“Yours, Alessandro. Forever.” I shudder as he strokes me, his dick inside me repeatedly riding over that mind-blowingly sensitive spot, and I clutch at his hip, pull him deep into me, gasping out his name as I start to shoot.
“Come for me,bellissimo,” he breathes, stroking me slowly through the aching orgasm. “Give it all up to me, every last drop.” He kisses me, his tongue plunging into my mouth as hard as his cock in my ass, and I can hardly take any more from him as he swells inside me until at last, with one final thrust, he floods me, surge after surge. “You’re mine,” he pants out one final time, and then he collapses on top of me, breathing heavily.
I’m his. His words seem to echo through the room, ring in my ears, drive into my heart.
I’mhis.
* * *
We clean up and settle into spooning, and I watch the moon peeping through the clouds drifting over the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance.
“Teddy,” Alessandro says, after a few moments of peaceful cuddling, and he sounds very hesitant. “Perhaps you should let your mother know you are safe?”
“Mom? She won’t care. Besides, after I showed up at that engagement party and then never went home, she’s going to kill me,” I tell him, surprised at how unconcerned I feel.
Alessandro snorts. “Well, she already tried to kill me, so—”
He breaks off abruptly, but I’m already turning over in his arms to stare. “What?”
“Nothing. A joke.”
“It wasn’t a joke,” I say. “I know what jokes sound like, and that wasn’t one. What do you mean, she tried to kill you? Tell me. No, don’t roll your eyes like it’s nothing,tell me.”
“She tried to run me down with her SUV,” he says with a yawn. “That’s all.”
“What?” I sit bolt upright, and Alessandro, sighing, sits up, too, and tells me exactly what happened to him after Roxanne Rochford’s engagement party, and how he recognized the black SUV from the funeral. “But it can’t have been her,” I say when he’s finished. “Itcan’thave been.”
He caresses my cheek with a reassuring smile. “It was nothing,topolino. A momentary passion. She did no harm. Besides, Jack saved my—”
“No,” I insist, moving out of his embrace. “No, Alessandro, you don’t understand. The car you’re describing—that’s herpartner’scar.”
CHAPTER51
TEDDY
I’m expectinga frosty welcome home after my phone call to Mom, explaining what we wanted to talk about—let alone the fact that I’m bringing Alessandro Castellani with me—but as soon as we get through the door the next morning and into a very quiet house, I’m not even certain she’shere.
Alessandro parked his Lamborghini a few streets away, as she requested, and we walked here. But when I call out for her, I get no answer.
“Let’s try the kitchen,” I say. Alessandro seems perfectly at ease, even though Mom also asked him to leave his gun at home. A show of good faith, she said. But halfway across the living room, my mother appears in the open door to the kitchen with her FBI-issued handgun trained steadily on Alessandro.
“Wait!” I shout, holding up my hands. I try to get in front of Alessandro, but he firmly moves me to the side. “Mom,wait.”
But a moment later, Alessandro and I hear a footfall at the same time, and we both spin around. Craig Barbieri is at the other doorway, also armed, also pointing his gun straight at Alessandro.
“The Barbarian appears,” Alessandro says with a laugh.
I turn to Mom, horrified. “What’shedoing here?”
“Where’s your backup?” the guy snaps at Alessandro.
“This is a social call,” Alessandro throws over his shoulder, an edge creeping into the polite tone now. “And while I am an important man, I don’t see the need to take a retinue with me everywhere. Especially not when visiting my boyfriend’s mother.”
My mother’s mouth purses up, but only for a second. “Sit,” she says.
I take Alessandro’s hand with a defiant stare at my mother, and lead him to the leather sofa, where we sit side by side. Alessandro is still wearing a polite smile, but I can’t keep up the act. I brought him here—walked him in like a lamb to the slaughter—
“What is that asshole doing here?” I demand from my mother again, turning around to glare at Barbieri. “I told you we needed to talk to you alone about—”
