Chapter 30 RóISE

"The mafia you mean. La famiglia ."

He winces. "Your pronunciation is atrocious. The famiglia on my arm refers to the De Lucas not the Genovese."

Like the wolf represents him and the men in his family, not just made men. And not just him.

Miceli's right about my pronunciation. He gave different inflections to the syllables and the g was silent. I'd like to see him pronounce Irish without coaching.

"And the other word," I ask, putting my grievances aside.

" Sempre means always."

Family always .

But not his mafia family. "You said that your family and the mafia are the same."

"They are." He brushes his fingers along my inner thigh. "Except when they aren't."

I want to slam my legs together and trap his hand there. "And when that happens?"

"I kill any threat to my family, mafia alliances, or not."

"When we get married, will I be part of your family?" The words slip out of their own volition, but now I want an answer.

I need one.

"You already are."

"No, not yet. We're not even engaged." Not officially anyway. Can a contract make me family ?

"You don't wear my ring. You don't carry my name, but make no mistake about it, mi dolce fiore . You are mine."

A thrill of pleasure goes through me at his words. Shouldn't that be revulsion? It's not though.

It's something way more dangerous to me. It feels like the first stirrings of an emotion I cannot feel for this man.

Love.

Lust is much safer. "I'm aching is what I am." I pause. "Miceli."

He doesn't even take time to gloat, but goes back to pleasuring me with his mouth. His finger slides inside me as he sucks my clitoris between his lips.

And just like that I'm back on the precipice, my body drawn taught as a bowstring.

I say the words he wants. "Please, Miceli. Make me come!"

The last is more an order than a plea, but that doesn't seem to bother him. His teeth scrape over my clitoris and he crooks his finger inside me, pressing against the bundle of nerves from the other side.

A two-ton blast of ecstasy detonates inside me and a scream tears from my throat as my soul leaves my body to float in delirium around us.

I'm just coming back to myself when I feel the cold steel of Miceli's knife at the top of my breast.

My eyes fly open. When did they close? During that cataclysm of pleasure, I guess.

"What are you doing?" I croak, my throat still raw from screaming.

"Yes, or no?" he asks without answering.

He wants to cut my bra off, just like my panties. Why is that sharp knife against my skin so exciting?

It should scare me, but I know deep into the soul that finally rejoined my body that Miceli will never physically harm me.

I nod.

"Say it."

"Yes." Might as well. With the panties destroyed, it's not a set anymore anyway.

The flat side of his knife blade slides up, lifts from my skin. Then he twists his wrist and pulls, cutting right through my bra strap.

"Don't move." He slides the knife over my collarbone and under the other strap.

Breathing shallowly, I don't so much as flicker an eyelash.

"Good girl." Another twist of his wrist and he's cut through the second strap.

A surge of pleasure pulses in my clitoris, my vaginal walls contracting in an involuntary spasm .

The knife slides over the slope of my breast taking the lace of my bra with it and revealing my breast. My hard nipple zings with electric current when the steel glides over it.

"You are such a good girl. So fucking perfect."

Those words fizz through my blood like an uncorked bottle of champagne.

He brushes the knife along my chest and over the curve of my other boob, using it to draw down the lace from that cup too. Then in a movement so quick, I feel the brush of air but don't see it, he cuts through the fabric connecting the cups.

The remains of the bra slips from my skin with a whisper of sound.

His hold on the knife shifts and suddenly it is pointing down at me. "Yes, or no?"

"Y—" I clear my throat. "Yes."

"Perfect."

He touches the tip of my nipple with the tip of his knife. Wetness gushes between my legs.

The sharp knife that cut my grandfather so easily doesn't cut me.

The hand that wielded the blade to leave a cut no deeper than a scratch on my grandfather's throat expertly wields it now. It touches me but does not bite into my skin. Does not draw blood.

He lays it on my chest, blade pointed toward my mons. Miceli doesn't have to tell me not to move.

He is showing as much trust in me not to hurt myself by doing so as I am that he will not hurt me with that wickedly sharp blade.

After bending to the side, he straightens and lifts his arm, his belt in his hand.

"Yes, or no?"

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Yes, or no?" he repeats.

I can say no . And he'll drop the belt. I'm as sure of that as I am my own unbearable excitement.

"Yes." It's barely a whisper, but he hears me.

He expertly binds my wrists with it. Did he learn that in the bedroom or on the job?

Does it matter?

The leather holds my wrists together without cutting into them.

He lifts them above my head and lays my bounds wrists on the chair. "Don't move them."

"If I do?"

"I'll remove the belt."

"And?" I prompt.

"And I' ll keep doing what I'm doing, but your hands will be free." His gaze traps mine. "This is all about pleasure. For us both."

I nod my understanding.

"If you say no , I stop. If you say stop , I stop. If you say off , I take the belt off. If you say get off , I do."

"I don't want you to stop."

"Good." He picks up his knife and begins to run it over my body, leaving chills of excitement in its wake.

How can this feel so good?

After pushing my thighs as far apart as he can and since I am extremely limber, that's pretty far, he slides the flat of the blade over my labia. His pinky finger runs a parallel line between my inner lips, through the slick wetness.

I try to stay still, but my hips move restlessly. I can't help it.

The knife clatters as it lands on the tile.

There is no chance to feel the loss of it, or think I messed up. His big hands with fingers as delicate against my skin as his blade cover every inch of the path the knife took.

I thrust upward wanting more and almost cry when his hands leave my skin. But he picks me up, turning me over and putting me on my knees facing the back of the big armchair.

The sound of the ottoman moving barely registers in my fevered brain.

