Saving Beth

by Kaylee, Katy

  I loved the teardrop shaped flare of her belly and the way her rounded hips promised pure, unadulterated heaven.

  Her legs moved together restlessly under my stare until my fingers closed around them, one on each, slowly parting them until I could see that most secret, hidden part of her that made my mouth water and my body tremble in anticipation.

  “Fuck, bella. You’re so god damned beautiful.”

  The words rasped from my hoarse throat as I knelt between her legs, my shoulders parting her shaking thighs wide as I settled myself between them.

  “Do you have any idea what you do to me?” My breath teased the drenched lips of her pussy and she writhed above me at just that featherlight sensation. Oh yeah. She was ready for me. More than ready. But I wasn’t. Not yet. There was something I dreamed of, had fantasized about for ten years.

  I leaned down, lapping at her sweet center, breathing in her cry of pleasure and drowning in the taste of her. Like honey and spice. Sweet and sultry. Just like her.

  I licked her up and down, circling her ultra-sensitive clit with the tip of tongue before sucking her down. I wanted her. I wanted all of her. And most of all, I wanted to taste her as she came apart in my arms, tied up and helpless, completely at my mercy but all the while knowing that I would never let her fall.

  “That’s it, cara, let me taste all of you.” She couldn’t hear my barely spoken words, but she still shuddered in response and I drank that up too. I took everything she had to give me, and then demanded more.

  I slid one finger inside her, thrusting over and over again and it didn’t take long with the pressure of my touch and my tongue together to have her crying out as she came beneath me.

  It was so sweet that it brought an ache to my chest as I rose to my feet. I loved seeing her spread out like that, just for me. I loved seeing her tied up and ready for me. And damn it, but I loved seeing her come apart in my arms. I needed to see it again.

  “I can’t wait anymore, Beth.”

  “Neither can I. Now. Aiden.”

  Her frantic, desperate words pushed me forward and I grabbed a condom, rolling it on with trembling hands.

  I grasped her hips, pulling her to the edge of the desk and all the wildness I kept trapped deep inside me roared to the surface, blinding me with its strength. I sank deep. All the way inside her, as far as I could go.

  We both froze like that for a moment, her legs wrapped around my hips, her wrists still tied above her head. Then we started moving. Hard and fast, frantic and desperate for each other. We weren’t two separate beings. We were just one. One body. One soul. Connected by need and pleasure and too many tangled emotions for me to count.

  I plunged inside her over and over again, driving out all the anger, all the fear that had paralyzed me until all that was left was Elizabeth. She stole all my control, all of my iron will, and in that moment I didn’t care.

  I felt her clench tight around me, like a vice squeezing me until I had no choice but to follow her over the edge. I threw my head back, crying out her name as I came, shuddering until my body was completely spent, taking her with me.

  Chapter 11

  Aiden

  It took me a long moment before I could breathe again. Before my thoughts started to return to normal and my body came back to itself. Slowly, I eased back, leaning on the edge of the desk as I untied Elizabeth’s hands because I wasn’t sure my legs would support me.

  After I was sure of myself again, I gently picked Elizabeth up in my arms, cradling her boneless form as I walk us over to the settee on the other side of my office. Her head lolled against my shoulder as she glanced down.

  “There’s a couch in here?” She muttered lethargically, her breath teasing my skin, “Why didn’t we use the couch?”

  “The desk was closer,” I said with a shrug and let out a rumbling laugh at her look of petulance. I was amaze that I could feel so full of light, so at peace, when just a moment ago I had been a maelstrom, wild and completely out of control.

  I dropped down onto the small couch, drawing her drowsy body up against mine, unwilling to let her go even though we’d just been as close as two people could be. It didn’t matter. It still wasn’t enough.

  I wasn’t sure if it ever would be.

  Elizabeth let out a contented little sigh and we lay there like that, her form wrapped around on top of me like a blanket. My body was relaxed, but all the thoughts that I’d tried to hold at bay came swirling back with a whirlwind of doubts and questions.

  I was still trying to make sense of this, of everything that had happened, but I knew I was still missing something. Something important. Something crucial. I turned it over and over in my mind but I still couldn’t figure out, except for one thing that I knew as certain as I knew my name was Diorno.

  As hard as it was for me to accept, as much as I wished it wasn’t true, at least one of my men was a traitor. Maybe more than one. And I didn’t have a fucking clue who it could be.

  I trusted them. I vouched for them. I’d gone through hell and back with some of them. Loyalty was the one thing above all others that I demanded, that the other demanded and expected.

  And now, the only two leads that Luca had been able to find where dead. Who would betray me? Who would betray their famiglia? Who would be willing to work with Ian Redman? The man was a complete psychopath. A cold blooded killer.

  I closed my eyes, but behind my eyelids flashed the crime scene photos from my father’s murder. There had been so much blood. An impossible amount. Splashed across the walls and dripping from the ceilings.

  The man had obviously been in an utter rage. It had been pure carnage. Redman hadn’t cared who he killed or how many had died that day.

  “What is it?” Elizabeth’s soft voice broke into my troubled thoughts.

