While I petted her hair, I mumbled, “I’m not a virgin, Kitty.” That earned me a garbled snort. “I don’t expect you to be.” I snagged some strands of hair and tugged on them. “But fuck if I don’t want to erase every man who’s ever sniffed around you.”
Itipped my head so I could catch her eye when she carried on sucking me, holding me in her warmth.
I took it as a good sign that she didn’t bite my dick off.
Deciding to dice deeper with death, I continued, “You’re Irish?—”
She rolled her eyes.
“—and I know you have protection, even if you choose to ignore it, but I want you to come to me if you ever have a problem. And I know how you roll. Because your sisters matter to you, they matter to me. So I include them in this.
“Any problems, you come to me. Your problems are my problems. I don’t care if the situation is ridiculous. You can lie to your siblings. But not to me. I can’t fix things if you don’t tell me the truth. Understood?”
That earned me a slow blink and a lash of her tongue to that sensitive strip of flesh under the mushroom tip of my dick.
I released a guttural groan. “If it’s a professor of Neev’s who’s flirting with her or if Raisin’s boss is coming on too strong. If it’s a patient of yours or some fucker from a bar that looks at you the wrong way—you come to me.” I fisted her hair and tugged until she no longer held my dick captive. Until I could demand an answer out of her. “Capisci?”
Tongue smoothing a circle around what had to be her sore lips, she murmured, “I can take care of myself, Stan, but thank you.”
“Of course, you can take care of yourself, but why should you have to when you have me? That’s literally what I’m for.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. Not in anger. In contemplation. “You know nurses pledge to do no harm?”
“Imade no pledges.”
“I’m supposed to heal people.”
“Some people don’t deserve your attention.”
“We can both agree on that.” She graced me with a smirk. “I shove aside my opinions a lot of the time and help the most annoying of Karens…”
“That’s your job. I get it. But let me do mine. You don’t have to like it but let me.” I cupped her chin. “Pi favuri.Please.”
I was unafraid of begging, not when she tried to deny me my purpose.
She stared at me for so long that I feared where her mind went. Then, she shivered. “I shouldn’twantyou to spill blood.”
“The heart needs what it needs,duci, and so long as your hands are clean, I’ll dirty my soul to keep them that way.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “They aren’t clean. You know what I’ve done.”
“The more I know, the more I can make sure it never comes back on you. The more I can protect you. That’s all I want, Kitty.”
She bit that still quivering lip. “You’d do that for me?”
“I will always keep you safe,bedda mia.”
“Why? Why me?” Her brow puckered. “I don’t understand. We barely know each other and yet, I feel the same. I feel like I was meant to meet you. I feel like…”
“What,duci?” I demanded when her words waned.
Her gaze ducked to my lap and her fingers swirled in some of the hair that furred along my thighs. I felt her trace the lines of adoña de fueraI had inked there. “I don’t want to wake up and for this to have been a dream.”
I sat up so I could cup her cheek. “Àncilu, the men of New York are idiots.”
She frowned. “Um, okay?”
“They are. If you think this horrific weekend of horrors is a ‘dream.’” I tsked when she flushed. “This is not on you. This is totheirshame. But I am not a fool from New York.” My heritage leaked into my tone. Making the words and syntax formal. “I am from Sicily, and we show our women how they are our queens.” When she licked her lips again, agitated this time, I dragged my tongue along her Cupid’s bow, just to feel the two collide. I pulled back, only so I could intone, “This is not a dream, but I will show you what it means to be mine. Would you like that,gattaredda?”
