by Eden Butler
Damn. Luca of all people.
I’d have to be the bigger man and get over my shit.
“Thanks, man. I appreciate you saying that and I…” The door to my room opened and whatever I was going to say to Johnny died on my tongue when Maggie walked through the door. “Ah, I gotta go. Thanks for everything and I’m sorry but…” She moved closer and I caught a whiff of her perfume. “Johnny, my lady’s here. Later.”
I ignored the laugh coming from the other end of the phone and the grin I spotted on Maggie’s face.
Everything fell away from me when she came inside, her body wrapped in a short, black jacket that hit her at the thigh. There was nothing else on her legs—no jeans, no skirt, no boots. Just black nylons and stiletto pumps that I got a good look at when she leaned against the bed.
Holy shit, did she look good.
Maggie always kept herself up. She always looked put together; she gave a shit about her skin, though she never wore much makeup. But she took extra time on her hair, wearing complicated curls and braids and clothes that were modest, but so damn tempting.
Now, though, when I was flat on my back, healed up and rested, after weeks of her treating me like an invalid, now of all times, the woman sauntered in front of me looking like something out of the wildest damn centerfold my fucked-up imagination could picture.
“Dimitri,” she said, the name coming out in a whisper, like she didn’t mean for me to hear it. She moved toward me, her smile soft and sweet, but her eyes were fierce.
I only saw that from her when I had her on her back panting and wet, ready for me to take her.
Shit. I’d missed her.
My throat locked up from the thought of finally being alone with her for the first time in weeks and I thought she might be thinking the same thing.
Maybe that’s why she was dressed the way she was. I’m guessing it was why she moved to the door and locked it. My ma was nosey, but even she wouldn’t come in my room without knocking. Still…it was a smart move.
One eyebrow quirked up and that fire in Maggie’s eyes became an inferno.
“Bella,” I started, bottom lip aching from how hard I chewed on it. “Fuck’s sake, what are you doing looking like that?”
“This?” She shot for innocent and missed the mark, fingering the collar on her coat, letting her thumb slide down to the buttons holding it together. “It’s wet outside.” She nodded to the window, grinning when I didn’t bother to look out of the glass. The rain had kept me drowsy all day. It had put me in a funk which, I supposed was what had Maggie suggesting the nap in the first place. But now, especially now with this company, I was wide awake.
“Just outside?” I couldn’t help asking.
Maggie exhaled, and a low, whispering groan left her throat as she moved to my bed, sitting next to me. “It’s been weeks …since…” She didn’t finish, deciding instead to shrug, leave the explanation open likely because she knew I’d catch her meaning.
It had been weeks since we’d been together and I’d spent a lot of that time in a hospital bed replaying memories of her body, her mouth, her taste of her laugh, her smell, her hair, her smile.
She leaned closer, moving her face toward my open hand when I brushed her cheek. “And you saved me…you saved us.”
“You weren’t exactly a damsel needing a rescue, baby.”
“You know what I mean.” She came closer, brushing against me.
I fingered her hair, wanting to get that red lipstick all over my mouth. Wanting her on top of me because I’d missed how good she tasted. “I’ll always do what I need to. I’ll always have your back, bella.”
She looked down, her expression going serious. “But…if it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have gotten shot.”
“It goes both ways. Whoever comes for me, would come for you. They know you’re my weakness because anyone that sees us together can tell just by how I look at you, how much I love you.”
A small noise stuck in her throat and Maggie’s big dark eyes glistened under the light above us. She was soft and sweet, beautiful and, Christ above, all mine. “Dimitri…mi amor…I love you too.”
I’d missed her like a first love. Like a dream on repeat that always came back. It never ended. I wanted her even more now than I had that first time in my apartment on Christmas Eve.
“The…kid…”
She smiled, biting her lip. “Your mom took him. We’re all alone.”
I took her mouth with a brush of lips and tongue and the pressure of my hands pulling her down with me. “Then climb on top of me, baby, and show me how much you love me.”
