Chapter 51 RóISE

I review the same page of notes for the fifth time and none of it sinks into my brain.

I can't sit still. Honestly, sitting at all right now is not in the cards. I'm lying on my side on the bed with my tablet propped up so I can study for my Performance Theory final.

Only, very little studying is getting done. Every time I shift, I feel the movement in my stretched sphincter muscles and something decadent flutters deep in my belly.

Flashes of what happened in Miceli's studio keep interrupting the words on the screen.

A loud pounding on my door startles me and I sit up, accidentally putting my hand down on Pusheen's tail.

I don't think I hurt her, but she yowls and leaps from the bed in protest.

Before I can even call out to ask who it is, because that is not the knock of one of my cousins, or grandmother, the doorknob starts to turn.

Screeching, I jump to my feet a lot like Pusheen, but I'm diving for a robe to cover the stretchy tanktop that barely reaches my thighs. I'm not wearing underwear.

I'm halfway into the robe when Miceli bursts into the room looking around like he thinks I've got someone in here with me.

"What are you doing?"

His eyes lock on the half of my body still exposed and lust he makes no effort to hide kindles in their depths.

What the heck? "What are you doing here?" I amend my first question .

But really, I'd settle for an answer to either.

"You cannot entertain visitors dressed like that," he says in full bossy mode.

I let the robe slide right back off and put my hands on my hips? "I can't ? Only it looks like I can."

"I am different. You can entertain me naked, but not if you don't want to mess the sheets up on that princess bed of yours."

"It's not a princess bed." There's no canopy. So what if pink is an accent color in my room?

I like it a lot, but I wear it a lot more since finding out about my contract fiancé's aversion to the color.

His eyes are focused on the apex of my thighs. "Shift just a little and I'll see the soft curls on your pussy."

"What? No! Anyone could walk in." I put a hand up to stop him even though he hasn't moved a single inch since bursting into the room.

"My point exactly, mi dolce fiore . And if this anyone is a person not related to you by blood, I will gouge their eyes out with my favorite dagger before I bury it in their heart."

I want to think he's exaggerating, but that look on his handsome, unhinged face says he's not. "Then you'd better shut the door."

He steps back without shifting his gaze away from me and slams the door.

"Make some more noise, why don't you? You're tough and all, but I don't see you winning if mamo catches you in here."

"I like your grandmother."

That should not make me smile. I shouldn't care that the jerk I'm going to marry likes the woman I adore, but it does. "She's likable."

Miceli shakes his head like he's coming out of a daze. "Put your robe on, please, Aphrodite. Neither one of us wants to find out what your grandmother would do to me if she walked in on me living out the fantasy in my head."

"You haven't called me that in a while." I bend down and retrieve the robe, muscles unused to the activity we indulge in earlier twinging.

"It's a fitting name for you." There's something strange in his voice.

"Not sure how a guy who doesn't do love thinks the Goddess of Love is a good name for me."

"You love lots of people." His eyes shift away from me.

If it was anyone else, I'd think he was trying to avoid my gaze. But it's Miceli. He's probably cataloguing every tiny splash of pink in the room.

"I'm not sure about lots, but I love my family." Even my uncle, who I don't always like .

I'm not sure if I love Mick. Are you required to love your cousin-in-law? I'm pretty sure not. If I am, I might be in trouble.

All of my resentment for Kara having to get married so young coalesced on him and it's never shifted. Kind of like how I resent Miceli for being the other half of our forced union.

Which isn't fair and I'm not even sure I resent the marriage anymore. How do I resent being forced to marry the man I'm pretty much head over heels in love with?

Even if he is a Grade A jerk sometimes.

I tie the belt on the robe as he thrusts a bag toward me. "There's an Epsom salt mix in one of the jars. Put two capfuls in the water and soak for at least thirty minutes. Afterward, rub some of the cream in the smaller jar on your asshole. It will help."

"You went and got me stuff to help my aching uh…muscles?" My face is flaming red, but my heart squeezes.

This man.

"You were sore and then you had to ride nearly an hour on the back of my bike." He shrugs. "It's no big deal."

Him taking the time to find the stuff in that bag and bring it here is a very big deal. We might not be a romance, but he treats me like I'm important.

More than just the uterus guaranteeing the blood alliance between our families.

"Have you had dinner?" We didn't eat the whole time we were in his studio "I was starving when I got home."

"Did you eat?" he asks immediately.

"I had some crackers and cheese. I wasn't up to sitting down to dinner with the family. Luckily Uncle Brogan wasn't there tonight." It's the one meal he insists we eat as a family.

And when he's there, he expects the rest of us to be too.

"Do you want tacos?"

"Do you have everything you learned about me memorized?"

"I don't forget important facts."

"Me liking tacos is one of them?"

"Yes." His tone dares me to ask why.

Yeah, no. I'm not sure I want the answer. It might be something along the theme of we're not romance . Like it's about keeping me healthy to carry his baby, or something equally infuriating.

I don't want mamo to walk in on me clobbering him anymore than I do her catching us in bed together. Just no.

"If I say I want tacos, are you going to run out and get some?"

He shakes his head slowly. "I'll order one of your uncle's men to do it."

"Can you do that? Order my uncle's men around?"

