I turn slightly, meeting his gaze. “Really?”
“If they don’t, they will soon.” He says it with absolute conviction. “This is where I conduct business. Where I decide what favors to grant and which to decline.”
Like it isn’t a little scary to know that almost everyone is here for him. To… I don’t know. Suck up to the Mafia enforcer? I should have asked Piper more questions.
It’s times like these that I wish my bestie were as dumb as a rock. Then she wouldn’t get suspicious when I ask questions about her Mafia in-laws. But alas, that’s not my life.
“I need more,” I murmur. “Am I the kind of girl who’s glued to your side? Am I a rebel without a cause? Do I dance on the bar and shake cocktails?”
He lets out a low, menacing growl. “My woman doesn’t fucking dance on any bar.” A delicious shiver works its way down my spine. “When we come back tomorrow night, people will learn you’re mine.”
Those words should not make my thong damp, so I’m going to pretend that didn’t just happen. Yep, I’m completely dry. Like the Sahara. And that’s the story I’m sticking to.
The entire thing is so ludicrous it takes everything in me not to laugh. Any amusement I might have felt vanishes when he grabs the nape of my neck and squeezes until I angle my head upward so I’m looking up at him.
Before I can even come up with any semblance of a counterargument or just a good ol’ quip, he presses his lips to mine in a bruising kiss that has me panting in no time. I eagerly open up to him, meeting his tongue halfway and stroking it with mine.
I get so lost in the kiss and his hands on my body that I completely forget this is just a performance. That is until he pulls back and rests his forehead against mine.
“Now everyone looking knows you’re mine,” he rasps while dragging me onto his lap like I weigh nothing. I shift so I’m sitting sideways so I can still see his face.
One arm cages my waist, the other traces lazy circles against my thigh while he tells me about his club. I can’t stop smiling at how proud he sounds. Every word he speaks about his club makes it clear this is his baby.
“I think I get it now,” I say somewhere around the second or third drink. “Having someone you can’t trust in your home is the ultimate betrayal.”
He grins. “This isn’t my home. You’ve been in my apartment, Little Thief.” He catches my earlobe between his teeth.
“I meant that metaphorically,” I clarify, shivering when he licks and nibbles his way down my throat.
I tell myself it’s still part of the act—his part, my role—but the lie gets harder to hold. The way his breath skims my skin feels too deliberate, too practiced, too perfect. For one impossible heartbeat, I believe this version of us.
His phone vibrates against my hip. The change in him is instant; jaw tight, eyes flashing silver before he smothers it beneath control.
“I have to take you home,” he mutters, voice rougher than before. “Business calls.” Regret edges the word, or maybe I just want it to.
The drive back is quiet. He walks me up to my door and patiently waits while I fumble for my keys. When I have the door unlocked and open, he tilts my chin, and kisses me again—slower this time, softer, as if sealing something that never should have existed.
“Goodnight, Raven.”
I manage a nod, though my pulse is still sprinting. The door closes behind me, and I stand there stupidly, palm pressed to my mouth like a teenager who just got kissed for the first time.
That… that wasn’t a performance, was it? I mean, there was no one else to see it. So that means hewantedto kiss me, right?
Chapter 15
Matteo
The taste of her still clings to my mouth when I tear through Cleveland in my haste to get to my destination.
Fuck.
Traffic lights blur past like afterimages of her—her pulse under my fingertips, the way she tasted when I kissed her outside her apartment. It lingers in my mouth, in my lungs, in the place between my ribs where I pretend nothing touches me.
If it weren’t for Raven, I would have been on my way quicker. But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—just leave her at the Leone Room or let anyone else take her home. And not just because it would leave a shitty impression after claiming her as mine.
But because… doesn’t fucking matter. Head in the game, Matteo. Besides, I had no issue leaving my driver on the side of the road and letting him find his own way home.
The tires screech as I take a corner so hard the car lifts onto two wheels. Streetlights smear gold across the windshield like war paint. The road out of the city dies fast—glass and neon giving way to cracked asphalt and skeletal trees.
