Page 50 of Diary of a Mafia Princess

A tear dripped down her cheek, and she clenched her fingers in my shirt.

I breathed her in. Fuck, I’d missed her. Missed her so much my entire body ached. “Can’t kiss you?” I whispered, my breath misting over her lips. “Because too bad. I’m going to.”

She lifted up on her toes at the same moment my mouth crashed down on hers. She gasped, straining up to meet me while I devoured her mouth like I needed it to breathe. Because I did. I hadn’t taken a proper breath since she’d walked out on me. Since she’d broken my fucking heart into pieces so badly I knew for a fact it would never recover. That there was no other woman for me.

It was always going to be her.

Her mouth was warm and welcoming, and kissing her felt as familiar as coming home. I knew her. Knew the way she kissed. Knew her body. She squirmed beneath me, and I grabbed her leg, dragging it up, hooking it around my waist so I could grind on her core.

I demanded it. Took what I needed.

The kiss was hard, my erection against her core rough. Part of me wanted to punish her for the way she’d broken me, and yet I was so fucking gone for her that even the thought of me punishing her didn’t sit right.

The way she kissed me, clung to me, her tongue stroking deep into my mouth, her moans of need in my ears told me none of this had been her idea.

She wasn’t marrying Carlos Guerra because she suddenly felt for him the way she’d once felt for me.

Nothing had changed between us.

I fucking loved her and she loved me. No matter what she said in front of Luca Guerra, I knew it in that kiss.

She tried to pull away, but I couldn’t let her. I kissed her again, licking away anything she might have been trying to say because I knew those words would put an end to this and I couldn’t bear it. Not yet. Not when I’d only just gotten her back.

I needed to be inside her but knew we didn’t have time. Luca and Lynx were right out there, and if she didn’t come out soon, they would come in.

Lynx might have allowed this.

Luca wouldn’t have been so forgiving to see his future stepmommy this close to fucking a man who wasn’t his father.

But I couldn’t stop. I pressed my hand between us, feeling how wet her panties were with her arousal.

It was the wrong move.

She shoved me away, hard enough this time for me to know she meant business. She stared at me, wild-eyed, hair messed up from my fingers in it. Her chest rose and fell hard. “You can’t do this.” She shook her head. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

I closed the gap between us again, this time gentler. Softer. I stroked my hand down the side of her face, loving the way she leaned into the touch. “Don’t you know I’m already dead if I don’t have you?”

She wrapped her arms around my waist and laid her cheek flush on my chest. “Don’t say things like that. You’ll get over this.”

I knew I wouldn’t. “I won’t. Not until I have you back.”

She lifted her head miserably. “That’s the thing, Dax. I’m not coming back. You know that. I can’t. I’m engaged to Carlos. That’s a life sentence, and we both know it.”

The truth was there in her words. I just didn’t want to hear it. “He can’t force you—”

Her bitter laugh cut me off. “Yes, Dax. He can.”

Something deep inside me snapped. The same frayed cord that broke every time I’d gotten in a fight ever since she’d walked out. “Then I’ll kill him.”

I’d never been that sort of man. I’d grown up doing martial arts and boxing alongside my brothers, tumbling on mats, fighting with hands and feet and bodies. Ironic, I realized now those lessons had probably been paid for by the wages my mother had earned from Carlos Guerra.

But art had always been my one true love. Drawing until the sun went down and I couldn’t see the paper beneath my pencil. Drawing faces, shapes, colors, landscapes—anything I could, because when I drew, the world narrowed down to nothing but that.

I fought for exercise.

I’d never had any desire to actually hurt people.

Until now.