She went slow, careful still, after a month of me being healed, one leg moving over my lap as I kissed her. The lipstick smeared against my lips, had me tasting more of her, tugging at the tie in her coat. She rested back, wiping the makeup from my mouth when I tugged apart that jacket to get a better look at what she was hiding from me.
“Madonna santa…”
“You like it?”
There were garters holding up the dark nylons and she kept the pumps on. The thin dress wasn’t a dress at all, but a black silk nightie that whispered over her thighs when she moved. I touched her hips, finding her wearing the sheerest pair of crotchless panties I’d ever seen.
I moaned, a low, guttural noise working in my throat at the thought. The thin straps dropped as she moved on top of me, and just the sight of the lace cupping her full, beautiful tits, free and braless, had me hard and ready.
“Do I like it, she asks. Fuck yes, but bella, you’re killing me.” I pulled her by the waist, my grip bunching up that silk fabric. “This won’t last long.” I scrubbed my face, waving my hand at my hard dick. “It’s been too long, and I want you too much.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, tossing the jacket to the floor, her mouth back to my lips, teasing me, her teeth nibbling. “I’ll do all the work.”
“Do it, baby. Fuck it. I’ll die a happy man.”
“I won’t kill you.” Maggie moved on my lap, lifting up to take hold of my dick. Her warm, sweet hands wrapped around me, making me lean back, giving her full access to my neck. “But I’ll make you feel like you’re in heaven.” She took advantage, kissing me there with her fingers stroking, making me harder, making me throb in her palm.
“Bellissima…God above…do it.”
She leaned back, pushing up my t-shirt, lips wet from her tongue as she looked at my cock, hard and bouncing in her hand. “So strong…so thick…”
I was drunk on the look in her eyes and the feel of her fingers holding me, teasing me, her thumb sliding over the head. Her pussy was right there, just under that black silk. I brushed it aside and curved my fingers. Finding her wet and warm and fucking ready, I couldn’t wait another second.
“Come here,” I said, grabbing her by the neck, my words a grunting moan. I kissed her, possessing her mouth, making Maggie cry and whine against it when I fingered her with my free hand.
She was soft and smooth everywhere, tight and searing on the inside, and she clamped around my fingers, bouncing against them, riding them faster and faster, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t close to being enough.
Maggie didn’t complain when I broke away from her. She watched, her breathing erratic, her lips swollen, eyes still raging and fucking sexy, then smoldering when I took her hand and licked her palm, moving it onto my cock to wet it.
“Ay Dios…” she said, but the oath got cut off as I jerked her hips forward, angling my dick for her and she slipped on top of me.
“Fuuuck…”
She squeezed me all the way down and I fell back against the pillows, too fucking overwhelmed with sensation. She only hissed in reply, coming to her knees, working her hips up and down, setting a rhythm that had my heart and pulse throbbing faster and faster.
“You’re so fucking sexy…look at you…I fucking love you.”
The sensation she worked up inside me was almost too much. Maggie was in her element now, her beautif
ul skin flushed. Her hair slipping over her strong arms, around her perfect tits as I pulled down that nightie.
I reached for them, teasing her nipples when she arched back, resting on my pillow to watch her as she clamped around me, her movements quickening.
She looked like a goddess.
She felt like a dream.
“Dimitri…ah…” She cried when I licked my thumb and rubbed it against her clit, smiling as she moved faster. The tightness gripping my cock intensified and she got wetter, her pussy hotter, clenching firmer and I knew she was so fucking close.
I lifted my knees, moving my hips to help her along, feeling my sack swirling when she squeezed me, her orgasm blooming, and she rode me hard, her fingernails digging into my shoulders.
“Ah…shit!!”
“Baby…stay with me…right there…”
Maggie shuddered, resting her forehead against mine, her pussy milking me. I kept her moving, guiding her with my hands on her hips, her breath hot over my face, her words soft, exhausted, unrecognizable.
