The Beauty and the Brawler

by Winter, Nikki

  “You two,” he said, heading for the front door. “Up and out.”

  Both heads jerked in his direction.

  “Wait...whaa?” the pair asked in unison.

  “Sammie is peacefully sleeping in what I would guess is the first time in weeks. I don’t need the bellowing to recommence,” Luciano continued, swinging open the door. “Because I’ll call your mother.” He pointed to Nyssa, who looked utterly horrified, then to Sansone. “And I’ll simply stab you in the face multiple times before sending your soul on to your master Beelzebub.” Then he gestured to the hallway. “Out.”

  There was a lot of angry muttering before they did as they were told.

  “I’ll call you later, Nyssa,” Luciano called after Samara’s sister.

  Sansone stopped, staring at him expectantly.

  “The fuck do you want?” Luciano barked.

  “No phone call for your brother, you prick?” Sansone barked back.

  “The fuck am I calling you for? Your name Samara? You carrying my perfect, angelic seed? I don’t think so.” He slammed the door in his sibling’s face. A few seconds later he reopened it, and said sibling was still standing there. “You gonna help me look for places on the Upper East Side?”

  Sansone took out his phone. “How many rooms?”

  “Four. I’m gonna need to hide from my pregnant girlfriend at some point.”

  “Oh...she’s your girlfriend now,” his brother said in a drawn-out, sing-song tone.

  “Kiss my hairy Italian ass and find me a home for my family, man-whore.”

  “I feel so much love emanating from the two of you,” Nyssa stated, her sarcasm quite apparent.

  Sansone looked up from his phone. “Got three places listed. Emails sent. I want a pay raise, dickface.”

  “Why don’t you pay raise a pair of huge ba—”

  “And that’s where this conversation will be ending,” Nyssa cut in, grabbing Sansone’s arm and tugging him behind her. “You two...Jesus...”

  Luciano was still laughing when he closed and locked the door. That laughter died as he turned around to find something small and feline with its head cocked, staring at him with what could only be described as the eyes of Satan himself.

  “Okay, this is how it’s gonna go,” he said quietly. “You stay outta my way, and I won’t have you neutered and hemmed up in a cone for two weeks unable to do what most men wish they could.”

  The cat blinked then slinked away.

  Rolling his shoulders, Luciano headed for the kitchen. Both of his babies needed to eat. He’d be taking the initiative to make sure that happened. He had a game plan here. Feed her. Get her compliant. Lay down that law.

  Yeah, even he could admit only two of those would go over well.

  Chapter Seven

  “I’m sensing there’s something you wanna say to me, Sammie.”

  Samara raised her eyes from the food that had been unceremoniously placed before her the moment she’d wandered from her bedroom in a slightly sleep-drunk waddle after the scent of pancakes had reached through her partial coma and bitch slapped her awake. The one to place said pancakes before her? Oh, just the unnaturally large male, with the beefy yet surprisingly gentle hands, who was sitting across from her, eyes tracing her face. He was still here. Luciano was still here. He hadn’t gone screaming into the night or hitchhiked all the way to Vegas to become a showgirl in order to escape his past.

  He’d stayed...with her. Had even made pancakes—which were like proof that the good Lord himself had mercy on her soul, because she hadn’t gagged even once since forking in her first bite. But there was silence. A heavy, awkward silence that left Samara fidgeting, a knot in her throat and playing with her food like an anxious five-year-old. The only thing that kept her from bolting from the room was the fact she’d been watching Luciano and Manfred sneer at one another for the last twenty minutes, and she was afraid if she left them alone together, she’d be burying one of their bodies tonight…which one, she wasn’t sure.

  Not only that, but she had the distinct feeling some flimsy piece of wood—meaning her bedroom door—wasn’t going to stop Luciano any time soon. No, the man was obviously on a mission here. He’d proved that much already, hadn’t he? She’d slept all through the night, occasionally waking up to him behind her...spooning. It was foreign, the spooning. Even stranger was the way he always seemed to know when she opened her eyes. He’d rub her belly in soft circles, kiss the back of her neck, and tell her to go back to sleep.

