Chapter 48 MICELI

There is that word.

Fuck .

When she says it, I know my innocent fiancée is ready for me to fill her with my cock.

When I took her virginity in Portland, I didn't know the gift she was giving me.

Tonight, I do.

Not every woman likes this, but mi dolce fiore does. She's panting for it.

If Róise doesn't come on my cock without me even touching her clitoris, I'll throw my favorite knife into a landfill.

Stretching her body, I pull her ass right to the edge of the island counter and arrange her legs so her feet are flat on my torso.

Then I grab her thighs and press against that oiled and stretched opening. "Push out."

She does and my head pops inside her. She screams and I stop.

If her glare were a weapon, I would be dead. "Do not stop," she says, enunciating each word. "Fuck me."

It's one order I am willing to obey. I thrust deep into her tight channel. So hot, it feels like I'm pushing into liquid fire.

Cazzo .

So fucking good. Who knew the sweetly innocent woman who wore cotton candy lip gloss to her 21 st birthday would respond so perfectly to my darkest cravings?

Pulling back slowly, I know the sensation of my retreating cock will excite every one of numerous nerve endings along the tight passage. Her moans tell me she is enjoying this every bit as much as I am.

Her gorgeous green eyes are open, her pupils blown with pleasure. She stares at me as if she has to see me in order to hold her to reality.

I let her see in my eyes the truth we both know. She is mine. Fucking mine. From now until forever.

We signed it in blood.

Her moans grow more frequent, her cries, more desperate, and I increase my pace. Pistoning deep inside her with every forward thrust.

Her tits jiggle, the hard little points flushed with blood. Her knuckles are white around the handle of my knife. And suddenly I know what else I want.

I stop moving and pick up the knife I laid aside after cutting off her bra. She watches me unblinking, her mouth parted, her lips and tongue and invitation.

"You are mine." I prick my thumb and let the blood well. "I will protect you. I will protect our children. I will never betray you."

I press my bloody thumb against her left breast right over her heart, leaving a smeared print on her perfect, smooth skin.

She releases the knife above her head with one hand and offers it to me. "You are mine. I will protect you. I will protect our children. I will never betray you."

This fucking woman. She is so perfect for me. So fucking perfect, period.

I prick the tip of her thumb and she waits until there is a large drop before pressing it against my left chest. Over my heart.

"I promise, Miceli."

There are no marriage vows that will bind us more tightly than the words we have just spoken with my dick in her ass, and our bloody thumbprints on each other's bodies.

I begin to move again. Slowly this time. This is more than sex. More than sharing two explosive orgasms.

This is connection.

My heart beats heavily under her bloody thumbprint.

Róise pulls my thumb to her mouth, sucking the blood off and sending powerful currents of pleasure straight to my dick.

My balls draw tight and I have to grit my teeth against coming. But I'm not ready. Because she's not ready.

Her eyes filled with an emotion I refuse to name, Róise offers her thumb.

Bending, I lower my head to take it into my mouth. The sweet copper flavor of her life's essence bursts over my tongue. Sucking and licking, I treat that sweet digit like the erogenous zone I know it can be .

Her eyes go half-mast and my body speeds up until I'm pounding into her like an animal. She urges me on the whole way, moaning and trying to meet my thrusts with the little movement I've allowed her body.

And then, she goes rigid, her eyes unfocused her mouth open on a silent scream. Her ass muscles choke my dick so tight if I wasn't hard as a pike, I wouldn't be able to move.

I fuck her through her climax wondering if the pleasure just might kill me. This time when my nuts grow tight with that burning sensation that says I'm about to come, I thrust harder and deeper.

I erupt inside her, coming so hard, it hurts, but it's a pain I never want to end.

Words I have never said sit on the tip of my tongue and I clamp my mouth shut.

We belong to each other, but the organ beating in my chest does not have a corresponding entity in my soul.

Love is a weakness and I have spent my lifetime controlling mine. Hiding them.

~ ~ ~

Afterward, we shower and I find her a paint splattered T-shirt to wear.

Like usual when I'm here since my father's death, I'm naked. Paint smears on my clothes would be hard to explain. If I felt the need to explain myself.

But I like creating naked. In those hours I am not a De Luca made man. Not the Genovese underboss. I am simply Miceli, the core of myself. The core no one alive has seen until now.

Why did I bring her here? I'm not Sev. I don't think Róise needs access to all my secrets. But I've given it to her.

