“Dominic!” she cried out.
“Are you my mate?”
“You bastard!”
“Are you?” he moved up, straddling her so she was trapped between his thighs and his cock rested on her pubic hair.
“Yes!” she choked out, and he grinned in triumph and moved his hips so the thick head of his cock nudged her entrance. He rammed into her tight tunnel, and she cried out. He was too big, he was stretching her, and she loved it.
He pumped into her hard, and fast, his breath harsh and guttural in her ear. Several times he paused, and she grabbed his butt cheeks with her hands and urged him on. He laughed quietly.
“Just need…oh God…to be sure that you want it as much as me…oh, you’re so fucking tight and wet for me, oh my God…”
And then the dam broke and the waves of pleasure washed over her in a tsunami of sensation, and she came hard, her muscles spasming and gripping his cock. His answering cry of pleasure sent a jolt of triumph through her and they were so tightly wrapped up in each other as they came that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
Chapter Twelve
Waking up to the smell of coffee and pancakes? Not the worst way to be greeted by a new day, Zoey mused, as she padded into the kitchen. She’d dressed in the extra set of clothes she carried in her messenger bag – jeans and t-shirt, her usual work uniform. Dominic was ridiculously sexy in plaid boxer shorts, flipping pancakes onto a plate, and he turned and smiled at her when she walked in.
She grabbed a coffee mug and poured a cup from the coffee pot, added some cream from the pitcher, and took a sip.
“You do make a mean cup of coffee,” she told him. “My friend Danielle would like you.”
“Danielle’s a woman, right?” That jealous tone was back.
“Is that a serious question?” she laughed.
“I don’t know. It could be French. Like, the French pronunciation of Daniel.” He set a stack fluffy pancakes in front of her. They were swimming in maple syrup.
“You do hear yourself, right?” She sipped deeply from her mug. “You’ve apparently dug into my background and my entire life. You should know by now, I’m a one-man-at-a-time kind of girl.” And she dove into her pancakes.
“And I’m that one man,” Dominic said firmly.
She winked at him. “For the time being.” She enjoyed his groan of frustration. He was really fun to torture.
“By the way, I meant to say, love the tattoo,” he said. “Right next to my mate-bite scar. ‘Love bites’? It’s like it was meant to be.”
“Huh,” she said. “Never thought of it that way.”
After breakfast, she got her phone out of her messenger bag and called the dispatch center to let them know she was available.
Dominic looked disappointed. pushed his chair back and strolled over to her, gathering her into his arms. “You could stay a little longer.”
It sounded so tempting…which was why she had to leave. She’d never meant to spend the night, wonderful as it had been. Yes, he was great at sex, and he made her feel really good about herself, and he was a gentleman in all things. He held doors open for her, he made sure she came first, and often, he brought her snacks in bed, he was all about her pleasure and comfort.
But she still felt as if he were a mystery wrapped in an enigma, as if she didn’t know him at all. And more important was the fact that the Blood Oath pack were still a criminal organization, and he was one of their highest ranking members.
So she needed to get out of here while she still had the will power to do so.
“I can’t. I need to give myself some extra time, I’m sensing obstacles.”
“Sensing…what? I thought you were a garden witch.” He looked puzzled.
Oops. Apparently he didn’t know everything about her – and she’d like to keep it that way. If he didn’t know about her map skills, that made it easier to hide from him. “Yep. Sure am. You are not wrong.” She tried to wriggle out of his arms. He tightened his grip.
“Talk to me.” She tried to duck, but now he had her caged too tightly. Her struggles were having an effect on him; she could feel that effect, pressing into her stomach. If this went on much longer, she’d lose all motivation to leave.
“I can wait all day,” he murmured into her hair.
She tipped her head back up and glared. “You are an absolute bastard!”
He smiled down at her. “I’m having fun. How about you?”
She replied with a scowl. “I’m going to be late.”
“What a shame.”