  “What?”

  “You tensed. I could feel it. Your whole body just tensed.” Elizabeth glanced up at me, a hint of a smile on her face, “I know it’s not because of me because I haven’t even started to argue with you again. So, what were you thinking about that made you go all stiff like that?”

  I stared down at her. I hadn’t meant to answer her. I didn’t mean to say any of it out loud. But the words just starting falling out of my mouth like a tap with no nozzle to turn it off. I couldn’t stop it.

  “I was thinking about the day my father was killed.”

  Her gray eyes immediately darkened with sympathy, “Aiden, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “How could you?”

  “Exactly,” She huffed, not unkindly, that gentleness still in her eyes, “If you’d just tell me everything already–.”

  I interrupted her with a finger across her lips, cutting of her words. “Hush. Do you want to hear this or not?”

  Elizabeth just cocked an eyebrow at me, looking up expectantly and despite the pain in my chest at the memories I let out a wry laugh. She made every moment, even the hard ones, that much more bearable.

  “My father was a proud man,” I said slowly, not sure where to start or how much to say. How much to give away, “He could never admit that he was wrong about anything, and as much as I hate to admit it, he rarely was wrong. He wasn’t kind, but he was fair. Always fair.”

  It hurt to talk about it, to say the words out loud after so long, but I knew I had to go on. I couldn’t stop now.

  “Since the day I was born I knew that one day I would take over the family business. I was groomed for the job before I could walk. I was taught how to lead. How to make the hard choices. To be ruthless when I needed to be. But always fair. Just like my father. Duty, responsibility, and above all family. He taught me that.”

  I drew in a deep breath as my eyes closed, remembering. Jesus, I had been so young. So naïve.

  “But when I turned eighteen I started to get reckless. A little wild. My father knew that I needed something. The job, it felt like a weight around my shoulders, drowning me.” I let the breath I’d drawn in out in a slow, steady exhale but it
didn’t sooth me. It didn’t take away the feeling of guilt that still burned in my gut.

  “I convinced my father to let me have a year. One year where I could be free. See the world. Experience some semblance of normally before I had to sacrifice everything. That’s how I had felt about it at the time. A burden I could never put down.”

  I looked down at Elizabeth, waiting for her to say something, to interrupt, but she just stared up at me, patient and waiting. It made it a little easier to go on.

  “So, I picked a university and enrolled the next week. I started classes, had my own apartment. For the first time in my life, I could make my own decisions. I could be selfish. Think about myself without have to think about the famiglia first.” I let out a harsh laugh but there was little humor in it, “It was just supposed a little time off, to explore, to learn. But then…”

  “You met me.”

  “Yes, tesoro. I met you. And you…you changed me. For the better.” I paused, not sure what else to say but I knew I needed to tell the whole truth. She deserved that. Fuck, she deserved so much more than that, but this was all I could give her.

  “I fell in love with you. That was never part of the plan.”

  “Oh, Aiden.”

  “Hush. Let me finish.” I swept her pale locks behind her ear, looking away from the raw emotion shining in her dove gray eyes.

  “I had the ring picked out and everything. I was planning on calling my father and telling him to find someone else to take over. I wanted to ask you to marry me, to leave my old life behind because I wanted a new one, with you.”

  I shook my head, thinking of how stupid I’d been. How naïve to think that I could ever have a normal life, a normal family. Love. That had never been my fate. I knew that now.

  “I had the ring in my pocket when I got a phone call. My father had been killed and the famiglia needed me. There was no one else, and I was out of time.” My heart stuttered as I remembered that terrible night.

  “I knew then that I had to put duty and responsibility first. And above all, family.” I repeated the all too familiar mantra that my father had branded into my brain.

  Elizabeth was quiet for so long I wondered if she’d fallen asleep, but then her softly spoken question reached me.

  “That’s why you left me?”

  “That’s why I had to leave.” I answered as gently as I could. But when she looked back up at me, the expression on her face was anything but gentle.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you call or write or…or send a carrier pigeon? Something? I would have understood.”

  “I thought it would be easier for you…no, that’s a lie and you wanted the truth, right?” I let out a long breath. “I knew if I saw you again, I would never be able to leave. And I had to leave. After my father’s death…I had a duty to fulfil. No one else could do it. There was only me.”

  “I do understand, Aiden.” She said somberly after a moment. “I really do.”

  “You do?” I was surprised at her easy answer, and relieved that she didn’t question me or blow up about how things had ended between us a decade before. But that relief was short lived.

  “I understand that you had to be with your family after your father was killed, but, Aiden…what is it, exactly? Your job? Why were you the only one?”

  Her gray eyes stared into mine, demanding answers and there was nowhere to run this time. No way to hide. I was fucked.

  * * *

  Beth

  I stared at him as the question rang softly in the air between us. I wasn’t going to let him distract me this time. I needed to know the answer. I had to know the truth. I could feel it in my gut. This was too important.

  I watched as a million emotions and thoughts flickered across his face almost too fast for me to keep up.