  The first three times she’d taken exception to it until he murmured, “Would you rather talk about our forbidden, unrequited love instead?” Then she’d quickly closed her lids and did as she was told. Anything to keep him from riding the elephant in the room. Didn’t seem like that’d be working too much longer. When she’d gotten up this morning, he’d been moving gracefully around her unimpressive kitchen space, flipping pancakes and whistling, nothing on but his dark jeans, unzipped and leaving the top of his boxer briefs very visible.

  Samara shivered a little as she stared at the hard chest she’d been sleeping on most of the night, wondering how he’d managed to get her body to do something even she, the controller of said body, hadn’t accomplished. Utter insanity. What had begun to drive her a little crazy was the way he kept looking at her. It wasn’t impatience in his gaze or even annoyance. Just the opposite. The man stared at her like he had all the time in the world to be here, tending to her.

  She expected a lot, most of it wrong, but fixing pancakes weren’t on her list of things Luciano might do in light of the discovery of their love-child.

  “Sammie?” he prodded again, still as patient as ever.

  She finally set her fork down and leaned back in her chair, holding his gaze, deciding she wouldn’t look away. “You’re here,” Samara stated simply.

  His brows rose as he sipped from a coffee mug. “Where else would I be?”

  Shrugging, she answered, “A hotel room. One of the condos I’m sure you have for rent here...someplace getting smashed with Sansone...”

  He snorted. “Meanwhile you, my pregnant girlfriend, would be doing what exactly?”

  She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “Since when am I your girlfriend?”

  Luciano glanced down at the watch on his wrist. “Since about six years, eight hours, ten minutes and thirty-four...no, thirty-five seconds ago.”

  Samara sucked in a deep breath, lifted her braids from her neck, and decided maybe eye contact wasn’t such a good idea. “Funny, I wasn’t aware we were dating all those times I informed you I’d be removing your testes with a thumbtack and a melon baller.”

  She heard the smile in his voice when he replied, “I find that statement way too easy to pick up and run with.”

  Sighing, Samara sat back. “I’m not your girlfriend, Luc. Let’s be completely honest here.”

  “Oh, I am,” he stated adamantly. “The words may not have been spoken, but sweetheart, you were mine from day one.” His eyes caught hers again. “Stupidity will make you stop yourself from admitting when you really want something.”

  “You don’t really want me,” she argued. “You’re happy about the baby. You’ll look up a week from now and—”

  “Are you Luciano Vincent Antonelli? No. Then you can’t tell me what I think or feel.” He rolled that mug between his palms, obviously resisting the urge to squeeze it if the way his shoulders had tensed was any indication. “Don’t project your insecurities onto me.”

  Something boiled inside her. “My insecurities? Oh, fuck you, Luc. You have no idea—”

  He waved a hand toward the hallway to her bedroom. “Those tears didn’t come out of the clear blue sky. I’m smart enough to recognize relief when I see it. It was written on my mother’s face the first time I returned home after running away for a few hours. On my dad’s face when I showed him my acceptance letter into college and on my brother’s face when I finally decided I’d let the Sultanas adopt me.” Leaning forward, he
completed in a quiet voice, “You cried because you thought I’d be either resentful or angry with you. That’s not what you got from me, and the moment the realization hit that I called our baby mine, all that pent-up emotion you’ve been walking around with exploded. I may be an athlete, an asshole, sometimes irresponsible, but I’m. Not. Stupid.”

  Standing, he began to clean up. “You didn’t tell me the moment you found out because you were afraid of what my reaction would be—thought I’d disappear and you’d never see me again.” Turning toward her, he lifted his hands and motioned them as if to outline something. “Breaking news, Sammie. I’m here. Get the fuck over it.”