She let out a hiss of frustration. He was enjoying this way too much. “Fine! I’m also a map witch. Let go of me.”
He released her, looking puzzled. “What is that, exactly?”
“Because of my connection to the earth, I can find my way anywhere. I can also sense obstacles. I’m finding a lot more obstacles these days, so I need to build in extra time to get around town.”
“What kind of obstacles are you running into?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, my magic doesn’t tell me that. It could be a traffic jam, a rampaging troll, road construction…my magic just lets me know where things will either slow me down or stop me completely.”
He went tense. “That can’t be a coincidence. We have enemies. We’re in a feud with the Bianchi pack. They are strictly forbidden from interfering with females, but…I don’t trust them. Come stay with us. I can keep you safe.”
“Do I still have a choice?”
Dominic hesitated, before saying “yes,” with great reluctance.
“Then no. If I go stay with you, I’m afraid I’d never get to leave. And I still have a life, Dominic.”
“At the next full moon…”
She met his gaze coolly. “You underestimate my abilities, Dominic.”
His eyes snapped with dark possessiveness. “And you overestimate my patience.”
Before she could say anything else, she heard a knocking on the door. Dominic’s expression went sour with annoyance. “Damn it. Romano has the worst damn timing.” He stalked off to answer the door, just as her phone beeped with a text message. It was Danielle.
“R U boinking a Blood Oath Pack member???”
She hurried into the bathroom so she could speak in privacy, and called her friend. Danielle answered on the first thing.
“What the hell?” Danielle demanded.
“It’s complicated! Dominic Lombardi’s wolf bit me on a full moon. Apparently that means he thinks I’m his mate.”
“Then tell him you’re not!” Danielle sounded appalled.
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” Zoey said, annoyed. “He’s Blood Oath pack, Danielle, and he claimed me publicly, and apparently when their wolf bites you on a full moon, you’re theirs. It’s a thing.”
“You mean, you’re going with it?”
Was she? Zoey hesitated. “He’s… not what I thought I was.”
“Do you know why all the businesses have been closing up? I found out. Everyone’s talking about it. It’s The Blood Oath pack. The pack deliberately raised their protection fees so high that they couldn’t stay in business any more and lots of the business owners are just leaving the city so the Blood Oath pack can’t murder them. They’re having to go into hiding.”
Zoey felt an odd flare of protectiveness towards Dominic. Where had that come from?
“Come on, Danielle, that’s just rumors. We all thought that it was the Blood Oath pack behind the garbage problem, and it turned out that it was just a corrupt neighborhood liaison. And they took care of it. Why would they force businesses to shut down? Then they couldn’t collect money from them. That would hurt the pack, not help them.”
“Oh, I see. For months you’ve been trash-talking the Blood Oath pack. But now you’ve got a rich, powerful boyfriend, and you don’t need to live in our lousy neighborhood any more, so who cares what happens to us?” Danielle said bitterly. And before Zoey could answer, Danielle ha
d hung up.
Frustrated, Zoey stalked out of the bathroom. Romano was serving himself pancakes. Dominic was giving him extremely sour looks. He gave her a cheery wave.
“Romano. We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Zoey said snarkily.
“I know, I know, you guys didn’t have sex,” Romano said. He gave her an exaggerated wink.
She brushed him off with a hand wave.
“Dominic. What do you know about all the businesses closing in our neighborhoods? They pay protection money to the Blood Oath pack, right? So you must be keeping track of them?”
The warmth in his eyes vanished. It was as if a door had slammed shut in her face. “We don’t speak of pack business to non-pack members.”
She felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on her head. Who was this man? One minute he was inviting her in, opening himself up and letting her see little pieces of himself, making her feel as if she was special and magical, and the next, he was everything she’d hated and feared for months and months.
The other Dominic made her melt like butter on a hot sunny day. But this cold, hard stranger, standing in front of her? She would not be the mate, or the wife, of this man.