  There was consternation and worry, a little bit of panic and most surprising of all, there in the deepest, iciest part of his eyes, a vulnerability that I had never seen from him before, not even when we were younger and in love.

  I was still reeling from his words, but after a moment, his eyelids shuttered closed and when he opened them again, I was looking at a different man. A stranger.

  “I am the head of the Diorno family. We are in charge of most of the big shipments of weapons that travel in and out of the city. We don’t deal in drugs, we don’t deal in people.” He grimaced in disgust at that last, as if he couldn’t stand the thought and I wanted to laugh at the irony but I didn’t feel an ounce of humor.

  I still wasn’t even sure that I’d heard him correctly but there was no denying the razor sharp look in his gaze now. He was doing what I’d asked. He was telling me the truth. Only, it was a truth that I didn’t want to hear.

  My eyes grew wide as I sat up, his words slowly sinking in as I tried to make sense of it all.

  “You…are you saying that you are…the head of a mafia family?” I scoffed, trying to make it a joke but my voice just sounded weak and disbelieving.

  “Not a mafia family, Beth. The mafia family.” He drew in a deep breath, pushing ahead when all I wanted to do was scream at him to stop talking. But I was a scientist first, a researcher, and I needed the truth. All of it. I needed all the fact, even if I didn’t like that. That didn’t matter. I had to stay objective, I told myself, all the while my emotions were exploding like a fireworks display on the fourth of July inside me.

  It didn’t matter. My feelings didn’t matter. I had to force myself to believe that.

  “I control everything happens in my city. Even the other families defer to the Diorno’s.”

  “Oh my god.” I whispered, the shocked words falling from my suddenly numb lips. “Oh my god.” I got to my feet, struggling to get my clothes back on. I felt too vulnerable laying there naked with him. My panties were ruined. I didn’t even try those, just left the tattered scrap of lace on the floor where Aiden had threw it.

  “I slept with a mob boss,” I wasn’t even aware I was speaking as I pulled on my worn jeans and t-shirt. “I slept with a mob boss who sells weapons, who knows hitmen! The hitman that Leah was investigating.”

  I could feel panic start to set in again and suddenly Aiden was there, turning me around to face him. But it was like I was seeing two people, a double image. One was the caring, confident, alright egotistical and cocky, but kind hearted man that I knew and the other was a stranger. A dangerous stranger.

  “You understand now.” Aiden said softly, a sadness in his eyes that made me want to wrap my arms around him, until I remembered what he’d just told me. “You understand how dangerous this is for you. It’s not safe for you Beth. It’s not safe for you to keep investigating on your own. If Redman finds you…”

  He cut off the words, shaking his head but my own thoughts were still tumbling. “Listen, I want to set up a detail for you, with some of my men. They can keep you safe.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” I said on a harsh laugh, staring at him with wild eyes I knew but there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Alright, then I’ll do it. I’ll be your body guard while we search for answers about your sister.”

  I noticed he didn’t say ‘search for your sister’ but search for answers. He didn’t think she was still alive.

  My heart stuttered at the realization. In the deepest, darkest part of me I worried the same thing, but I couldn’t give in to that fear. If I did, I didn’t think I’d be able to go on. I had to have hope. I had to have something to cling to.

  “The last thing I need is you hulking around, scaring everybody away.”

  “That’s kind of the point of a body guard, Beth.” He said with a wry twist of his lips. Lips that I’d kiss. Lips that had tasted me, all of me. Lips that had ordered his men to do god knows what.

  “I…I have to go.” I muttered suddenly, “I don’t need a babysitter, Aiden. I need my sister.” And I need some space to think. I was more shaken by his admission than I could admit to myself, but I couldn’t think when he was around. He wa
s too big, too impressive, too all consuming, just…too much.

  “Where are you going?” Aiden demanded in that way he had that instantly had temper flaring inside me. How the hell did he always do that? Know exactly what to say to piss me off.

  “I’m going to work.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t really care what you think at the moment,” I saw the way he flinched at my sharp words and regret filled me for a moment. Right, regret. For getting snarky with a mob boss and hurting his feelings. I shook my head at the thought, but still my voice softened when I opened my mouth again, “Please, Aiden. I need some time. To think. To figure some things out.”

  “Three days.”

  “What?” I asked, tossing the question over my shoulder as I turned to leave.

  He answered in that soft as silk, dangerous as a knife in the dark voice of his, “Three days, Beth. If I don’t hear from you in three days I’m coming to find you.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. I couldn’t. My mouth was suddenly so dry I couldn’t have formed the words if I wanted to. With one last look at him, standing there looking so strong, and so, so alone, I turned and walked out.

  Chapter 12

  Beth

  My hands were shaking as I got in the cab. Hell, my whole body was shaking. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. I hated that. Objectively, I knew I should be able to control my body’s reactions, but when it came to Aiden Diorno, all the regular rules of my life flew right out of the window.

  I gave the cabbie the address and sat back, trying to make my mind go blank but my thoughts were so chaotic I couldn’t find the normal peace I found when trying to solve a puzzle. Normally, I could sink my teeth into a problem, focus so intently on it that anything I was feeling or dealing with would just disappear.