Cazzo .

What's done is done. But this is as far as it goes.

We can enjoy each other's bodies, but that doesn't mean getting our hooks into each other's souls.

"Are you going to show me your art now?" Róise asks walking toward one of the easels.

There's a little hitch in her step.

I'm beside her in a second, grabbing her shoulders and turning her so I can see her face. "Are you alright?"

Against her loud protests, I meticulously checked her ass for tears and/or blood in the shower. She was swollen but not torn.

"More than." She grins and then winces. "But it will be a few days before we can do that again."

"More like a few weeks."

"Says you."

"Says me. "

"Listen here, Mr. Big Shot Underboss, I let you boss me around during sex, but you don't get to boss me around about it. If I say my body is ready in a few days. It's ready."

I don't argue. But I'm not fucking her ass until I'm sure she's up to it.

To change the subject, I pull the cloth off of the painting on the center easel. "This is what I'm working on now."

Well, one of them.

She gasps. "This is what you paint? How would anyone looking at this think painting weakens you?"

I look at the burned-out hull of a car with the skeletons of long dead occupants still inside it on a torn up stretch of pavement. The crumbling skyscrapers in the background are set against a darkening sky.

"What did you expect me to paint?" I ask.

"Not this scene of destruction. It looks like the end of the world."

Her words please me. "That's what it's supposed to look like."

Róise looks more closely at the painting and then at me, her eyes narrowed.

"What?"

"The covers on the books of one of my favorite series have pictures like this. I bought the first one because of the cover."

I didn't expect to reveal another secret so soon. "I didn't figure you for a reader of post-apocalyptic fiction."

"What do you think I read?"

"Romance? Books on acting?"

She laughs. "I read those too. The books on acting mostly for class."

"That series seems a little depressing for you." I point to the painting with the thumb I drew blood from while we were fucking.

Not that there's any significance in that. It's just the easiest hand to use.

"Not really. It reminds me that no matter how bad the world seems sometimes, it's not that. We're not post-apocalyptic. We haven't completely destroyed ourselves and I don't believe we will."

"Philosophical thought for twenty-one-year-old." I don't comment on her youthful naivete because I'm not sure her hopeful outlook is about her age.

I think at her core, Róise harbors hope in a way I never did.

Tugging at the hem of my t-shirt she's wearing, she wanders to the next easel. "Isn't college when you're supposed to be your most philosophical?"

Her modesty after screaming for me to fuck her in the ass is as much of a turn on as her sexual daring. I ignore the pulse of blood in my semi-erect cock.

I'm always aroused when I'm with her. I'm not about to act on it again. Her body needs rest .

"What's this one?" Róise starts to lift the edge of the cloth covering the largest canvas in the room.

My hand jerks out of its own volition to stop her, but then I let it drop. This painting is a secret she already shares with me.

"Not a post-apocalyptic scene."

"Is it another book cover?" she asks, pausing with her hand on the cloth.

"Look and find out."

She flips the cover over the back of the painting and then makes a choked sound of surprise.

A platinum blonde lies in the center of a hotel bed. Her body flushed with pleasure her thighs spread obscenely, her pretty pink, perfect pussy on display. It's my memory of the woman I thought I would never have again.

The one I am going to marry.

"It's me." Her voice comes out in an awed whisper.

"Yes. "

She bites her lower lip. "But not really."

"Yes, really," I disagree. "Every centimeter of that woman is you. That wig doesn't matter. The make up…"

I let my voice trail off. But her eyes are wide, and I know she knows. She looks at me.

She looks back to the painting. "You left off the makeup. That's me. That's my face."

"I know, I painted it," I say sardonically.

"Don't be a jerk."

Even her fucking bluntness is intoxicating.

"I started it the day after I got back," I admit. "I couldn't get the face right until after we signed the contract."

She reaches as if she is going to touch, but she doesn't.

"It's still wet to the touch." It would be surface dry by now, but I keep coming back to it. Or I did, until I started the other painting on the last covered easel.

"What are you going to do with this?" She bites that sweet lip again. And looks up at me through her lashes.

"I was going to keep it here before I knew you are she and she is you." As a reminder of a night I will always treasure.

That's one piece of sentimental idiocy, I'm not about to tell her.

"Now, what are you going to do?"

"Hang it in our marital bedroom," I tease.