“I see,” she said tightly. “I see a lot. Things I really don’t want to see. Thanks for last night, it was…interesting.” He flinched when she said that. Good. She’d meant it to hurt.
Holding her messenger bag, she turned around and walked into the bedroom, shut and locked the door behind her.
“Zoey!” Dominic bellowed, his voice so loud the door shook.
She shot out the window and onto the fire escape just as he kicked the bedroom door in with a sound like a bomb going off.
Then she scrambled down the ladder and dropped to the ground and disappeared around the corner. She’d leave her bike at Sergio’s for now; she had another bike stashed in an empty warehouse in the warehouse district. And Dominic was about to find out how hard it was to track down a map witch who didn’t want to be found.
Chapter Thirteen
Arturo paced the floor, watching Giuliana on the computer screen on the wall across from him. Anger bubbled up inside him. She was lying to him again. She’d told him that she was at the mall, and yet there she was, halfway across town. She was actually in a good neighborhood, just driving around, apparently at random. That was the only reason he wasn’t dragging her back home right now.
That, and if he did so, he’d have to give up his secret – the fact that he had her bugged. And not just her cell phone, which of course she had guessed early on. Putting a bug on the earrings that had been left to her by her late mother was a low move, he knew, but it didn’t prick his conscience in the slightest.
He could have grabbed a strand of her hair from her hairbrush and used a tracking spell, but they weren’t as reliable. And he couldn’t afford any errors.
His niece was stubborn as hell, just like his sister Maria had been. His sister had chafed under his attempts to protect her. So he knew that no man was good enough for her – so what? He would have found a mate that he approved of, eventually. She should have just waited. Instead, she’d snuck out and gotten herself pregnant by one of his foot soldiers – who’d abandoned her and run for his life as soon as she found out that she was with cub.
Arturo had tracked him down, of course – quietly. Discretely. And fatally. There was no escaping Arturo’s wrath. And he’d threatened death to anyone who so much as looked at his pregnant, unwed sister askance. Of course, his sister knew what everyone was thinking – the mafia shifters were an old-fashioned bunch, and they were all silently judging her, and it hurt her deeply. But at least none of them spoke of it to her face.
With all that Arturo had done to keep her safe, nature had betrayed them in the end. She had a defective heart valve and died of heart failure – begging him to care for her infant daughter.
His niece had been the sweetest little girl – but then she’d grown up to be just like her mother. Independent, argumentative, and way too into taking risks. These days, Giuliana lied to him just for the sake of it. She did it often. She’d go to the mall, leave her cell phone hidden at a restaurant, to make it look as if she was still there – and then go head out and drive around town.
Oh, she’d always come home with bags full of the latest couture, but why did she have to sneak out like that? Just for the sheer joy of defying him.
He wished that Dominic was still available to marry Giuliana. He’d been shocked that she’d actually agreed to it, but also relieved.
He suspected that, with Dominic’s past, it was unlikely that Dominic would ever open his heart again. Dominic had erected an enormous wall around his heart, and he guarded it with a protective armor of cold indifference and cutting sarcasm. But Dominic would have fulfilled the duties of a good mate, he would have abandoned his life of one-night stands and devoted himself to Giuliana. Settled her down. Tamed her restlessness.
Before Arturo could make the announcement, though, the Bianchi pack had approached him, and proposed the mating between Fabiana and Dominic.
Arturo hadn’t been fooled for a minute – they’d be sending Fabiana in as a spy. He’d announced that he had to think about it as a way of stalling. He hadn’t told anyone that, even Dominic and Giuliana. And he’d been gratified to find out that Dominic would have accepted the mating with Fabiana if he’d been ordered to.
He stopped pacing and settled into the chair behind his desk. He couldn’t tolerate her defiance much longer. He could order his niece to marry someone else. He didn’t want to have to do that, but he was afraid that if he didn’t find a way of settling her down, she’d keep putting herself in more and more danger. What if, heaven forbid, she started dating someone from the Bianchi pack, just to get under his skin? Worse, what is she did that, and found herself with cub?
