Under Her Skin

by Michelle Love

  The woman stepped forward, her eyes never leaving Hero’s face. “Hello, Hero,” she said, her Indian accent obvious. “I’m Priya. I’m your …”

  “Mother …” Hero finished. Her mother. Her biological mother.

  Priya hesitated before putting her hands on Hero’s arms. “Yes. I am so happy to meet you at last.”

  Hero couldn’t stop staring at her. She studied every aspect of her mother’s face, seeing every similarity, and every difference with her own. The shock of the sudden reunion was making her breathless.

  “Cara mia … are you all right?” Arturo put his arm around her, and she leaned into him, grateful for his presence.

  “I am … think I am … I just … hello,” she said in a rush, to Priya who smiled. “Hello … hello … hello ….” Hero couldn’t stop saying it until she burst into tears.

  Priya looked at Arturo, who smiled and nodded, gently steering Hero into her mother’s arms. Priya cradled her sobbing daughter’s head in her arms. “I’m sorry, my love. I’m sorry I had to give you up.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Hero managed to choke out. “I had the best life, the best … you did the right thing … I’m just so glad, so happy that I’ve finally met you.”

  Hero felt so overwhelmed that the rest of the day passed in a blur. Eventually, Arturo took her back to their hotel to decompress.

  They lay together, and Arturo stroked her face as she shook her head, disbelieving. “Four years ago … I lost my husband and my daughter. I had my parents and a bad relationship with Melly. Today … I got my mom back, I have the love of my life next to me, and two sets of parents who both want to be in my life.”

  Arturo smiled. “And Melly loves you.”

  “Well, that’s still up for debate.” Hero grinned, then laughed. “I can’t really get it into my head, but I have a huge freaking family.”

  “You sure do.”

  Hero turned to gaze at him. “And the best part, always, is you. Really, I mean it. With you I can go from one moment, experiencing the most erotic, kinky experiences to the next day the most wholesome, life-affirming, incredible family time. It’s you, Turo. You gave me life.”

  “I think you’ll find that’s your mother,” he joked, deflecting her compliment, but she shook her head. She placed her hands on his face, her eyes serious.

  “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody. Anybody, Arturo.” She took a long shaky breath in. “When I came to Como, I was broken. Completely broken. I just didn’t see a way out of the darkness. I bought the Patrizzi apartment, intending to spend time there drawing and reading and listening to music, until the day I plucked up enough courage to take a handful of pills and swim out to the middle of the lake and not come back.”

  Arturo rocked back at the thought. “No …”

  “Yes. I’m not proud of how cowardly that plan was. Even sleeping with you that first time. When you appeared behind me on the street, and you touched me … I thought, why the hell not? But then, the moment you were inside me, I knew there was light in the world. It felt like a rebirth being with you. Even when Peter was sticking that knife in me, and you were dying, I knew, somehow, we would make it.”

  Arturo’s eyes were still full of pain, so Hero went on. “Today was mind-blowing for me. And you and Mom and Dad and the Lamberts all did that for me. I can never pay you back, except for in one way … which is why I waited until tonight.”

  Arturo was confused as she got up from the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. As she walked back to him, she smiled. “I wasn’t sure, wasn’t convinced, but I got the hotel maid to find me one of these when we got back this evening. And I took it while you in the shower earlier.”

  She handed Arturo a white plastic stick. “Don’t worry, I rinsed the pee off.” She giggled at his bemused expression.

  He blinked and stared at the stick. Two bright blue lines. It took a minute for him to process what they meant, then he looked up, his face breaking into the widest smile. “Really?”

  Hero chuckled. “Really. You’re going to be a Papa, Turo.”

  She screamed with laughter as he pulled her onto the bed and kissed her. “Remember this day, Turo … remember it …”

  “You think I’ll ever forget this moment, piccolo? Never, never …” and he kissed her until she was breathless and giggling.

  Seven months later …

  “I’d tell you to push, but I don’t want to get smacked again,” Arturo said ruefully as Hero yelled out her pain.