  “You don’t have the right—”

  “I have every right,” he interrupted in a soft tone. “I had the right the very second you got over whatever it was that kept you from sleeping with me all these years and made your way to my bed.” Folding his arms across his chest, Luciano gave her a hard stare. “The moment you let me touch you, taste you, know you—you gave me the right, sweetheart. Don’t you ever forget that. You want me to be angry about something? Fine. I’m angry about the fact that you seemed to have so little faith in my character. That you just assumed—”

  “Exactly what was I supposed to do?” She’d stood so quickly that her chair fell backwards, advancing on him. “I left you and—”

  “Right. You left me. Not the other way around.” He stepped toe-to-toe with her. “Did I run screaming into the night the moment I knew you were asleep? Did I completely ignore you for days after I woke up to find your side of the bed empty and cold? No. I fucking sat and wondered if you regretted the fact that you lowered yourself just long enough to see what my dick looked like.”

  “You calling me stuck up?”

  “I’m calling you scared.” His brows lowered. “We spent so much time playing cat and mouse because you want a certain kind of guy, Sammie.”

  Her brows winged. “Oh do I, now?”

  He nodded. “Yes. You never let me get anywhere near this.” Running his finger over where her heart lay, Luciano continued. “Because I frighten you.”

  “Oh this I just have to hear.” She motioned for him to finish, and he walked forward until he had her backed against the counter.

  “I frighten you because I’m not average. I’m not small-minded, weak-willed or easily controlled. I won’t let you run all over me, intimidate me. I won’t give you your way just because you bat your lashes and pout your lips in my direction.” He smirked. “I may want to but I won’t. You want a man who’s going to bend;who’ll fold like a house of cards, who’ll be at your beck and call when you snap your fingers.”

  Luciano leaned in and placed his mouth against the shell of her ear. “A man who’ll be forgettable, replaceable. Who won’t get in the way of your career. You don’t want a man who’ll make an impact because you know those shoes will be too big to get refilled should it ever be needed. You’re content with the lights being off and the missionary position coming into play. You’re content with rolling over and getting your eight hours of sleep, any orgasm you’ve had already pushed to the back of your head. See, you don’t want me because I can make you smolder on the spot with just one look. You don’t want me because when I kiss you—I mean really kiss you—everything else fails in comparison.”

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stay still, kept shifting from one foot to the other, trying to focus on anything but his voice, his scent.

  “You don’t want me because eventually we’ll get to the point where just my leaving the room for five minutes will leave you anxious. You don’t want me because I will have you in the middle of your interviews and meetings, wondering and questioning how quickly you can leave so I can be beside you again, making you smile, teasing you, listening to you and actually giving a damn about what you have to say. You don’t want me because you’re already halfway through everything I’ve said and it scares the ever-living shit out of you.” He kissed her temple and completed with, “But guess what? You may not want me but I want you. I’ll never have to push or force myself on you. You’ll come willingly. And I’ll have you. Over and over and over and over again. Until your voice is hoarse and your body’s sore. Until you get swollen enough with our child that every time he or shehears my voice they’ll kick and push, acknowledging, just like the rest of you, that they know who I am.”

  Luciano finally backed away, and she found herself desperately trying to figure out how she’d spend the next eighteen years of her life avoiding the feelings this man brought to the surface.

  He cocked his head. “You have a road trip in the morning and more sleep to catch up on. I’m going to run you a bath. Finish your pancakes.” With a slight tap on her ass, he walked away...whistling.

  Samara felt someone watching her and blinked over to her right to find Manfred standing there, staring.

  He mewled. His obvious thoughts along the lines of, “Bitches be in trouble...”

  She was really starting to hate her own cat...

  ***

  He could feel her watching him from the doorway. Just standing there...silent. That scared him. Why? Because if Samara was silent for too long it usually meant she was thinking back to the last place she’d dug a shallow grave and sizing you up to make sure you’d fit. Luciano chanced a glance over his shoulder and repressed the urge to call on the good Lord for protection. Yup. There she stood. Just staring.

