“Sorry I'm late, baby bird,” Luca begins.
“I don't like to be kept waiting, Don Morelli. Even if youarethe head of the New York Commission. We had a date, we had a time, and you missed it.”
Luca grins at me. “Why don't we have our marital tiff in private?” he suggests. “Thanks for your work tonight, guys, you can all go. You too, Vitali.”
Teo isn't dumb enough to leave withoutmypermission. He knows who he works for. But I give him the nod. “I'll see you tomorrow, T.”
Once we’re alone, Luca comes close to the desk. “You're notreallymad at me, are you, angel?”
“I’m getting that way. Don't you know what day it is today?” I’ve been reminding him all damn week.
“It's Friday. Date Night,” Luca says with a shrug.
I actuallyamgetting pissed off now. “Are you kidding me?”
Luca comes around the side of the desk and grabs me by the waist, twirling me around. “Yeah, baby bird, Iamkidding you. I know exactly what day it is, and I didn’t need you nagging me all week to remember, either. It's our wedding anniversary, and if you'd been awake this morning when I left, we could have started the day right.”
“I got home at four and you left at six,” I point out. Lately our sleep schedules have been pretty erratic. That’s something we’ll have to work on, but between me getting the nightclub booming and Luca settling into his position as head of the New York Commission, we’ve had to grab time together whenever we can.
But not today. Today is our first wedding anniversary, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to mark the occasion with everything in me—except traditional paper gifts, because I’m not that boring.
He sets me down again and I put my arms around his neck.
“Forgive me?” he asks, his blue eyes electric in the subdued lighting of the office.
“Only ’cause you’re hot,” I tell him, and then I kiss him. I think about that kiss we had on our wedding day, fierce, almost violent, a public kiss to make our friends cheer and our enemies quail. This one is private, but no less passionate.
“You ready to go?” he gasps, once I let him come up for air.
“Sure. Let me just tell Hudson we’re going.”
Luca makes a face.
“Look, he tries hard,” I tell him. After Hudson recovered, he didn’t seem inclined to go back to New Jersey after everything that happened, so I offered him a pity-job as my personal assistant here at the club. “He’s learning. You know, he has a lot of enthusiasm. He just needs to learn how to direct it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. I do say so. And since I’m the king here, my word is law.”
Luca snorts. “Okay, King Finch. Hurry up and alert your enthusiastic assistant so I can boss you around in bed.”
I defy anyone to turn down an offer like that.
* * *
We were supposedto go to dinner somewhere special, but as usual, we end up ditching the reservations, getting the food to go, and enjoying each other in the privacy of our bedroom instead.
“One day we should fuck elsewhere,” I say lazily, kissing down his chest. We’re past the clothes stage, got past it a while ago, and we’ve showered together with mutual teasing hand jobs that were never intended to go anywhere, just whet our appetites.
Like I ever need whetting for this guy. Luca knows all he has to do is drag a knuckle down my backbone and I bounce to attention all over.
“Fuck elsewhere?” he asks, threading a hand through my hair and giving it a cute tug.
“Yeah. Like the formal dining room. Or something totally basic bitch, like blowing you under the desk in the study when you’re on the phone.” I’ve reached his dick now, and it definitely gives a little jump at my words. “Do we like that idea?” I ask, looking up the planes of his body to meet those icy eyes. They’re black and blue right now, his pupils so big he looks stoned.
“We do.”
“Mm.” I circle my tongue around his cockhead, still holding his gaze. When I try to pull away and keep teasing, his hand tenses in my hair.
