Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

ALYSSA

A nything that I want? Those are words a girl could get used to. Dante’s piercings spear through my body, creating a storm that’s about to lay waste to me entirely. Nothing has ever felt like this. No man has ever commanded my body this way, made me feel as though I was going to come and cry all in the same instance. There’s a heavy emotion bleeding into my chest, and I don’t understand it one bit.

Like he’s carving me open with each deep thrust of his cock, peeling back all the hardened layers so that he can learn me. It feels fucking terrifying. I wouldn’t say I like feeling vulnerable.

His hand reaches around the front of me, pulling my hand off my clit, replacing it with his.

“Let me, minaccia,” he growls into my ear, and all the hair on my body stands on end.

“Dante,” I plead, my belly burning low and heady, my body racing for climax.

I don’t want this to end. This can’t end.

I’m not the girl who runs off into the sunset with a man. I’m the one who will never see him again, even if my soul goes through a period of withdrawal from the loss of his touch.

“I know, minaccia, you’re going to come for me. It’s going to be the best fucking thing you’ve ever felt, too,” he teases, and I know his words are about to ring true.

“Don’t come inside me,” I pant, and I close my eyes, not allowing myself to look into the mirror I’m facing to see disappointment or hurt on his face staring back at me.

His other hand wraps around my throat, however, and my eyes fly open, boring into him as he bends his knees and fucks me from a new angle, still thrumming my clit from behind with his tattooed hand.

His left hand holds me hostage as his mouth drops open. “Fuck, you shouldn’t feel this goddamned good, minaccia.”

God, I want to know what that word means.

There’s a feeling building in me, however, one that says once I learn the meaning, it’ll haunt me forever.

Like the ghost of this moment hanging over me for the rest of eternity.

Like a curse.

“Fuck, I’m going to come. Don’t stop,” I manage as he tightens his hand on my throat, and we both lock eyes in the mirror.

“Hurry, minaccia,” he begs, his eyes growing worried the closer my orgasm dances to his.

I break, shattering like a window blown out by the pressure of a tornado, screaming through my orgasm as Brynne walks into the room, spots the two of us, eyes going wide before she turns and rushes back out of the room.

I can't think about it, however. Dante pulls out of me, spins me around and shoves me to my knees.

Only his cock is out. He’s in slacks, a button-up shirt, and a holster for two guns strapped around his massive shoulders.

His tattoos are alluring and dark against his tan skin, and as he jacks his cock toward spilling, I lean forward and open my mouth to capture each drop of this man’s essence. If I only have one moment with him, one time, I want everything he has to offer me.

“Here it comes, minaccia. Get every drop,” he grunts, thrusting forward as his strokes change and his dick empties on my tongue, some pulses hitting the back of my throat as I swallow his musky flavor down.

I moan, and he leans forward as he continues to spurt cum into my mouth, his left hand gripping the sink. I swear I hear it creak under his hold.

“Fucking fuck, motherfucker,” he hisses, spewing incoherent curse words as he’s undone.

It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, and my pussy throbs in a jealous little flutter at being empty.

I’m on birth control, but I never let them finish in me. I don’t let anyone mark me like that. I never will. It’s something that makes me feel like I’m still in control.

Even if it’s only an illusion.

I’m licking my lips as his eyes clear, and he looks down at me. His hand works the last drop of cum out of his softening dick, and he drops down and rubs it across my tongue slowly. I eat it up.

I close my lips, savoring the hint of him still on my breath as he rubs his thumb across my lips. “Fuck, look at you. You’re perfect.”

His words send up red flags, and I need to counteract them somehow—pop the balloon of ecstasy we’re floating in, if you will.

“Brynne walked in on us. She saw…”

Dante’s eyes don’t change, however. “I don’t give a fuck who saw us. I’d fuck you in a room full of people and still only see you.”

Fuck, he’s making this hard.

I reach a hand up on the counter to lift off my knees, and Dante backs up and swoops in to help.

“I can manage,” I snap, feeling my walls closing in around me in protection.

He puts his hands up in defense. “Sorry, I didn’t mean any offense.”

There’s no malicious intent in his voice, and it only makes my stomach clench into a bigger knot.

I finally meet someone who makes me feel something, and they’re in the mafia and exude kindness that I’ve never known before.

Figures.

“Sorry,” I say, grabbing my clothes off the floor to make my great escape. However, this is my room, so I don’t know where I’ll retreat. “I’m not… I’m not normal when it comes to things like this.”

He leans over the sink and washes his cock in it, and it’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I lick my lips as I allow myself to watch every sinew of his muscles beneath his tattoos work as he rolls his hands over his dick, rinsing us off, the moment swirling down the drain, no more than filth being washed away into the drain field.