"Men in our world know who I am and if they know what's good for them, they do what I tell them."

"I just bet. I'm not one of my uncle's men though."

"No, you are most definitely not."

"We don't need to order out for tacos. There'll be leftovers from dinner in the kitchen."

"And your housekeeper doesn't mind you scrounging around in her refrigerator?"

"Nah. Does yours?"

"We have two cooks besides a housekeeper and none of them would take kindly to me messing up the kitchen."

"What do you do when you're hungry between meals?"

"Call one of the staff."

" Mamo would say that's taking on airs. No offense."

"None taken."

"Anyway, the trick is probably not to leave a mess behind after you snack. Mamo would still rap my knuckles with a wooden spoon if I did that."

Miceli's not about to show shock at mamo's methods of discipline. He was raised by a don to be a soldier. His corporal punishment would have been far worse.

"I don't want you to hurt our children," I blurt out. And when did child become plural?

"I won't."

"I mean the training. It's barbaric."

"How would you know? Fitz is too young for the type of training you're talking about."

"Yeah, if Mick tries to train Fitz at any age with some of the things mamo warned us girls about, Kara will turn mama-bear and maul him to death. I'm pretty sure."

"Ah, so your grandmother told you. I will teach our children to fight and the only time I will strike one is dummy strikes during that training."

"Your father didn't strike you?" That surprises me.

Miceli's face shuts down. "I didn't say that. He was a good father and he trained me and my brother the way he'd been taught."

"But you're not going to follow in his footsteps?"

"Not in certain respects, no. Neither will Sev."

"Wow. That's good to hear." Like really, really .

It would be a real bummer to have to poison the man I love. But yeah, there are things my grandfather did to train my dad and uncle that I would have dosed his coffee with rat poison for.

Miceli lets me feed him leftovers, watching every move I make in the kitchen. It's weird. Because the lust is banked and he just seems…happy maybe?

Like I said. Weird.

After bossing me around some more about taking a bath and treating my bottom and vagina…seriously? I'm supposed to use the tiny tube of cream there. Anyway, after all the instructions, and a kiss that pretty much blows my mind, Miceli leaves.

And somehow, not one of my family interrupts us.

After that very weird night, I spend the next day studying for my finals.

All of my tests are on Wednesday and Thursday, which gives me Monday and Tuesday for study groups on campus.

~ ~ ~

Fiona finds me in my room on Sunday. She wants to talk about her eighteenth birthday.

"Dad's already got this big bash planned and I'm going to hate it. You know I'll be hiding for most of it."

"Tell him you don't want the party. It's your birthday." And Fiona isn't exaggerating. She'll last about thirty minutes with the crowd and then she'll disappear.

Uncle Brogan doesn't even yell about it anymore, but he doesn't stop forcing her to attend events either.

"You know it's not that easy. Since when has our birthday ever belonged to us and not to the mob?" Fiona sounds more jaded than I've ever heard her.

I don't have an answer for her. It's not just Uncle Brogan. My dad allowed my birthday and his own to be used as events for networking with his criminal buddies.

But mom and dad also started the tradition of me celebrating my birthday separately and privately with friends and really close family, i.e. my cousins.

"Whatever networking even your dad plans for the day of, we can have a private celebration just you and me and Kara," I promise.

"And Zoey. I want her to be there too."

My first reaction is to say no way. But this is Fiona's birthday. And she's going to be eighteen. Old enough to date the nineteen-year-old. If Fiona wants to date a mafia soldier, that's her choice.

I just hope she doesn't end up with her heart broken. "Okay, and Zoey."

Fiona smiles. "I want to do like you did on your 21 st ."

"You mean sneak out?" Where would my cousin want to go ?

"Yes."

"You don't want to go into the City do you?" I ask.

She bites her lip and shakes her head. "I want to go for a bike ride on the trails at Caumsett."

"Uncle Brogan won't refuse for you to do that."

"But I want to sneak out. You and Kara had so much fun doing it."

I get it. I really do. We did have fun. The risk of getting caught added to the excitement that night.

And Fiona wants to experience that. If it doesn't backfire, it could build back some of the confidence in her that the shooting the day of my mom's death ripped away.

"Okay, Operation Sneak Out the Birthday Girl is a go, but Zoey can't come."

"What? Why?"

"It's literally Zoey's job to tell on us. Well, me anyway."

With the increased security Miceli has in place, it's going to be hard enough for me to get out of the house without one of his assigned shadows. There is no more off time for my mafia guards. Just a bigger detail with a guard on hand even when I'm at home.

"She wouldn't tell."

"Maybe." I'm not convinced, but Fiona could be right. "Do you want to put her in the position of being punished if we're discovered though?"

"No." Fiona's lip wobbles. "It's not fair. We can't do anything fun without this stupid mob life ruining it."

Hard to argue that with someone who spent two weeks in a coma as collateral damage to this life. "We can do fun things. And we will. Listen, let me try to figure this out. If I can come up with a fool proof plan, we can invite her without worrying."

A plan like telling Miceli and letting Fiona think she's sneaking out when Zoey is actually there as a bodyguard? Yes, it's sneaky, but sometimes sneaky is the only way to get what you need out of this mob life.