  She shook her head and grabbed his hand. “No jokes. This hurts like a motherfucker …” She bore down again, growling wildly as she pushed, and the doctor called out.

  “Good, Hero, good … one last hard push. Ready? Three … two … one … push!”

  Hero screamed like a banshee but then felt her child’s head emerge from her, then the rest of the baby slid out. She started to cry as the baby did, and as Arturo helped her settle, they brought the baby to them.

  “Congratulations, Signore, Signora … it’s a boy.”

  Arturo kissed Hero’s head then his son’s, his tears covering both of them. “He’s perfect, he’s perfect … you’re perfect, thank you, thank you …” He couldn’t stop kissing Hero.

  She was smiling through her tears. “Look at him, Turo. He looks just like you …”

  Indeed, their son already had a covering of dark brown hair, and when he opened his eyes, his eyes were a startling green like his father’s.

  Hero looked up at her husband. “We did it, Turo.”

  “We did it, piccolo.”

  And they cradled their son and knew the future was bright and full of love.

  The End.

  Free Gift

  Subscribe to Michelle Love’s Newsletter

  and get one FREE romance story, exclusive to my Subscribers only.

  Dance With Me

  Click here to get your copy!

  Spending her first Christmas away from her family, Juno Sasse finds that while her day job as a music teacher at the Gabriella Renaud Foundation is fulfilling, she feels a little isolated, with nearly all of her friends coupled up. Spending the holidays with her friends Livia and Nox, she bonds with a young singer, Ebony, and the two become good friends. When Juno reveals a lifetime dream of learning to dance, Ebony introduces her to her older brother, Obadiah, one of New Orleans’s finest dance tutors. Their working relationship is soon complicated by a growing attraction between the two of them and when Obe asks Juno to be his partner at an important dance competition, Juno has to put aside her innate shyness and step up to the challenge…

  Click here to get your copy!

  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/q8c11f9r16

  No Promises

  A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance

  English grad student Anoushka ‘Noosh’ Taylor is working as a junior reporter for a successful New York City radio network under the mentorship of her heroine, Allison Monroe. On the cusp of producing her first big story, an exposé of New York’s BDSM club scene, Noosh is issued a challenge to go the extra mile and attend a club to see for herself. Summoning her courage, she finds herself caught up in a moment she can’t escape with a devastatingly handsome man, and after being humiliated by him, she leaves in tears, vowing never to return.

  Angry and hurt, Noosh drops the piece but cannot stop thinking about her almost lover.

  When they decide to do a piece on the most eligible bachelor in New York, Noosh is thrown into the path of Christofalo Montecito, playboy and son of organized crime boss, Fogliano Montecito. Christo is gorgeous, brooding, sensual – and the man who humiliated her at the BDSM club.

  Noosh reacts badly, but when Christo apologizes, she begins to see a different side of him. Soon, their mutual attraction grows, and Noosh finds herself falling for Christo – but can a son of a crime boss ever be reliable, trustworthy?

  When dark secrets from both of their pasts reveal themselves, Noosh and Christo have to decide whether their attraction is mor
e than just a casual thing, and discover just how far they will go to save it.

  Can Noosh give him the trust he has yet to earn? Or will Christo reveal himself to be his father’s son?

  Chapter One

  Long Island, New York

  Christofalo Montecito stared at his father in astonishment. He couldn’t be taking Christo’s news this easily. Nuh-uh, no way. “Dad, you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Fogliano Montecito gazed back at his son with the same brilliant green eyes he had bestowed on his only child. “Christo, do I look like an idiot? You want out of my business, that’s the crux of the matter, right?”

  Christo hesitated. “Right. Look, Dad, it’s not as if I haven’t mentioned this before, and I’m almost forty now, and it’s time. I’ve given you the last seventeen years, all my time after college.”

  “College that my business paid for.”

  Here we go. “Yes, Dad, and I’m grateful for it, don’t get me wrong. But I need to make my own way…and some aspects of the family business don’t sit easily with me.”