“Tighter, baby. Come all over me. I’m so close.”
Then she moaned, grabbing my face in one hand, watching me. Her expression relaxed, satisfied as she kept at me, her pussy like a vice now. My girl kissed me soft, then sweet, then took the breath right out of my lungs with her lips and tongue.
“Shit…fuck…” My thoughts went blank and the only thing left of me was sensation. The smell of our bodies sweating. The feel of her wet, hot pussy taking everything left in me as I came. The noise of the bed creaking and our skin slapping together. The taste of her breath sweet like cinnamon, salty like sweat on my tongue the deeper she kissed me.
She collapsed against me. I wrapped my arms around her, twisting us to the side, grabbing the barely-there blanket to cover her as I brought Maggie against my chest.
“Amore mio,” I called her, cupping her face, my body on fire, ready to die if my heart never returned to normal beats.
“Dimitri, are you okay?” she asked, looking me over, her fingers grazing against my chest. When she grazed the scars on my skin, still pink but fading, I stopped her.
“I’ll do, bella.”
Truth was, I could fucking fly. With this woman, for this woman, I’d do anything.
21
Smoke
“Ma, stop…I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“You wasted away in that damn hospital. Let your mother feed you.” The woman ignored me, filling my plate up again, slapping my hand away when I tried to cover it. “Dimitri…don’t upset me.” The glare she gave me twisted something in my gut.
I gave up, letting my mother finish fattening me up.
“Here, open.”
“I can feed myself. I’m not an invalid.”
“While Maggie is changing the baby, I’ll look after you.” Ma cut the manicotti in half, then glared across the table when my kid sister snorted a laugh as Ma held the fork in front of my mouth. “You watch yourself, young lady.”
Antonia rolled her eyes, shooting me the bird when mama wasn’t looking, before I took the fork from her. “Ma, please. It’s been a month. I’m fine. Grazi, though.” I kissed her cheek, earning a hand wave from her, but I noticed the pink warming her skin as she brushed crumbs from the table.
“Speaking of Maggie and the baby—”
I glanced at my watch, nodding. If I’d put money on this shit, I’d have made a killing. Maggie and Mateo were living with me now and my mother saw that as some sort of sign. She’d spent most of the month since I left the hospital dropping hints about how nice it was for us all to be under one roof or what a sweet family we made.
“She’ll ask you again within an hour,” Maggie had promised earlier tonight as we made our way to my parents’ restaurant.
My folks wanted the town to celebrate my survival and it wasn’t in the people of Cuoricino to turn down a free Carelli meal.
“You think an hour?” I’d asked Maggie, nodding to Mr. Kempt as he and Vi crossed the street from her apartment. I’d nudged Maggie, pointing out how the old man touched her friend’s back as he walked her toward my folks’ business and earned a wide grin from her. “I’ll give her half an hour at best. She really wants me to lock you down.”
“She’s determined.”
Truth was, so was I.
“Now, Dimitri,” my mother continued, dropping her voice, “I don’t mean to tell you your business—”
“Since when?” I laughed when she rolled her eyes.
“But that was a scare with Maggie and that…man. Thank the Virgin it all worked out…”
Ma would never mention my killing Alejandro. It was always “for the best” or “God’s plan.” She never liked thinking of any of her kids as bad people.
Dante had been “misguided” when he ran drugs out of Dario’s bar.
Antonia was “lost” when she tried running off with Luca at twenty.
Dario was “honorable” when he had four more months tacked onto his sentence after some asshole tried offing his cellmate and my brother broke the guy’s jaw.
“But you know, son,” she continued, inching closer to me, pulling apart a breadstick to stuff in my mouth, “Antonia told me that Maggie had doubts about you even before everything happened.” Ma closed her eyes, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you but if you love her…” She let the comment hang, not finishing her thought, then my mother lifted her hands, fingers stretched as if to say, “but it’s not my business.”
