by Bethany-Kris
“You’ve never told me,” he said.
Karen’s tongue wet her lips again, a soft trembling moan following the action. “Sometimes I think when I feel so strongly about something—someone—that it must be clear enough that I don’t have to say it, too.”
She watched him under her lowered lashes, never once stopping the rhythm of her body moving on top of his. Every lower of her hips was accompanied by the slap of skin against skin, and the clench of her inner muscles around his length.
It was almost teasing.
“Karen,” Dino started to say, wanting to stop her from saying something she couldn’t take back.
Or worse, that he might have to take away.
Because while he was entirely distracted by her—by fucking her—he still heard her. He heard what she was saying, or rather, what she was trying to say to him. He understood those feelings she didn’t vocalize, because he felt them beating through his bloodstream every single time he was in her presence.
That didn’t mean he had to say it.
Right?
Shouldn’t she just know?
He knew.
“I forget that just because I feel something, it doesn’t mean you know I feel it,” Karen continued.
He was worried he was going to break her heart someday.
He was frightened that because he couldn’t give her something healthy—something normal—that they would never be good enough for one another.
He was scared she wouldn’t understand.
Still, Dino was all too aware that with this—like with the way she saw him—it wasn’t something he was allowed to have a say in. It seemed he had already had his say in her feelings where they were concerned, and his fears simply didn’t factor into it at all.
Karen was allowed to feel.
She was not like him.
She didn’t have to hide from it.
So he let her say it; he let her whisper the words in his ear after he’d twisted them around and put her on her knees. He’d let her tell him exactly how she felt because she had every right to say it after he’d pounded into her from behind and made her beg for more.
“I love you,” she’d told him.
Three little words.
Spoken quietly.
Quickly said, mumbled into a pillow.
He loved her, too.
It just wasn’t that simple.
“Coffee?” Dino called out to Karen.
“Tea—it’s in the same spot.”
He thought that was a little odd, considering Karen rarely, if ever, drank tea, but he didn’t question her on it, simply grabbed the box of decaffeinated tea and dropped a bag into the steaming mug.
“Want me to bring it in there, or are you going to peel your ass out of bed?” Dino asked.
Karen laughed lightly from the bedroom. “I’m comfortable, Dino. It’s my day off and I’ve had a crappy week. Stop judging me. Milk and one sugar.”
“No judging. I’ll bring it.”
He almost asked why her week had been crappy, but decided against it, if only because he was about to add to her stress when he was going to have to warn her about the agents, and the possibility that they may be around asking questions. It was a simple enough task as far as demanding his employees of all his businesses deflect any attention from officials, but Karen wasn’t just Dino’s employee.
Once the tea was steeped long enough, he grabbed his coffee and Karen’s mug and made his way back into the bedroom. Karen, resting against the headboard with a book in her hands, looked like she had spent the night rolling in the sheets with him.
She looked properly fucked with her lazy smile and messy hair, not to mention the sheets she had pulled up around her body to keep her modesty.
Not that it did anything to hide her body.
He knew all too well what she looked like under that sheet.
“Here,” he said, handing her tea over.
Karen took it with a happy sigh, sipping on the hot liquid. “It’s good.”
“Tea is new for you.”
She didn’t look at him when she replied, “Didn’t think you’d notice the change.”
Dino’s brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t I notice something like that?”
“It’s not important. Come here.”
He did as she asked, leaning over the bed and letting her pull him close enough for a kiss. Her lips curved into a smile against his mouth as she stroked his cheek with her thumb.
“I do, you know,” she said softly, “love you.”
Dino wished it was as easy for him to say as it was for her. She could let the words fall from her mouth so easily, as if it was the same thing as breathing.
For him, a fear choked him silent when he wanted to reply in kind—reply honestly. She was entirely his, had never said a thing differently, but Dino knew the things that were his, things that he loved, could be taken away without reason or apology.
Still, he managed to say the words.
She deserved to hear them.
“Love you, sweetheart,” Dino murmured.
Karen’s smile bloomed into a full blown grin. “The tea is new.”
“Decaffeinated, too. What good does that do?”
“Suffices my need for a hot drink.”
“Why the change?” Dino asked.
Karen didn’t answer right away, instead dropping her gaze and her hand from his face. Dino leaned back, standing straight as he watched her curiously.
What was she hiding?
“What brought you over here this early?” Karen asked.
A deflection.
Dino was not a stupid man.
He saw that for exactly what it was.
“I’ll indulge you for a minute, but then you’re going to tell me what you’re hiding,” Dino said frankly.
Karen still wouldn’t look at him, but she nodded. “Fair enough.”
“I wanted to see you; I haven’t been able to have a minute with you since we got back from the cabin two weeks ago. Something else came up today and it made sense for me to come over while I had the chance.”
“Something else came up?”
