“Oh my God,” she cried out. “I’m so close.”
Leaning over her, he slipped his free hand up the front of her blouse to her breast. Finding her hard nipple, he pinched it as he continued to piston his cock in and out of her.
It did the trick, sending her into a state of bliss that had her calling out his name while her channel squeezed him.
“Fuck,” he barked, driving himself in deeply as he come in a rush of ecstasy.
When it was over, he pulled back, and only then did it occur to him that he didn’t use a condom. He internally cursed himself. What the fuck was he thinking? This woman had a way of making him act like an impulsive teenager that couldn’t keep it in his pants.
“I’m on the pill,” Alessia said as she turned around and saw his expression.
Relief washed over him. “Good. You made me lose my damn mind, woman.”
She laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He was just glad to see her smiling so brightly. If sex did that, he’d be more than happy to oblige her any time.
13
ALESSIA
Alessia put Beaux in charge of the gallery temporarily. She was going to miss going there every day, but she knew that if Leo was truly after her, she couldn’t go somewhere that he could easily find her. The gallery was bound to be the first place he looked after her apartment.
She wasn’t even completely surprised that her brother would do such a thing, despite how horrible it was. But it hurt, all the same, especially when she realized that his assumption that their dad wouldn’t care was probably correct.
It had been a tough thing to accept, but she spent much of yesterday evening coming to terms with it. It was time to accept that her relationship with her family was over. Even her mother. That was a little harder to accept, but she knew that deep down, her mother was the type of woman to do what she was told. If her dad said to fall in line, she always did it. Alessia didn’t doubt that her mother’s loyalty would extend to this situation as well.
She needed a clean break, and staying with Connor gave her the opportunity to figure out her next move.
“What smells so good in here?” Connor asked as he entered the kitchen.
He’d been gone for most of the day on mafia business, and she decided she wanted to repay him for looking out for her by cooking dinner. So, while he showered, she got to work making one of her best dishes.
“Eggplant parmesan,” she said, noting that his long hair was still damp. Thoughts of him naked under the shower spray threatened to distract her, but she was determined not to ruin this dish, so she forced herself to focus as she finished layering the mozzarella on top of the eggplant pieces and popped it into the oven.
“Authentic Italian food?” he grinned, coming up to the kitchen island as she wiped down the surface where she’d assembled the dish. “Did you learn that from someone in your family?”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. I wish someone in my family cared enough to teach me this. I learned it in college. I took a culinary arts class, mostly just for fun since I was an art history major. I was particularly interested in the section covering Italian food because I wanted to know how to prepare the kinds of food that are normally passed down through the generations, you know? The food from my culture.”
“Makes sense.”
“My mom isn’t much of a cook, but we always had a cook, so she didn’t have to be. But I’m not going to pretend that she would have taught me how to cook if she knew. She was never that kind of mom.”
“What kind of mom was she?”
“The kind that swallowed a handful of painkillers with her morning coffee. She can’t get through a day without that high, and what she cares about most is her social status. Oh, and staying on my dad’s good side.”
“He has a good side?”
Alessia chuckled. “No, not really. Honestly, I thought that the way that I was raised was normal until I became an adult. That’s when I realized just how messed up my family was, with a deeply manipulative father pulling everyone’s strings. I didn’t even know how repressed and lonely I was until I found friends and freedom living on campus.”
“It pisses me off that you had to deal with all that.”
She liked that he was always blunt and honest like this. So few people were.
“And what about you?” she asked. “What is your family like?”
A dark emotion passed over his face, but he quickly schooled his features into a stoic expression. “My parents aren’t around anymore. They both passed away in a car accident when I was twenty-one.”
