The next day, all I could think about was Rosalie.
Her cherry scent lingered in the air around me everywhere I went. And her touch—god, hertouch—was seared into my skin like a brand.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face, her eyes locking onto mine with a vulnerability that did nothing but make my dick hard.
Keeping my hands away from her felt impossible.
I was a twig nearing its snap; a man on the edge of a cliff, teetering between restraint and surrender. The line between self-control and giving in to my desires was becoming increasingly blurred.
I lit a cigarette and took a drag, feeling the smoke filling my lungs. The nicotine did little to calm my racing heart or quiet the storm inside my head. Rosalie would be upset with me for smoking, but what more could I do to piss her off? Plus, it wasn’t necessarily a rule I couldn’t break.
Truth was, the cigarette was nothing but a futile attempt to clear my thoughts. A temporary distraction from the complication, and nothing more.Shewas a complication—a beautiful, maddening complication I couldn’t ignore.
“Sorry, Sloane wouldn’t let me leave,” Mikhail said as he met me on the dock.
I turned to face him, my brow furrowed and my lips curved in clear annoyance. “Fuck every man who’s getting laid right now,” I muttered under my breath, the frustration clear in my voice.
Mikhail raised a brow, a smirk playing on his lips as he reached me. “Trouble in paradise, Max?” he teased.
I shook my head, flicking the cigarette to the ground and crushing it under my shoe with a twist. “I’m on my best behavior,” I replied.
Mikhail chuckled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Your best behavior, huh? Didn’t know you had that in you.”
“I don’t,” I admitted. Restraint was a foreign concept to me, especially when it came to Rosalie. “But I’m trying.”
“Just have your way with her,” he said as if it were the simplest solution in the world.
“I need her to get there on her own. If she doesn’t sign the marriage certificate, Giovanni will have to deal with me. And I don’t know about you, but I quite like my life and wouldn’t mind keeping it.”
“That’s your plan—hope she falls for you?”
I shook my head. “Pray, Mikhail. Pray she falls for me. Hope will get me nowhere.”
“Pray, is it?” He let out a low chuckle—the kind that didn’t reach his eyes. “You think the Almighty’s got time for your troubles?”
“You’d be surprised what a desperate man believes. When all you’ve got left is faith, you cling to it like a drowning man to driftwood.”
His eyes narrowed, his hand asking for a cigarette. I handed him the pack along with the lighter. He took one, lit it, and inhaled a deep drag, the ember glowing in the dark.
“She’s got you all twisted up, hasn’t she?”
“More than I’d like to admit,” I confessed.
My steps echoed on the wooden planks of the dock. Mikhail followed, and as we neared the ship, a few more men emerged from the side building.
“Boss,” Matteo called.
“Matteo.” I greeted him with a nod. “Everything in place?”
“Secured and ready.”
“Good,” I said, turning to another man approaching him from behind. It was Monique, our logistics expert, who wore her dark hair in a tight ponytail. She’d come to us from the East, where she’d handled smuggling operations for one of the big families before things went south.
“Monique,” I acknowledged. “Shipments?”
“Still weighing everything. The last shipment was missing half a ton. We’ll see if this one is any different soon.”
I was tired of people stealing from me.