  Fogliano held up his hands. “Enough. Christo, you must do what you think is right, what is appropriate.” He sighed and pushed back from his desk, standing and clapping his son on the back. “Now, you’ll still be coming to the meal tonight?”

  Christo, still stunned, nodded. “Sure, Dad.”

  “Good. Now, I have to get back to work. You can see yourself out?”

  “Of course. See you later.”

  Christo nodded to his father’s personal assistant, Mandy, who simpered at him. Christo tried not to roll his eyes and instead gave her a polite smile. At thirty-eight, with his father’s Italian good looks and devastating smile, Christofalo Montecito had turned heads since he was a teenager. Wild dark curls, long, long legs and a body to die for meant that Christo had the pick of any women he wanted. And he took full advantage.

  Lately, though, the constant stream of ready women was tiresome. Where was the challenge, where was the fight? Christo was feeling jaded by his entire lifestyle. Rich beyond imagination, he had begun to crave a simpler life, with a partner he could settle down with. Someone who would challenge him hold her own against the shattering weight of his family’s reputation.

  The Montecitos were well known in New York as one of the biggest family businesses – and that business was crime. Corruption, drugs, murder – Fogliano Montecito’s reputation was feared by everyone, even his son. Christo had lost his mother to Fogliano’s devotion to his corporation. Ornella Montecito had leaped to her death from the roof of the family’s eighteen million dollar home in Sands Point, Long Island when Christo was seven years old, leaving her only son bewildered and broken. Christo had become an expert at shutting off his feelings after that, and after graduating summa cum laude from Harvard Law, he had passively gone straight to work for his father.

  Over the years, Christo had told himself that at least he, personally, was on the right side of the law, that he himself never oversaw anything that was technically illegal…but as he’d reached his late thirties, his conscience began to nag at him.

  And there was something else. Christo, like his mother, had an artist’s soul, and the more mired he got into practicing law, the more that side of him – and therefore his connection to his mother – faded. For the last couple of years he had been living a double life, and now that other life was the one he wanted to live. Hence the conversation with his father this morning.

  Christo took the glass elevator from the top of his father’s building down to the basement parking garage, and then slid into his Mercedes. He sighed, blowing out his cheeks, and dialed his best friend’s number.

  Bertie Franklin-Hart answered on the first ring. “Hey, dude, how’d it go?”

  “It went…well.” Christo knew Bertie would hear the astonishment in his voice, and by Bertie’s silence, he knew Bertie was feeling it too.

  “Well?” Total disbelief. Christo’s mouth hitched up in a smile.

  “Yup. Can you believe it?”

  Bertie let out a long breath. “Well, no, to be honest. What’s his game?”

  Bertie, who had been Christo’s roommate at Harvard, had no time for Christo’s father or his associates, and was the only one of Christo’s friends to say as much to his face. Bertie came from old money, older and even more powerful than the infamous Five Families and their successors. Bertie’s money dated all the way back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence – and no one fucked with Bertie’s family. No one.

  Bertie sighed. “Well, I guess you’re clear. Just, for me, take Fogliano’s word at face value for now, but don’t trust him, Christo.”

  “I know. But it’s the first step.”

  “I know you, Christo. You’ve got a glimpse of freedom, and you’ll run at it full tilt. I love that about you, brother, but as your best friend…well…I got your back.”

  “Don’t trust to hope.” Christo’s smile faded, although he knew Bertie was right. Fogliano wasn’t someone people left behind without consequence, not even his own son.

  “That’s what I’m saying, but at the same time, go for it.”

  Christo mulled over his words. “Okay. Look, the dinner tonight?”

  “I’ll come, of course I’ll come. I don’t suppose there will be any chance of some beautiful women to distract us?”

  Christo laughed. “No, it’s one of Dad’s sausage parties. But after…drinks at La Forge?”

  “Deal.”