“Not normal, how? It was only sex, minaccia,” he says, and my chest burns at his words instead of getting lighter.

Any other time that I’ve told a man this can’t happen again, and they agreed, I felt relief not to have to deal with their overreactions or emotions.

“Just sex,” I echo, trying not to sound like a wounded fucking deer.

I don’t like this.

I don’t like my reaction to him. I don’t even fucking know him.

He rubs his thumb over my lower lip, looking as if he regrets not kissing me, then lets it disappear.

“Amazing sex I’ll never forget, but just sex, nonetheless.”

He turns and makes for the door of the bedroom, and I drop onto the lid of the toilet, deflated and forever changed by Dante Ricci, the mafia enforcer who forced his way past my walls with a fucking ball peen hammer and rearranged my psyche.

As the door clicks closed, and my body still thrums from the amazing orgasm I just had, a lone tear brims and falls down my face from the interaction.

Worry takes up in my chest as I don’t know how to pull myself together after sex with Dante.

Usually, I have a routine, and I know it won’t work to bring me back after what just transpired between us.

“Alyssa?” Brynne calls, likely having witnessed Dante make his exit, and at her voice, I break, tears flowing like rivers down my face.

I’m on the edge of the toilet, wholly naked other than my bra and panties that now are back over my pussy when she stops at the door and takes me in.

“Oh, Lyss. What happened? Well, I know what happened, but are you alright?”

Her stammering would generally serve as the thing I needed to come around, but not today.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be the same,” I tell her, and she nods in understanding, dropping to her knees in front of me and pulling me into her.

“Shh, it’s alright,” she coos, rubbing my back softly.

No. It’s not.

Even with everything going on, Brynne stayed with me until I calmed down and told her everything. Everything I felt during the interaction with Dante, even the aftershocks.

She listened with rapt attention, even if she had a wicked grin on her face as she did so.

“What if he’s your person?”

I roll my eyes. “You’ve watched too much TV with me over the years, B. That’s not a thing.”

She scoffs. “Not when you’ve built the Great Wall of China around your heart, no, it isn’t.”

My chest stabs with pain from her words spearing through it. “Hey, I did that for a good reason.”

Her eyes soften, her hand covering mine on the bed between us. “I know you did, Lyss. We’re all housing some trauma from our childhood and our parents. At some point, though, you need to let go of it and live.”

I swallow, and she squeezes my hand.

“What did you need when you, uhm…”

“Walked in on the best orgasm of your life? I was only going to give you the minutes of my meeting.” She smiles.

“Oh, I got most of your meeting transcribed into notes on my iPad already.” I point to the device, lying where I’d thrown it when I hastily tossed it on the bed earlier.

She grimaces, her cheeks heating. “I guess you guys lingering by the door wasn’t my best plan.”

I don’t know how to tell her that her little tryst set Dante and me into motion because she doesn’t need to feel bad about what happened with her and Slate. They’re back together, and my friend is happy. I don’t want to take that from her in the slightest.

So I keep my mouth shut.

“So, how’s it going to go with the families?” I ask her.

She shrugs, pulling her hands back into her lap. “It’s not going to be easy, I’m certain. I’m going to leave men here to finish getting the house empty and on the market, and we’ll travel back to the city.”

I nod.

“We’re going to have to have a come to Jesus meeting, if you will,” she tells me. “Both families around one table.”

I laugh. “That’s going to go well.”

She looks more determined at my words. “It’s got to happen. Slate is everything to me, and I can’t be at odds with him.”

We’d spent the last three nights recounting everything she’d been through with him in the weeks she’d been holed up with him in his cabin and when they were together in NYC as he returned home to face his brother—who was still alive.

“I agree. I also think it’ll be good to have the alliance.”

“Yeah, same.” She sighs.

“You still look a little worried,” I point out.

She smiles, and there’s a bit of sadness in it. “It’s still the Italian mafia, Lyss. Anything could go wrong.”

I blow out a breath as I stare off across the room, nodding in agreement.

“Well, we won’t let anything go wrong. How about that?” I counter her words.

She eyes me, brows tugging together. “How do we manage that?”

I shrug nonchalantly. “We’re bad bitches, and we take no shit. That’s how.”

Confidence builds on her features. “Yeah! We’ve got this!”

“That we do.”

She laughs, and I join in as she reaches for my hand. “Don’t worry about Dante. Just put it aside for when you have the space to deal with it. He’s not a pushy man; he won’t press the issue.”

I catalog her words and decide to listen, but it’s only hours later when Dante decides to prove her sentiment entirely and utterly wrong.

The private jet Slate loaded me, Brynne, and Dante onto is beautiful. The carpet is red, and the seats are a creamy tan that complements it. The seats toward the bathrooms swivel, and there’s a decent-sized bathroom next to a private room in the back of the jet.