I shrugged, giving her a nod like I caught her meaning. And I did. But I had my shit already locked down.
That Ma glare of hers vanished the second Maggie returned with the kid and they both sat next to me at the table.
“Did you eat?” she asked me, holding Mateo on her lap when he tried squirming away from her. “Stop, baby.”
“Ma won’t stop stuffing my face.”
“He’s so skinny now,” my mother told Maggie, waving a hand over me like I’d dropped fifty pounds and not five while being in the hospital. “We have to fatten him up.”
“He’s stubborn,” Maggie told Ma, ignoring my hand on her thigh squeezing her. She twisted the right side of her mouth and cut her gaze to me but didn’t comment on the small warning my hand on her was supposed to be. “You don’t scare me, you know.”
“No?” I asked her, taking the kid from her when he reached for me.
“Pop, pop,” Mateo said, snuggling against me, giving Maggie a smug grin like I knew the baby was on my side.
“You hear that?” I told him. “I take a couple of bullets for your mama and she still sides with my mother.”
“Dimitri!” Ma fussed, smacking my arm.
“What?” I looked between her and Maggie, the grin dropping off my face when I noticed that beautiful smile I loved so much was missing. “Bella…”
“I’ll…get the baby some more juice. Watch him for me.”
She was gone before I could stop her. I turned, the kid jumping on my lap as my old man’s stereo kicked on a hopping Little Richard tune, my gut dropping when I spotted the way Maggie swiped at her face.
“You really are a clueless moron,” Toni said, taking Maggie’s spot.
“What I don’t need is a lecture from my kid sister,” I told her, my eye on Maggie lost when the crowd circled closer together toward the dance floor.
“Well, you’re gonna get it.”
“Antonia, your brother was teasing,” Ma said, her voice sharp.
“Yeah, I know he was, but shit, doesn’t he realize Maggie feels guilty about him getting shot?” She shook her head, her gaze moving to the baby and how his attention was on the chain around my neck. The crucifix was gone, but he still liked to mess with the necklace. Antonia pushed back the baby’s hair, and a slow-working smile moved onto her lips before she dropped her hand and glared at me again. “You want to be serious with her? Pay attention to a few things. You can’t assume that everything that happened is all water un
der the bridge or that she’s fine with how all that shit went down.”
“What the hell do you know about it?”
When Mateo shifted on my lap again, pulling away from me, Antonia took him, and stood, her expression hard as she looked down at me. “I know what it’s like to lose someone. I know what it’s like to think I lost them forever. I know what it is to understand that forever can happen at any moment. That’s not something you forget.”
“I’m right fucking here. She knows that.”
“Doesn’t mean, big brother, that she’s still not scared.” She flipped the hair off her shoulder, glancing at our mother, her mouth quirking. “Doesn’t mean she’s not like every other woman either, by the way.”
“She’s not like anyone,” I said, meaning it.
“Big damn gestures, Dimitri. That’s what every woman wants. Forget the flowers. Forget chocolates or balloons or whatever else the Hallmark channel tells us about romance.”
“I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
“Well, obviously.” She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing like she needed to focus on my face before she continued. “Maggie loves you. You love her. Put that shit together, but remember she deserves something big. Something grand.” Her gaze trailed away from me, like she got a little lost in her own head, then her attention went back to my face. “Something that is as big as you say your love is for her.”
Antonia took the baby, not bothering with even a glance over her shoulder. When ten more minutes passed and Maggie hadn’t returned, I guessed she wasn’t coming back.
My sister, for all her bratty behavior the past few months, had been a friend to Maggie. My woman had told me as much.
“I’ll be back, Ma.” She waved me off, folding my napkin when I tossed it on the table. I moved toward the back of the restaurant, looking for my bella.
Half the town was here and it took me a good ten minutes to navigate through the crowd. Mrs. Phillips stopped me to tell me, again, how sorry she was that she hadn’t known August was the punk I knew him to be.