  New York City

  Anoushka ‘Noosh’ Taylor shifted in her chair nervously as her boss, Allison, read through her proposal. Yes, it was her first big story, and yes, it was out there – even for a late-night radio talk show known for tackling dangerous subjects – but in her bones, Noosh knew Ally would go for it. It was the kind of story Allison Monroe had built her fearsome reputation on; a look into the BDSM clubs of New York’s subculture. Noosh had spent months researching and talking to people who worked the clubs, and now she had put together a fifteen-minute segment for the show – her first chance to be on air.

  Noosh had come to New York from London a year ago, straight from a doctorate in creative writing, and now she had cultivated an honest and friendly working relationship with one of New York’s major radio stars.

  Allison Monroe was known for her exacting methods, razor-sharp intellect, and her ability to convey her natural warmth and vivacity with her interviewees. She set the proposal down now and looked at Noosh over her spectacles. Noosh’s heart was pounding hard against her ribs; she couldn’t read her boss’s expression.

  Allison studied her young friend for a minute then took her spectacles off, laying them gently down on her desk. “Noosh…how old are you again?”

  Noosh felt her face redden. “Twenty-four.”

  “And I’m assuming you’re not a virgin?”

  The blush deepened. “No.”

  Allison sighed. “Sweetheart, while this proposal is well-written, obviously researched, and full of good intentions, it sounds like it was written by a virgin.”

  Noosh felt a lump settle on her chest. “Oh.”

  Allison smiled kindly at her. “I don’t mean to be rude, darling, but here’s my thing – there’s a sense of ‘Gosh, golly’ about it. And by that, I mean you’re painting this world as some kind of otherworldly experience that ordinary people don’t subscribe to. The people you’ve interviewed here – hookers, security guards, club owners…what about the clientele? And I have one more major question which overrides all that.”

  “Which is?” Noosh tried to stop her voice from croaking with distress but failed, and Allison got up and came to sit on the desk in front of her.

  “Noosh…did you actually go to the clubs?”

  “Yes, of course,” Noosh said defiantly. Don’t sulk, you’re not a teenager.

  Allison smiled. “I mean, at night, as a client?”

  Noosh was horrified. “No, of course not.”

  “See? How on earth can you e
xpect to convince our listeners you’re an expert on this subject if you yourself have no experience with the places? And Noosh, just so you know, BDSM is no longer a dirty little secret. With safety in mind, it can be a thrilling experience if that’s where your particular peccadillos find their home.” She sat back down behind her desk. “I’m not saying you have to go out and fuck a ton of men or get spanked by them, I’m just saying you should go, sit at the bar, have a drink and see what happens. Watch the interactions between people, talk to them. But don’t tell them you’re a journalist, for fuck’s sake. Pretend you’re the clientele for the night. You might surprise yourself.”

  Noosh’s face was burning. “So…”

  “So…keep working on it. There’s promise, but it’s not quite there yet.” Allison handed the proposal back to Noosh. “Darling, it’s coming along. I just think you need to go the extra mile. I’m pushing you because I believe in you. I believe you could be a rising star. I just want your debut to be as perfect as it should be.”

  Noosh was still thinking about Allison’s words as she took the train home to her studio apartment in Queens. The 7 train was crowded and sweaty, and by the time she opened the door and dropped her bag on her floor, Noosh was exhausted. Coming from London, she was used to the hassle and annoyance of the Tube, so the actual train journey didn’t bother her, just the amount of people. Then why did you move to one of the most crowded cities in the world?

  To disappear…

  Noosh pushed the thought away and stripped off her clothes. She thanked God she didn’t have to wear a suit to work, that her usual uniform of blue jeans, t-shirt and Chuck Taylor’s was accepted office attire. She didn’t own anything that could be described as formal wear, except for the ruby-red dress she had worn for her graduation. She loved that dress. It had been a gift from her parents – her parents who had loved and supported her throughout her education, cheered her on, and scraped together their money to buy the designer dress for her. Noosh had worked and paid for her degrees with loans and grants – her parents would never have been able to afford to pay for it themselves.