Dino took a deep breath—now or never. He wanted to keep Karen blind and deaf to his business as much as possible, but sometimes, he knew he wasn’t going to have a choice, especially if she might somehow be dragged into it by affiliation. This was one of those times.
“Police might be sniffing around,” he said, choosing what he told her carefully.
‘Agents’ would have been honest, but it would have needed a better explanation. He chose to go with telling her it was police simply to make the situation seem less bad.
“Oh?” Karen asked, glancing up at him with genuine concern in her eyes.
“Don’t worry about it—it’s nothing. But if someone does come around asking questions, follow everyone else’s lead and say you know nothing.”
“I can do that.”
Dino smiled, thankful. “Good. Now what are you hiding?”
Karen’s hands tightened around the mug, and she dropped his stare again. “I …”
He didn’t like that she seemed scared to speak—scared of him, maybe.
That cut him to the core.
“Whatever it is, just tell me,” Dino urged.
Short of her saying she had given information to the officials, Dino could handle it.
Surely.
Karen finally looked back at him the fear still coloring her eyes with a vibrancy. Yet when she spoke, she did so with strength, as though she was ready for anything. “I’m pregnant, Dino. Eleven weeks, almost three months. I’ve been busy and overlooked the fact I’d missed a couple cycles. We’re not always safe—this morning, for example, not that we needed to be, but you didn’t know. I found out shortly after we got back from the cabin.”
He could handle it.
That’s what he had said.
That’s what he had thought.
Pregnant.
Except that, he knew.
Din
o wasn’t sure he could handle that.
He should be excited. He was not a young man—he was capable of caring and providing for a child of his. He loved Karen, and she was right, he could have taken precautions to prevent this very thing from happening.
It should not have been a surprise.
It still was.
He was not ready for this.
Fear kept him silent, and instinctively, to protect Karen from unknowns that would love to hurt her and his unborn child simply because they were his, Dino took a step away, moving back from her.
Karen’s features fell, hurt coloring her eyes. “Dino.”
He took another step back even knowing he was hurting her because he didn’t know what else to do to protect her. The only way he could do that was by removing himself from the equation.
Anything that was not given to him was always taken away.
That fear was so real to him.
So alive.
He wouldn’t let her be hurt because she was his.
He would rather hurt her himself than see her be used against him.
Karen wouldn’t understand.
Dino wouldn’t explain it.
“IF you’re not up to discussing business today, that’s fine. But don’t ignore me as though you’ve got better fucking things to be doing,” Riley Conti said. “I’ll take your lack of conversation as your usual bullshit, but the rest is just disrespectful, Dino.”
The bitter tone of the Outfit’s front boss held an almost threatening quality to it, and that was the only thing that made Dino glance up from his clenched hands.
Riley glared at him from across the restaurant table. His outburst, and Dino’s lack of attention, had not gone unnoticed by the other men who had been brought to attend the meeting between the front boss and Capo.
“Well, do you?” Riley barked.
Dino willed away the mess in his mind, determined to get this day over with so he could move on. “Do I, what?”
“Have better things to be doing, Dino!”
Yes, he wanted to say.
He should be with Karen, across the fucking city, apologizing for being a total asshole the week before. He should be on his knees in front of her, making amends in whatever way she wanted him to for leaving her place without so much as a goodbye. He should be feeding his desires, placating the dull pain in his heart by going to her.
Instead, he was sitting in a shitty restaurant having a conversation with a man he cared nothing for. Dino felt more for shit under his shoe than he did for Riley Conti.
Business was still business.
He had a job to do.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Dino asked calmly. “You want more foot traffic on your territory, fine. I’ll make it happen.”
“With my men—not your brother doing the majority of the work.”
Dino resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Still don’t like Theo, huh?”
Riley didn’t grace that with a response.
Honestly, he didn’t need to.
“Do I need to take this to Ben?” Riley asked after a moment of silence had stretched on between the men.
At that, Dino did tense in his seat. He’d gone through much of the meeting without trouble, despite his lack of conversation and attention. It really wasn’t that unusual for him, regardless of what Riley wanted to say.
But at that statement—that threat—Dino did hesitate.
Riley knew it was a good threat to use. The front boss was one of few men aware of just how to get what he wanted where Dino was concerned, and that was through Ben.
“I said you’d get the foot traffic,” Dino said.
“Make it happen, or the next chat I have will be with your uncle.”
With that final threat hanging over Dino, the front boss stood from his seat, waved a hand at his son across the restaurant and the other men who had attended the meeting, and then he was gone. Dino only looked up from his hands again when he heard the jingle of the bell above the restaurant’s front door.
Being alone did nothing to settle the anxiety drumming in his heart. He was not on his game, and this meeting proved it even more. He was sleeping less and less, and when he did sleep, it was as though he’d dipped his mind into hell for a few hours.
