“I saw,” I say tightly. “I’m sorry it went that far.”
An ache spreads through my chest and I hold her with one hand while reaching the other to her face, brushing my fingertips tentatively across her cheek.
She leans into my palm and almost destroys me. She’s letting me touch her. This moment, right here, means more to me than any of the other moments leading up to it. She hasn’t been touched since she left New York ten years ago. The idea of it has scared the living shit out of her. But… she’s lettingme.
And I don’t deserve it.
I brought her here to ruin her. My ill intentions broke through her fucking hymen for God’s sake. She deserves someone who never had an ulterior motive—who had only honorable thoughts from the start.
But when Val-sticky fucking fingers-Marino pulled her onto his lap, I saw red. Immediately. The only reason I didn’t put a bullet in his skull that very second is because I was trying to maintain some sort of professional decorum.
I held out for as long as I physically could. And then I couldn’t.
She’s watching me with parted lips and heated gaze as I slowly caress her skin. It’s even better than I’d imagined. The softness at one with my fingertips and her temperature exactly right to soothe my burning pulse.
“Come here,” I whisper, pressing my lips to hers. I kiss her again, slow and deep, pouring everything I can’t say into the movement of my mouth against hers. Because words have never been my strong suit. Not since high school.
Her fingers come up to my jaw, soft and trembling.
“Thank you,” she whispers against my lips.
I rest my forehead against hers and close my eyes. “You don’t understand what seeing him touch you did to me.”
Watching another man put his hands on her felt like someone was splitting my ribcage open with an axe.
“Make it right,” she breathes, her lids fluttering closed as she drifts her lips over mine, “Make it better.”
“Pfeiffer…” I groan.
It doesn’t take much effort for me to reach down to lower the zipper of my pants and release my cock. It takes even less to nudge her panties to one side and lower her all the way down my dick.
We both breathe through the moment, acclimating to being joined again. She adjusts around my length and girth, short breaths getting longer and her chest relaxing.
She lets out a sweet moan and licks her tongue over mine.
I don’t care what I wanted from this arrangement in the beginning—I’m fucking feral for this woman now. Being inside her isn’t a one and done experience; it’s my goddamned home.
I turn around and press her back against the wall, holding her up as I pull my length out of her. Her eyes widen then roll back in her head as I push back into her warmth.
“Why don’t you hate me?” I grit, sliding into her again.
“I feel a lot of big things for you Fiero. So big there’s no room for hate.”
We lock eyes as I fuck her slowly. There’s something sitting right on the edge of both our tongues now. I see it in her eyes and I feel it in my chest. One more second and one of us is going to say it.
My grip tightens instinctively on her thighs and danger floods my bloodstream. Not because I don’t feel it, but because I do. I feel it too much.
I kiss her again before either of us can speak.
But when she trembles around me and cries my name into my shirt, one alarming truth settles in my stomach. I’m gone for this woman, completely. And I’ll burn every goddamn thing I’ve built to the ground before I let her go.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Fiero
I’ve always thoughtthat weddings are never about the couple getting married—they’re about the families, the politics and the circus surrounding them. But not this one.
This one is about Augusto Zanotti, Di Santo underboss and former ‘Surgeon,’ and Erin Applebaum, a divorcee from California who knows shit about the mafia, and no one else.