  He didn’t know what reaction he’d expected to his monologue in the kitchen, but this was definitely not it. Luciano could read her facial expressions, even her body. Her thoughts? No. That was the one thing Samara had the power to withhold from him. Bravado. He was good at it—had built a career around it. Yet he wasn’t feeling like super champion Luciano “The Philly Brawler” Antonelli. Nah. At the moment he was feeling like that rejected kid sitting on the stairs of Trenton on adoption day, watching kids he’d grown up with wave goodbye as they were taken away by their new families.

  He felt like that rejected kid who stood on the sidelines at every school function watching other students with the slight hope that someone would come talk to him. He felt like that rejected kid who couldn’t get a girl to look past the messy hair and kicked-up sneakers to see he was just like any other guy—simply poor with a desire to be liked. He felt like that same rejected kid who recoiled the moment he realized Samara had snuck out of his bed like she was ashamed she’d ever laid down with him.

  Luciano didn’t know why, but her opinion of him mattered. Her hiding the fact she was pregnant danced on the edge of a lifetime of insecurities he’d managed to hide with a flashy smile, smart mouth, and large, powerful hands. But to tell her that would be to trust her with something he’d never trusted anyone with...including Sansone. He didn’t want to be rejected again, so he’d keep his mouth shut and do what was right.

  “I planned on telling you this weekend, you know.”

  He stiffened at the sound of her voice, expecting a but to follow. Instead of turning around, he found one of the expensive bath oils she kept in her bathroom cabinet and poured some into the tub, watching bubbles sprout up as he asked, “Is that right?”

  “You can take the disbelief out of your tone, Luc. I have the plane ticket to prove it.” She paused. “I wanted to announce it face-to-face. Saying it over the phone—”

  “—didn’t seem right,” he finished for her.

  “Yes.” Luciano could hear her pad closer on the tiled floor. “I wasn’t hiding it, but I wasn’t exactly ready to scream it from the rooftops, either. I needed it to sink in first, but you should know that I’d never purposely keep something like this from you. That’s not who I am. No matter the circumstances of our relationship, I wouldn’t take your right to be here away. I didn’t find out for sure until Saturday.” Samara sighed. “But part of what you said was right. I was afraid of how you’d react. Even if I was prepared to deal with the fallout. I just don’t want you believing I’m ashamed about anything that happened between us here.
And I’m damn sure not ashamed of this baby.”

  His hands had clenched so hard that the oil was spilling over the side of the bottle. She’d said everything he needed to hear, yet there was something missing from her little confession. “Do you want me?” He turned to see her eyes widen.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you want me.”

  Samara took a step backward. “What does that have to do with—”

  “Yes or no question, sweetheart.”

  “Luci—”

  “Still not getting an answer.” He’d backed her up into a corner like he’d done before, staring down at her. “I want an answer.”

  She looked over his shoulder, a muscle ticcing in her jaw. “You’re pushing me, Luc. I don’t like to be pushed.”

  “Excuse me while I play the world’s smallest violin and cry for Argentina,” he said dryly. “You don’t like to be pushed, and I don’t like dragonflies. Are we gonna keep stating useless facts, or are you going to answer my question?”

  Something sparked in her gaze when she turned it back to his own. “What do you want from me?”

  “You,” he answered simply. “All I want is you.”

  Her face softened a fraction. Her next question was whisper soft. “Why?”

  “Why not?” Luciano set down the bath oil and reached for the bottom of her T-shirt, tugging it gently. She let him, either too hypnotized by this moment like he was or too confused to protest. He lifted it above her head and tossed it toward the hallway before kneeling before her.

  He’d never say the words that’d bare everything, but he could let her in a little, right? Placing his cheek to her belly, he rested there, didn’t make a move. Then he spoke softly. “I could never regret this. I won’t ever regret this.” Luciano wasn’t sure if the words were for her or the baby…maybe both. Wasn’t like she was far enough along for the kid to actually hear him but he needed to say it anyway. He pressed a kiss just beneath her belly button, heard her suck in a huge breath as his palms ran down her sides, skimming just underneath the waistband of her shorts so he could push them down her thighs and off her legs completely. She kicked out of them as he traced the butterfly on her hip with his mouth.