Dino knew what his problem was—he was without Karen.
It was a jackass move to leave her without explanation after she’d told him about the pregnancy, but he didn’t know what else to do. He wanted to protect her from the monsters in his life—including himself—but the only way to do that was to cut her off completely.
Pregnant, his mind taunted. While she’s pregnant with your child.
Dino never pretended to be a good guy, or even an honorable one, for that matter. Even this was kind of low for him, and he knew it all too well.
“Fucking hate that tool,” Theo muttered from beside Dino as he took a seat at the table.
He’d forgotten that his brother was there—yet another reminder he was way off his game and that meant he was probably about to suffer for it.
“I’ll handle Riley,” Dino said.
He tried to sound flippant, but was sure he failed in the effort. Theo didn’t mention it either way, and for that Dino was grateful.
“And what was that shit he tried to pull at the end about Ben?” Theo asked.
Dino pushed up from his chair, trying to appear unaffected. “You know what it was.”
Theo glanced away. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
That was that.
“Do us all a favor and put some guys in Riley’s streets to do whatever work he wants them doing,” Dino said. “It’ll keep him happy and off our backs for a while. I’ve got enough going on without that asshole adding to it.”
“Got it.”
It took from the time Dino left the restaurant to the second he sat down in the driver’s seat of his car to decide to call Karen. He’d done well all week by avoiding her, but the fact remained the same, he didn’t want to avoid her at all.
Knowing she should be at work, he called through to the restaurant first. The office phone rang off the hook with no one picking up the call. Confused, Dino hung up, then tried another number—Karen’s cell.
That too rang with no answer.
A heavy feeling settled in Dino’s gut as he made an illegal U-turn right in the middle of the street, uncaring if he got pulled over and ticketed for the action. Something wasn’t right—he could feel it in his bones.
Karen was habitual to a fault. She didn’t miss work, she didn’t ignore calls, and even if she was pissed off to the high heavens at him, she wouldn’t snub a call from him.
Surely not now.
Knowing Karen should be working, he headed to the restaurant first. Surprisingly, Dino found Karen’s car was not parked in the lot with the rest of the employees’, and when he went inside, he didn’t find her there, either. He by-passed other employees, disregarding their questioning stares as he flew through the main dining area and then the kitchen, heading straight for the back offices.
Her car wasn’t there, so she shouldn’t be either.
That didn’t stop Dino from checking the office.
It was empty.
Not entirely empty, as things were still in its place, but Karen was not inside working as she should be. Even her laptop was gone.
Dino had just turned around to leave when the buzzing of his phone in his pocket stopped him. He checked the caller ID, seeing Karen’s name light up the screen, and quickly slammed the office door shut, determined not to have his conversation overheard.
“Where are you?” Dino asked the second he picked up the call.
Maybe that was not the best way he could have answered, given everything. Dino was well aware that he had no right to be playing the asshole between the two of them. He was the one who walked out on her and then didn’t even bother to give her a call for a week.
“Hello to you, too,” Karen muttered.
“I’m at the restaurant an
d you’re not here. You’re on the schedule, Karen.”
He sounded like an asshole.
Dino tried to check that impulse and put it in place, but he wasn’t sure it was going to do any good. Especially not after what she said next.
“I quit, so no, I don’t need to be there at all.”
“You quit.”
It didn’t even come out as a question.
Karen sighed. “Yeah—I’m done.”
“Karen …” Dino took a breath, thinking hard on what he wanted to say next because he knew it was going to be important. It was going to mean the difference between her never wanting to see him again, and him being able to explain himself in a way that she might understand. “Give me ten minutes, please.”
“For what, Dino?” she asked softly. “For you to walk out on me again? For you to leave me trying to figure out a shitty situation by myself again? I would rather do this alone than be with someone who makes me feel like I’m doing it alone. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Yes.
He absolutely did.
“I don’t want you to do it alone,” Dino said. “I’m sorry that I was a fucking asshole last week. I could say you took me by surprise and I didn’t know how to react, so what you got was just a really bad reaction, but it would only be half of the truth.”
“Listen—”
“No, let me finish. I’ve had the shittiest week in a long time, although I am sure yours has been worse than mine. I don’t know what to do, but if you just let me explain it, maybe you’d understand why.”
Dino had fully intended to keep Karen out of his business as far as the Outfit and his family went. He didn’t want to put her in a position where Ben might be able to use her to hurt Dino in some way, or God forbid, as another one of his lessons.
But if it would make her understand why he kept her at a distance, if explaining to her how his fears were like a constant noose tightening around his neck every single day of his life, then he would do it.
He didn’t know what would come after.
He wasn’t sure that those details mattered at the moment.
“Ten minutes,” Dino said almost pleadingly. “Please give me ten minutes with you to explain. I love you—that should be enough for ten minutes.”
He’d said the words so easily that time.