“You know you only ever shut up during sex when you got your mouth full,” he mumbles, half-chuckling.
I can hardly let him get away with that. “Not true,” I say indistinctly around his dick, and he laughs for real. But he’s the one I want to make sure can’t talk, from how blown his mind is thanks to my dick-sucking skills. So I quit teasing, and it doesn’t take long before the only noises coming out of him are moans of pleasure and then my own name,Carlo, fuck, Carlo, dragged out of him almost unwillingly, and the grudging tone of it is how I know he’s close.
He’s swelling in my mouth, pressing my tongue down, almost choking me, but I want all of him, so I push down more, let the tears stream out of my eyes for him, give his ballsack one last teasing squeeze with my fingers, and he erupts down my throat, his hands shoving me down hard on him like he’s forgotten all about being a gentleman.
Good. I much prefer Nicky primitive and unrestrained, even when—especiallywhen—I’m drowning in his cum. He lets me up when I start gagging, pulls me up so I drool spit and spunk all over his belly, his hand around my throat. Anyone else doing that to me, I’d hate it. But there’s no threat. He’s not strangling, just steadying me, guiding my mouth up to his, his fingers warm where they rest against my shuddering pulse. He kisses me, sloppy, his hand a gentle collar on my neck as I grind against his still-thick cock. I’m three-quarters on top of him, but there’s no question who’s in charge. I’m completely subservient to him, to my own need to come, shaking and shivering as his other hand takes up both our dicks together, his still half-hard and slick from my mouth, still dripping cum, and he jacks us together like that only a few times before I shoot, groaning into his mouth.
I collapse on to him and he wraps me up in his arms, lets me get my breath back. His fingers rub up and down my spine. When he murmurs, “Harvard, I want you to suck me like that every single morning,” it’s tender, truthful, almost wistful—if a man like Nicky could ever bewistful.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’d like that, too.”
A few minutes of content silence pass before I remember I was supposed to smugly turn him down.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nick
Normally I’m the one in charge.
I’m the most powerful Capo in the Morelli Family, whether you go by territory, responsibilityorcrew size. I know that pisses off the older Capos, who think that having wrinkles gives them a right to be higher up the food chain. But more than being a Capo, I’m also the Boss’s go-to guy when it comes to solving problems, making friends, or smoothing waters. I’m smart enough to know when to use my fists and when to use my brain—and when to use my charm, although it’s not the most effective weapon in my arsenal.
And more than all that? I know Luca wants me as Underboss. He hasn’t said it outright, but I know it’s what he’s thinking. If it weren’t for the shadow Angelo Messina casts over the role even from out West, I’d alreadybeUnderboss in name, not just duties. And when the time comes—when Luca formally asks me to step up—I’ll be glad to do it.
So when I say it’s hard to sit there and let Carlo take charge of our so-called investigation, you’ll understand how I feel.
I keep my mouth shut as he runs his for an hour, thinking out loud like he can’t let an idea mature in his own brain. And then, finally, when he’s typed thousands of notes on his laptop and filled several pages of his legal pad with scribbles, I can’t help myself.
“This is getting us nowhere.”
He looks up from the screen, blinking. “I’m brainstorming.”
“You’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and wondering why it ain’t sticking.”
He puts down his laptop, folds his fingers together, and gives me a supercilious smile. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve come up withfivedifferent theories about what could have happened.”
Seriously. He says this like it’s an achievement. “Yeah. Great. We don’t need theories about what happened. We need to knowwho’s doing this.”
Carlo frowns, picks up the laptop again, and stabs a finger at one of his bullet points. “What we need to know iscui bono. Who benefits?”
“Who benefits?”
“From my death and your money.”
I stand up and stretch, because he’s irritating me now, and I don’t want to start snapping at him. Truth is, I’m annoyed at myself, not him. I’m annoyed that I let things get real between us this morning, just for a few minutes, but long enough that I found myself thinking about stupid things like a future together where we might wake up just like we did this morning, enjoy each other, get up and have breakfast together.
I made him bacon and eggs and he acted like it was the most incredible thing in the world, teasing me again about how neat I am as I stacked the dishwasher straight after cooking. He doesn’t understand where those habits came from. Sometimes I think he doesn’t even remember the first day we met. Maybe it’s better that way.
But the guy’s going to be staying with me until we’re done, so I need to both pull back on the snuggles and keep my irritation under wraps as long as possible. “You’re talking like these things are linked, but we don’t know that. We don’t know if youarein danger, or if that break-in was coincidence. We don’t even know what this fool who sent that messagewantsfrom me. They never said anything about money.”
I start walking past him toward the kitchen, planning on more coffee if I have to listen to another hour of his ramblings while I sit and twiddle my thumbs like an asshole, but he grabs my wrist from the sofa. “Don’t be like that, Nicky.” I look down at him, at the slight smirk. I flex my wrist in his grip, but he holds on. He tugs me back to the sofa until I sit there next to him.
“You don’t need me with you to do all this ‘brainstorming,’” I point out, and he laughs.
“Aw, come on now.” He puts the laptop aside and before I know it, he’s swung around to sit on top of me, straddling my thighs with his hands cupping my face. “I definitely need you,” he murmurs, and I don’t stop him when he starts to kiss me. His ass is in my hands, or my hands are on his ass, I can’t tell how it happened—but he fills up my palms so nicely that all I can do is squeeze at it as he sucks on my tongue. My dick stirs at the sense-memory and I pull him closer into me, trying to get some kind of friction.
