Matteo was the first and only man to be attracted to my fire.
I now had a very serious problem.
Because I didn’t just want him gone anymore.
I wantedhim.
My undoing was red, hot and short-tempered.
One I didn’t see coming.
Not entirely at least.
All it took was one true touch to turn me stupid.
Skin to skin. Sizzling in heat. And doused in fatal attraction.
I swallowed dry.
Tensing my jaw, I stretched my neck in a failed attempt to get her out from under my skin.
It’d been an instinct reaction on my part – to pull her closer and block out the danger with my bigger frame.
Francesca DeMone had touched me exactly three times before tonight.
First, when she dragged me by the collar over the desk in her club’s underground’s office. And I had to walk around with a hard-on for a month, remembering the fire in her eyes.
When she slapped me across the face with the contract of our expansion in my hotel suite, before leaning forward and pushing her tits in my face. And all I could think about was bending her over my desk.
And last, when she grabbed me by the bicep to hold me in place in an attempt to console me at her family’s party. And all I could think about was pushing my hand into those heavenly, platinum strands of hair, pulling her head back and kissing her deeper then she’d ever been before.
Every single one of those times, I was thinking with my dick, yet somehow managed to do the reasonable thing.
My muscles were coiled tight as I tried to take in a deeper breath to loosen the tension in my body. Francesca didn’t seem to be doing much better either. She was sat in the armchair next to me, her posture too straight, her face too still, her body too stiff. Both of us looked like if just one wrong move or wondering look was caught by the other, we’d cross the line of no return and ravage the entire room.
Though, no one else was able to catch our distress.
The office smelled like old cigars and fresh leather. A wide desk of polished mahogany separated the Vegas Boss from us, contracts stacked in neat piles, a fountain pen glinting in the lamplight. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the Strip, neon bleeding through the glass like veins of fire.
I sat back in the armchair, the leather creaking beneath me. To my left, Francesca a mirror of me – rigid, contained.
We didn’t look at each other.Couldn’t.
If I turned my head even an inch, if my eyes so much as brushed her face, I knew I’d give myself away. That the heat I’d felt beside her during the fight would break loose here, in this room where control was the only thing keeping our world from burning.
So, instead, I fixed my attention on the Vegas Boss.
“You’ve always had my respect,” the man was saying, sliding the papers closer. “Your families, your crews – we’ve all made money together for decades. This expansion? It’s a good thing. A solid thing. For New York, for Mexico, for Vegas. We’ll all eat better.”
Francesca nodded once, slow. “That’s what we want.”
She had her hands folded neatly in her lap, her legs crossed, her face the picture of a Consigliere. But I saw it – the tension in her jaw, the way her throat moved when she swallowed. She was trying as hard as I was.
He looked between us, then chuckled. “Sharp kids, both of you. Enzo raised you well, Francesca.”
She smiled politely. I kept my eyes on the desk, on the pen, anywhere but her.
Because if I looked – if I let myself see those doe eyes glinting like sin under the low light – I wouldn’t stop.