She looks properly horrified. "What if someone sees it? It's too explicit to hang on our bedroom wall. When the maid cleans, she'll see it. "

She's starting to spiral, twisting the hem of the t-shirt until her thighs are exposed nearly to her pussy. Which I'm positive is not her intention.

"I'll keep it here. A secret for you and me to enjoy."

"To enjoy?" she squeaks.

"Oh yes, I think we both get pleasure from seeing you like that."

She doesn't deny it, but she does look away and points to the only easel with a covered painting on it still. "What about that one?"

I don't say anything. Róise takes my silence for permission and moves to uncover the last of my current projects. This time there is no sound at all from her.

She simply stares at the portrait in silence.

It's her. Of course. Her face surrounded by bouncy brown curls with hints of red and her shoulders. The background and edges around her are whorls and splashes of all the shades of pink that remind me of mi dolce fiore .

The dark, almost purple pink of her pussy when aroused. The soft pink of her lips. The darker raspberry shade of her nipples. The cotton candy pink of her birthday lip gloss.

Hot pink. Rose pink. So many pinks and all of them her.

"I look…it's…" her voice fades without her saying what it is.

"You," I finish for her. "And it will hang on the wall of our living room when it's done."

For everyone and my mother to see my obsession.

Fuck.

"So the engagement is official?" Róise asks.

Not what I expected to hear, but I'll go with it. "Not quite."

I walk naked over to my trousers and pull out the small velvet box. There's no logo from a famous jeweler. It's the ring first De Luca who came to America gave to his wife.

I want Róise to feel like she is part of not only our family but of our family's legacy here in New York. She might have been born an Irish mob princess, but now she is Cosa Nostra. Róise will be the mother of another generation of De Lucas who serve the Genovese family.

The next Genovese don.

I open the box and pull out the ring. It's not the biggest diamond in our family's collection of heirlooms. However, the oval center stone surrounded by small diamonds in the delicate Victorian setting is a pink sapphire.

She followed me and is standing near when I turn. She looks down at my closed fist.

"Give me your hand. "

Without hesitation, she lifts the small appendage toward me and I slide the ring on her finger. The fit is perfect. It should be. I had it sized for her.

"It's beautiful," she breathes. "Is this a family heirloom? Only, it's antique gold. Like moma's ring from her great grandmother. Vintage gold is darker sometimes, with more of a copper tint."

I kiss her to stop the babble.

She kisses back until my cock is a pulsing column between us. I pull back, reminding myself once was enough.

Not that it ever is with this woman.

"It's from the first De Luca matriarch to make her home in New York a century ago. She came from Sicily to marry my ancestor."

"Wow." She holds her hand out in front of her, examining the ring. "You De Lucas have been doing this marriage of convenience thing for a long time."

"Pretty sure the Shaughnessy's have to." The ring isn't holding my attention, but her bare legs sure are.

"You're right about that." She sighs and drops her arm. "What next?"

"There will be a press release accompanied by a press conference."

She makes a face of distaste.

"We both need to be there for pictures and to answer questions," I inform her.

Her brows draw together in suspicion, like I'm one of the reporters she apparently doesn't want to deal with. "What kind of questions?"

"Whatever questions reporters who report on society stuff ask I guess." This really isn't my thing. But it is necessary.

"They're going to want to know how we met. They're going to ask about our age difference. They'll want to know if our families are friends. Those society reporters can be really invasive."

"It's a good thing we have an easy meet-cute to tell them."

"You know what a cute is?" Her face reflects her surprise.

I don't live under a rock. "I've heard the term," I say dryly.

"What are we going to say? That we met in a club?" She doesn't sound thrilled by this. "That I let you pick me up?"

"Don't sound so horrified. That's what happened."

"Trust my one and only one-night-stand to make it into the papers."

"No one is going to know it was supposed to be a single night of sex. We're getting married, remember?"

"Right." She's back to twisting the hem of the t-shirt she's wearing. "Let's not mention it was a club in Portland though."

"That could cause more trouble with your uncle than either of us wants to deal with right now," I agree .

She gives me a disbelieving look. "Somehow I don't think you care about trouble for my uncle."

"I care if it causes you stress." It is my job to protect her after all.

Even from censure from her family.

Róise blows out an exasperated breath. "Could you just act like an ass for a while? I think I need you not to be so perfect right now."

I'm far from perfect, but with her permission to be a selfish ass, I swoop down and carry her to the only bedroom with a bed in it. It's only a single, but we don't need a king sized mattress to fuck each other's brains out.