin in the woods. I wish I could bring you there. Give you a place to rest for a while.
But that’s just me spinning dreams that could never happen.
You probably have hundreds of women telling you the same thing. War hero—I can only imagine the mail. So I’m writing this card to tell you the same thing, and to wish you a Merry Christmas.
