I would have done it, too.
I stretched out as much as I could, let my hand stroke up my inner thigh as I thought about touching Aidan’s hand in the car before we went into the townhouse. I replayed the conversation, adding in a few endearments,No need to be nervous, baby. I’ll take care of you.
I’d take suchdamngood care of him if he would let me. I palmed my dick, which fattened up as I pictured his plump mouth, wondered how he would’ve reacted if I’d kissed him there in the church, wondered what he would’ve said if I’d told him he was mine from now on.
With a self-pitying groan I pulled my hand away from my junk and turned over onto my side. My thick cock gave a few hopeful pulses but I left it slumped on my thigh, abandoned. I couldn’t beat off, not when anyone in the family might wake up and come into the kitchen for a glass of water or something. Maybe tomorrow in the shower. It was the only time I ever got to myself these days, it felt like.
I wondered if Aidan had gone to sleep okay, if he’d thought about me at all before he had or if I was just another Morelli fixture to him, background noise to his friendship with Mr. D and the Boss.
Part of me ached to make him scream out my name, make him look me in the eye and reallyseeme. I wanted to touch him and make his body come alive, make him pant out my name, go down on his knees in a parody of prayer and beg me to fuck him.
But mostly I just wanted to make sure he was okay. Someone so selfless needed someone else looking out for them—but that couldn’t be me, no way. My sexual fantasies about him only proved how unworthy I’d be.
I hunched up on the couch and tried to put Aidan O’Leary out of my mind.
Chapter Five
Teo
Iwasn’t on call to guard Mr. D the next morning, but I showed up at the townhouse anyway, since I had nothing better to do. If Snapper called me to help his crew out with a job, of course I’d go, but he’d been relying on me less these days since more Morelli soldiers had been recruited, and I’d taken on more shifts guarding Mr. D. Our numbers in the Family were finally growing, and the recruits all seemed like good, solid people so far.
The truth was, I wanted to make sure Aidan got home okay, if he still insisted on going. But when I turned up at the townhouse, he seemed in no hurry to leave yet. He was in the kitchen dressed in a borrowed fluffy robe, eating pancakes with Mr. D at the breakfast table. Hudson Taylor, Mr. D’s assistant and apparently now personal chef, was cooking for them. Hudson’s boyfriend and Finch’s bodyguard for the day, Gio Carlucci, was sitting at the kitchen table too.
“Yo, Vitali,” he called, seeing me pause in the doorway.
“Yo,” I said back. “You all sleep in or what?”
Mr. D looked like he hadn’thadmuch sleep, and before he could reply, he interrupted himself with a huge yawn. I was trying hard not to look at Aidan, to wonder what that fluffy robe might feel like on his skin, under my palms, so I got an eyeful of Mr. D’s tonsils instead.
“Hudson offered to make pancakes,” Aidan explained, smiling at me, and now I had to look at him or be rude. “There’s plenty, if you haven’t eaten.”
“I ate,” I said abruptly, although I hadn’t. Well. I’d had Marietta’s coffee, which was stuffed full of butter and cream and all this weird shit she put in it. The pancakes smelled really good, too. I shrugged. “I could eat again.” Aidan jumped up. “Hey, no, you sit there and enjoy your breakfast,” I protested.
“It’s no bother,” he said, bustling around the kitchen counter and grabbing me out a plate. He held it out for Hudson to flip a few rounds onto and then kept it there until the kid put another one on. “You take butter? Bacon? Maple syrup?” Aidan asked, lifting up the jug.
“Hit me,” I said. Might as well get my calories in early. I wandered closer to Aidan and said in a lower voice, “You sleep okay?”
Aidan put down the syrup and put his hand over mine on the counter top. “I wanted to say thank you,” he said. “You were right. It was the best thing for me to come here last night. I slept much better for it, too.” His fingers were slightly sticky—with syrup, I figured.
I looked down at his hand, then up into his sincere blue eyes. They had flecks of yellow in the iris that I had never noticed before.
“No problem,” I said. He smiled, and took his hand away to continue piling up toppings on my pancakes. I sucked my knuckle clean quickly.
Yep. Maple syrup.
“Here you go,” he said, smiling still as he handed me the pancakes.
“Thanks.” I followed him back to the kitchen table. Mr. D looked slightly more awake now, having chugged half his mug of black coffee.
“Aidan can’t come tonight for poker,” he said sleepily to me. “So we’re playing Sunday lunch instead. You in?” The last few months we’d all been crazy for poker, playing once a week or more if we got enough people together.
“Oh,” Aidan said, sitting up straight. It was like the whole mood at the table changed suddenly, from homey to on edge. “I meant to tell you,” he continued slowly. Mr. D was staring him down, while Aidan pushed a neatly-cut piece of his pancake through a river of syrup, watching it hard, like it would fly off his fork if he wasn’t careful. “I was thinking,” he said, and I could tell Mr. D was getting sick of the hedging. “I like playing cards, but I wondered if there was another game we could play? Or maybe we could, you know. Not gamble on it.”
“Why?” Mr. D asked, and his voice was almost cold.
“I just don’t feel comfortable playing for money.”
Mr. D studied him, his eyes hard.
