“You and me both. I would’ve killed him back in that warehouse meeting with D’Amato.”
That startles a thin laugh out of me. “Killed a Morelli? In front of Luca D’Amato and your own Boss?”
He doesn’t have to think about it at all. “Yeah. In front of them.”
We look at each other. “You should go talk to Sammy,” I say at last.
“He’s locked himself in his room. Punk music so loud the walls are shaking. He needs some time before he’ll let anyone in.” He comes into the room and shuts the door behind him. “Besides, I had to check on you.”
I can’t stop the misery in my voice when I demand, “Why? Why the hell would you need to check on me? I’m the villain in all this. Sammy’s an innocent.”
He gets a small furrow between his brows and gives a shake of the head, trying to find an answer. “You’re not a…” He trails off, starts again. “You didn’t do that to him.”
“I didn’t kill your father, either. Didn’t make much difference when?—”
“Don’t,” he says, and that furrow deepens. “Please. And I came to check on you because you just killed a guy for the first time.”
The first time. Will there be more?
Of course there will. I might not hold the gun personally, but I will kill again. It’s part of the job.
I said I would do anything to survive. Anything.
I guess I really meant it.
“Why?” I mutter. “Why would you be worried about me?”
“You know why.”
“Pretend I don’t.”
He makes a helpless gesture with his hands. Those huge, powerful hands that have killed more men than mine ever will. Those hands marked with a “G,” a mark that will always be there until he’s cold in the ground.
“I belong to you now,” he says. The words come out rough. He dragged them up from somewhere deep and they fought him the whole way.
“No you don’t.” I sound so bitter. “There’s a mark on your hand that says exactly who you belong to, and it’s not me.”
He looks down at the “G” tattoo. Black, immovable, embedded into his skin. Then he crosses the room to sit next to me on his bed. “I’m not a Gee anymore,” he says. “I knew what it would mean to keep you. And I’m not giving you up.”
“Butwhy?” I ask again, pain choking up my throat so it actually hurts to get the words out. “Why would you risk all that—just to keep me? After everything that’s happened—everything we’ve done to each other?—”
He grabs my face between his hands and kisses me. Hard. No tenderness in it, no sweetness. Just his mouth on mine and hishands holding my jaw and the heat of him cutting through the cold that’s been sitting in my bones since I pulled that trigger.
“For someone so fucking smart,” he says against my lips, “you sure ask a lot of dumb questions.”
The adrenaline that’s been coiled in me since I killed a man goes off like a grenade, turning from horror into hunger so fast it makes my head spin.
Dami pushes me back on the bed and I pull him down with me. There’s nothing slow about it. This is the two of us tearing at each other like the world is ending, and maybe it is. Maybe tomorrow morning will bring Big Gee’s men to the door, and that means there’s no time for anything but this.
I get his belt open. He yanks my trousers down. His mouth is on my stomach, my hip, the crease of my thigh, but I drag him back up because I need his full weight on me, the bulk and the heat and the proof of him.
“Turn over,” he says, scrabbling around for the lube.
I do.
He pins me face down with one hand between my shoulder blades while he slicks up his cock, and when he pushes into me, I make a sound that doesn’t belong to a Don. It belongs to the virgin in the basement. The one who wanted this even when he shouldn’t have, even when it was dangerous, even when the man doing it was the enemy.
Except he’s not the enemy anymore. And the way he moves—fast, yes, rough, yes, but angled precisely right, his breath hot against my ear, one hand sliding under me to hold my cock in agrip that knows exactly what I need—this isn’t about taking away my power. This isn’t about control.