He bends me forward and arranges my limbs so my forearms rest on the back of the chair. My wrists are still bound.

"Miceli!" I cry, needing.

He rubs his hard length up and down the crack of my bottom. Is he going to…?

Am I ready for that?

"Do you want me inside you?"

There can only be one answer, even if I'm nervous about where exactly he's going to put that oversized dick.

He spreads my intimate flesh from behind and the head of his sex presses against my soaked entrance. Relief and disappointment both cause the sigh that gusts out of me.

Then he thrusts forward with his powerful hips, filling and stretching my tight channel. My vaginal walls squeeze and he grunts.

One hand comes around and hard fingers press against my clitoris.

It's so much sensation, my brain shorts out.

He thrusts in and out of me, keeping those amazing fingers against my sensitive nub. Ecstasy doesn't build, it coils tighter and tighter.

"Miceli, do something!" He has to end this terrible tension .

I can't take it anymore. I need to come.

He shifts behind me and then he's kneeling on the chair. He lifts my body so I'm sitting on his thighs, his knees bent under us. Then he wraps his arm around me like a vise, pulling my body up and flush with his.

He's completely surrounding me, controlling our movement.

His hips thrusting, he moves my body up and down with that viselike grip.

He's so deep, I don't think I can take him, but my body makes a liar of my fear.

My climax hits without warning, my body going rigid as every muscle contracts. He rubs my clit, forcing higher levels of pleasure until I scream and then the pressure is barely there.

That perfect control of sensation, giving it continuously but not too much pulls another powerful orgasm from me and then he's shouting and filling me with his hot semen.

My head flops back against his chest and we stay like that panting for a long time. Our mixed fluids drip out of me around him. Not as hard as he was, he's still inside me nevertheless.

My body tries to tell me it wants more, but my mind knows we have to stop.

I try to shift off of him but I don't get far.

"You need to take the belt off," I tell him.

He doesn't argue, but reaches around me and undoes the leather loops. He rubs my wrists before letting them go.

"We need to… I need to…" What? I need what? To go. "Go. Get up." Something.

Again, he doesn't try to talk me out of it, but carefully lifts me so he can slide out from under me. The loss of his body heat tells me he stepped away.

But then strong arms are sliding under my knees and tipping me back as he lifts me from the chair. I squeak.

Which I will deny later if he tries to bring it up.

"Bathroom?" he asks, his emotionless mask back in place.

I point. "I can walk."

"The tile is cold."

He carries me to the bathroom which is equipped with shower and towels for those hot summer days we decide to swim in the bay instead of the pool.

Miceli turns on the water and waits for it to heat the tiles before letting me down inside the shower stall.

His eyes focus between my legs. "You waxed your pussy so I wouldn't know what color your hair really was."

"I waxed my vulva because I wanted to." Because Kara told me it would enhance the sensations and I wanted to get everything I could out of my first time, my only time with someone not the man I was supposed to marry .

I didn't want that man to know who I really was, or what I really looked like though. So, in that way, Miceli is right.

Well, I just found out that it's every bit as hot and wonderful with hair down there than without. Even if it is different.

And my hope of staying anonymous to my one-night-stand is dead and gone.

"Which do you like better?" He licks his lips.

Oh, no. Not again. "We can't," I tell him.

He nods. "So, which one?"

"It hurts to get waxed."

"That's not what I asked."

"You want to know which I like better when we…you know?" How are our thoughts so in sync?

"Yes."

"Um, they're both good. When you lick and suck on my um…lips, when they're bare, it's..." I shiver under the hot streaming water. "But when you run your fingers over the tips of my hair…"

I'm getting wetter down there, aching for him again, still…whatever. "Which do you like better?"

"You taste better than anything I've put in my mouth either way."

Anything? "I read that people can be chemically compatible, so their taste and smell is really attractive to the other person."

He smiles. "I read that too."

"Um, so, yeah. It's probably chemicals."

"Good thing ours match."

I shrug and turn to face the wall, grabbing the loofah sponge. "I guess."

"Trust me, a lifetime with the same lover that smells wrong and tastes bitter is not what either of us wants."

"It's just science," I say more to myself than him.

"Biology," he agrees.

I lather the loofah and start washing my body.

He makes a strangled sound. "I'll get your clothes."

"Thank you."

Feelings pelt my insides while the water, at just the right temperature…no guy should be this perfect…pelts my skin. That was…it was…I shake my head.

Yeah. That.

Intense. Incredible. Not just science. Not by a long shot.

Imbued with trust. On both sides.

Dangerous.

That last one times a hundred .

When I first found out about this marriage deal, I was worried I couldn't love my Cosa Nostra husband. Now, I know that the really scary scenario is that I could .

Falling for the underboss would be a disaster. He'll never love me back. Not like my dad loved my mom.

Men like my dad are rare, in or out of the criminal underworld. I'm not risking vulnerability with a man programmed not to give into the tender emotions.

Miceli doesn't have to tell me that's how he was raised. I know it.

No matter how good he is in bed, or a chair…whatever. No matter how considerate and protective he can be, none of that equals love.

Not for a made man.

I find my clothes, such as they are, on the bench when I step out of the shower. There's a bathmat on the floor from the cupboard too.

Miceli again.

I dry off thoroughly everywhere. I have no panties to put on, so I have to get back into my jumpsuit without them. Or a bra.

It feels weird.

And also, kind of cool. Like it's something private just for me. Or me and Miceli.

He's not in the boathouse when I come out of the bathroom. His tie is laying neatly over the back of one of the chairs at the table though. And his knife is resting on the table beside the armchair that just witnessed so much activity.

There's a message there, but heck if I know what it is.

Or, he just forgot both?