“I'm never too tired for you,” he rasps, sliding his cock between my legs and rocking hard, pressing against my clit and making me whimper. “I figure a baker like yourself would know how to deal with my baguette. My guess is it needs to be in an oven for at least forty minutes before it’s fully baked.”
“Thirty,” I whimper in the dark when his hand travels up my stomach and cups my breasts, pinching at my nipples. “But at different temperatures for the first fifteen…oh God!”
“Clearly one of us is wrong,” he whispers, nipping at my earlobe and making me shudder. He dips his free hand between my legs, and my hips jolt when he slides his middle finger between my slick folds. I moan when he rubs my clit in lazy circles. “I believe this baguette will need more than a couple of minutes to be fully baked. Do you want to test how long that’ll take?”
“Luca!” I gasp when the head of his shaft presses against my entrance, slowly sliding into me. Filling me. Stretching me. He stays still and doesn’t move for a second, focusing on my clit until I’m gasping for breath. And when he starts to move, it’s sweet torture. He moves slowly, painfully slow and then hammers into me, pinning me to the bed and taking me in fast thrusts. When we're both close, he slows down, driving me wild until he’s all I can think of. All I can feel.
An hour and thirty minutes.
By the time Luca finally lets me shatter around him, we’re both breathless and spent. It’s nearly four thirty when Luca climbs off me, nuzzling my neck sleepily. My body isstill humming, every nerve ending alive and sensitive. Sore and limber, but unlike earlier, there is no urgent need to leave bed. “We were both wrong,” he whispers sleepily into my neck. “I guess baguettes take longer than I thought.”
And then he’s out like a light.
I lie awake, burrowed into the arms of the man I have fallen in love with. There’s no use denying it anymore. It’s there. The feelings I have for Luca Conti go beyond physical, and now, I want it all. The wedding. The family. Everything I never could have imagined I would have.
We just have one thing to take care of.
My mind returns to the intruder. It’s clear to us now how he got the code to my bakery. Sally mentioned that Winston Hill, the real estate agent who’s been pressuring us to sell, walked up to her when she was locking up. She didn’t notice him until it was too late. She didn’t think much of it, but the man must’ve memorized the code and hired someone to trash the place. Perhaps hoping to scare Arianna and me into selling. It made sense. Winston had been in the bakery many times and knew where all the cameras were.
He must’ve known he’d be caught because he fled the city when Luca sent men after him, but it’s only a matter of time before Luca and the Rossis find him. Something tells me that he’d be safer on some other planet. No one can hide from the Rossis, not when they have a vendetta against you.
We assume Winston was behind both break-ins—the bakery and the third floor damage. The painting in my father’s locker was probably just a coincidence, something he never even knew about.
Thinking about it—the Rossis’ business—doesn’t scare me as much as it used to. It’s odd. Having my cousins marry intothat family somehow made the rest of us family too, and as Leonardo put it, an insult to Ari and me is an insult to the Rossi family.
Family, I think as I nuzzle closer to Luca’s warm body.
The word stays in my mind the rest of the day, and my mood is considerably better. Even Sally, who comes by to help clean up the bakery for its reopening, notices the change. She doesn't have to be here, but the poor girl's been beating herself every day over the bakery being broken into. It took a lot of convincing to tell her that it was no fault of hers that some creep decided to steal the codes and wreak havoc in the place. Her promise to be more mindful of her surroundings was enough to put me at ease.
It takes hours and tons of work, and by evening, the place is all cleaned up and everything is ready. Sally leaves with the promise to be back bright and early tomorrow, and Luca follows shortly after to pick up Silvia and bring her to my apartment for dinner. Silvia had promised to teach me how to make the perfect eggplant parmesan. Leaving me to go pick up his mother took a lot of convincing with the man who was convinced I would break and shatter like glass if he left me to my own devices for longer than an hour.
“Maybe I could ask one of my men to pick her up,” he’d argued earlier when I told him it was time to pick Silvia up. “I just don't like the thought of leaving you here alone.”
His concern touched me in ways nothing ever could, but I promised him I would be fine. “There are cameras all over this place. Plus, with Winston on the run, the danger has passed. You’ll get an alert if someone tries to break in. Go!”
That was thirty minutes ago, and thinking about that worried face only makes me smile. No, I don’t have to hide alonein closets anymore. Knowing Luca, he’ll break all the traffic rules to make sure he’s gone and back in the shortest amount of time possible.
A knock on the door breaks the silence of the apartment, and I find myself smiling. Thirty minutes? Now that’s a record. I’m grinning as I walk to the door, and it doesn’t immediately occur to me that Luca shouldn’t be knocking until it’s too late, and I’ve unlatched the door.
It bursts open, forcing me back a step, and I watch with shock as my uncle, Giovanni, storms in, veins pulsing in his temple and eyes bloody red. But he’s not alone. Before I can turn to the figure standing behind my uncle, Giovanni’s angry voice pulls my attention back to him.
“Where is it?” he spits, eyes filled with so much hatred when they meet mine. I always found it odd how different my uncle and my father looked, and the difference has never been as stark as in this very moment. “Where is the fucking painting, you little bitch?”
My heart jumps into my throat, but I try to keep my face neutral as I stare into my uncle's hateful eyes. “What painting?”
“Don’t play dumb,” he roars, punching the wall and making me jump. “You think I haven’t had someone watching this place every day? I know you and that Rossi lackey went to the bank and then made a detour to see Leonardo. I'll ask one more time—where is the painting?”
My uncle's shadow steps from behind him and into the light, and…I gasp. The man moves more slowly and is seemingly less agitated than my uncle. The same way he moved when he broke into my parents' house and shot them.
I remember that face.
How could I forget the face of the monster that took my parents away just because of some stupid painting?
My heart breaks as I turn to face my uncle, tears welling in my eyes as I wonder if, in those last moments, my father knew that his own brother was the one who sent a man to kill him. The fear of not knowing if the child they’d shoved into the closet would make it out alive.
He killed them. And I am not going to give them the pleasure of doing it again.
My uncle must read my plan to run on my face because he reaches out to grab me, but he’s a few seconds too late. I knock the lamp in the corridor as I run toward my bedroom, slamming the door shut just as a body slams into it from the other side. I shut it then run to the bedside table, pushing it against the door to bar it further. My uncle pounds and yells from the other side, demanding I give him the painting, but I ignore him. I ignore the fear and roaring in my head as I run to the bathroom and lock myself inside.