Slate and Brynne retired over an hour ago, leaving Dante and me alone on the flight for the next hour.

Other than the three sleeping Ricci men sprawled out on bench seating.

We’d have been there by now, but a Florida storm had grounded us.

The captain only lifted us off into the sky as the clouds cleared.

I sip my whiskey and look over a few more accounts I’ve been working on for Brynne, trying to decide how tangled they are into the Adamo family and their dealings in the flesh trade.

We want nothing more to do with that part of the underground world, and it’s my job to fix the fucking mess her father made.

I’m not ungrateful for the opportunity, but it will take time.

And a lot of patience.

The captain calls out and says we should buckle our belts for incoming turbulence, and I grumble as I close my iPad and down the rest of my drink, setting it on the cart toward the bathroom so that it doesn’t decide to go flying and shatter.

I plop down on the seat next to Dante, the only one not covered in bags or bodies of Ricci men Slate had traveled with. He was asleep as I’d slipped past him and fastened into the window seat, lifting the window to sneak a peek out of it right as lightning crackled across the sky.

I shut it and close my eyes as the plane bumps and rattles against the errant wind surrounding it, trying to remain calm.

I’ve only ever flown a couple of times in my life, and I didn’t mind either experience, but this isn’t something I enjoy.

Hurtling through the sky at seven hundred miles per hour is one thing. Hitting speed bumps in the sky as we do so is another.

“Relax, minaccia,” Dante whispers into my ear, and I fight the turbulence growing in my body at the feel of his breath on my ear.

“I’m fine,” I manage.

“Are you?” He chuckles against the shell of my ear, and another wave of tingles works through my skin like worms on a rainy day, cresting through dampened soil. “Sorry, your death grip on your seatbelt must be one of pure joy, then. I misunderstood.”

The plane’s lights dim as another pocket of rough air bounces the plane around, and I grab his hand, tightly grasping it as I whimper.

“Open those pretty eyes of yours, minaccia. You’re making it worse on yourself.”

I do so reluctantly, turning my head and finding his beautiful face only inches from mine.

“There you go, good girl.”

Holy fuck, not the praise.

I’m a sucker for praise and degradation, if I’m honest. You mix the two and have a pliant Alyssa on her knees, ready to obey.

Let’s hope he doesn’t find that weakness and prod at it.

I feel much better having opened my eyes, even though the plane continues to jerk and shimmy. I say, “Thank you.”

He only nods, his rugged jaw setting into a line that could kill. His hand finds its way under the skirt I’d worn, this one less tight than the pencil skirt he ripped off me earlier today.

“I could take it all away,” he says, leaning closer and whispering his dark words in my ear.

My nipples pebble, and my legs spread of their own whorish volition.

“You could?”

“Mm, minaccia, I could.”

“I told you, I’m not… I can’t… It was just the once.” My words stutter out as he works his hand over my pussy through the fabric of my panties.

“Well, that’s the thing about one-night stands. You can have the person more than one time, as long as it’s the same night.”

“What?” I ask, confused solely because of his hands on my body and his breath tickling my neck.

“Mhm, and it’s not yet midnight, minaccia. It’s still today. It won’t count.”

It won’t count. Even as I tell myself his contrived bullshit, that it could be a loophole to my rules, my brain is shaking its proverbial head at me.

I’m buckling too quickly for him.

No one’s ever had this effect on me.

“Not yet midnight,” I repeat, turning my face into his and wishing to all that’s holy that he’d eat up the space and kiss me.

“Do you want me to take your worries away, minaccia?”

That fucking word.

I’d asked Slate what it meant, and he laughed at me before telling me it meant menace.

Telling myself he’s as annoyed with this attraction between us as I am spurs me forward. I nod.

“Take it away,” I whisper, leaning into his lips.

He pulls back a pinch, unbuckling me and then unbuckling himself.

“Go to the bathroom and wait for me. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Five minutes?!

Even as my mind and body get annoyed with his commanding us around like his toy, I’m on my feet and moving before I can think twice about it.

Not one Ricci man registers my leaving the room, and I’m waiting for him before I think about what I’m doing.

If I’m not careful, Dante Ricci will ruin my perfectly contrived outer shell that keeps me protected, I'm not sure that isn't the entire game that he's playing.

So, I need to be vigilant.

But when he steps through the door, actively rolling up his sleeves to show his tattoos, I step into him, dropping all common sense from the plane to the world below as we barrel through the skies, enforcer and his prey locked in a battle of wills.

“On your knees, minaccia. I want to see that perfect pout of yours locked around my cock.”

Yeah, I’m fucked.