It was a shame Dominic was off the table now, due to his having moon-bitten that human. Of course, he did have some concerns about Dominic and what was going on in the territories that he’d been assigned. Ottavio was flat-out convinced that Dominic was skimming money. Granted, Ottavio, fanatically loyal to the pack, saw betrayal everywhere.
Arturo didn’t know what to think, these days. Dominic had not been able to track down a single one of the business owners who’d closed up shop and left town. Neither had Arturo, who had his own sources.
The ghoul attacks, the challenge from the Bianchi pack, the businessmen disappearing…everything seemed to be happening at once. It couldn’t be a coincidence – but try as he might, he couldn’t find a single common thread to the new threats that were cropping up on what felt like a daily basis now.
He glanced back at the computer screen that was tracking his niece’s progress and shook his head in confusion.
“What the hell is she doing there?”
*****
Zoey muttered curses under her breath as she glided to a stop in front of her building. It had taken twice as long as it should have to get here, because everywhere that she drove, obstacles popped up in front of her.
She’d come back here, reluctantly, because she needed to go pick up some clothes. She couldn’t afford to buy any new clothes, because funds were getting increasingly tight. She hadn’t gone to work at either the catering company, or the messenger service. She’d been laying low for an entire week now, hiding out from Dominic, crashing in an abandoned east side building and dumpster diving for food.
She also intended to make Danielle talk to her, whether Danielle wanted to or not, which was why she’d brought coffee with her.
And she’d grab some new books while she was in her apartment.
She stepped off her bicycle, trying to puzzle out what was different about her neighborhood. Then it hit her. The reek of garbage.
There was none.
The area smelled like a walk through a garden. The air was sweet and fresh.
Well, that was something. Feeling a little better, she went to Danielle’s apartment and rapped on the door
until Danielle answered. It was only noon, way before Danielle liked to wake up. Good.
When Danielle opened the door, she shoved the cup of coffee at her. Danielle took it and drank half of it without pausing to take a breath. Then she looked Zoey up and down.
“You look awful,” she observed. “I thought your new gangster boyfriend would pay for you to go to a salon and dress you in designer clothes. So, he’s not just a criminal, he’s a cheapskate?”
“Gee, I missed this.” Zoey flopped down on the couch. “I have been sleeping in an empty building over on the east side. I asked Dominic about what’s happening with the local businesses. He wouldn’t answer me. I left. I haven’t spoken to him since. I haven’t been able to go to work or stay in my apartment, because he’d be able to find me. And it’s not my fault that his damned wolf bit me on a full moon and now he thinks he’s stuck with me.”
Danielle took another sip of coffee. “Well. You did bring me caffeine,” she said grudgingly. “And I’m sorry that he makes you feel like he’s stuck with you. Sounds like a douche.”
Zoey sighed. “Ok, in fairness, he doesn’t really make me feel like he’s stuck with me. It’s more like it’s some kind of weird fate thing. According to him. He’s very flattering and he’s the only guy I’ve ever met who’s ever made me feel like an actual fairy princess. He’s just kind of a moody dick. And also, very stalker-y.”
“Like, sexy romantic rom-com stalkery, or annoying stalker-y?”
“Umm, well, I…”
“The first one, then,” Danielle observed drily. “He isn’t terrible to look at, I guess. For a criminal. So what are you going to do?”
“He’s got this idea that on the next full moon, he can claim me. I was thinking, maybe if that date comes and goes, he’s not allowed to claim me after all?”
Danielle just gave her a skeptical look and finished her coffee. “And when that inevitably fails?”
“Wow, I’ve really missed this!” At Danielle’s sour side-eye, Zoey laughed. “No, I really have. And I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. I’ve just decided to believe that it’ll work. Now, do you know if there are any Capo pack members upstairs in my apartment?”
Mated To The Capo (Mafia Shifters Book 1) Page 11