by Sam Mariano
It’s a real struggle to follow her lead. I don’t know if I should even let her try again; I know she’s not intentionally being a tease, but she’s on track to giving me the worst case of blue balls I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t want her to be worried about me, though. Not tonight. I want to drive her wild with pleasure tonight. I want to show her there’s absolutely nothing scary about what will happen between the two of us on a bed—or any other surface we happen to find sufficient. I can’t do any of that without actively participating though, and if I do, she might freak out again.
She’s calm right now, kissing me tenderly, periodically pulling back to watch my face as she works me with her hand. “You’re really wonderful, you know that?”
I give her a little smirk. “I tried to tell you.”
Rolling her eyes while smiling, she says, “You’re so full of yourself.”
“I’d like you to be full of me.”
I only mean it as a joke, but her smile wanes. “I’m sorry I’m such a weirdo.”
“You’re not,” I assure her. I really don’t want to talk about this right now. She’s not going to feel a whole lot better if I lose my erection while she’s giving me a hand job, but if she stirs my sympathies and reminds me of why she is like this, that’s bound to happen. So I choose the lesser of two evils, bringing my hand up to cup the back of her head and pulling her in for another kiss.
When I let her pull back, I tell her, “We have plenty of time for sex. I’m not in any hurry. Eventually you’re going to be comfortable enough with me to know there’s no part of you that needs to be hidden from me. When I remove your bra, your only thoughts will be of my mouth kissing, sucking and worshiping every single inch. When I take your panties off, the only thing you’ll feel is excitement, knowing I’m about to bury my face between those perfect thighs of yours and devour you until you’re writhing all over this bed, mindless with fucking pleasure. The only thing you need to be afraid of is possible dehydration—and I’ll make sure there’s a bottle of water on the bedside table to stave that off, too.”
Francesca smiles, her long lashes keeping her eyes hidden from me as she looks down. It’s too dark to tell, but I’m betting she’s flushed again. “You think of everything, don’t you?”
I want to respond, but she’s doing good work with her hand. My eyes drift shut, my head resting more heavily against the pillow. The sound of rustling bed sheets compels me to open my eyes and investigate, but by the time I do, she’s already disappearing under the sheets. A couple seconds later her mouth closes over my cock, and I’m gone. She takes me into the perfect, wet warmth of her mouth, and all I can do is fist my hands in the crisp white linen covering the bed and let Francesca suck my cock. My arousal’s been so up and down in the past half hour, my cock seems a little more desperate for release than is typical. Her magical lips help, too. She swirls her tongue around the tip, then wraps it around me like a lollipop. When she pulls back, the suction is fucking incredible and she doesn’t break it. I think I might have to marry her.
Now she’s getting into it, moaning as she takes me deeper. Christ, I can’t even focus. Or, I think I can’t focus, then she plunges deeper, taking my cock deep into her throat. She eases back and does it again, her tongue massaging my cock as it slides home.
“Holy fuck, Francesca.”
She does it again. And again. And again. I can’t take it anymore and before I can even warn her, I explode, pleasure surging through me so sharp and intense my vision gets a little foggy around the edges.
She emerges from under the blanket, flashing me a smile before curling up beside me, resting her hand on my torso. “Good?” she questions.
Chuckling a little, trying to gather my wits as I recover, I murmur, “Obviously. Sorry I didn’t warn you. I did not expect you to deep throat.”
She seems legitimately surprised. “No?”
My eyebrows rise and I look down at her. She’s frowning a little, like I’ve said something legitimately confusing. “Well, no.”
“Why?”
I don’t really know how to answer that. “Uh… well, you haven’t had many partners. Generally women don’t get into that with their first sexual experience. I guess I assumed Dead Man Walking was your only lover?”
Nodding a little as her hand skates absently across my chest, she says, “He was. That’s how he…” She pauses. “I just thought that was part of giving a standard blowjob. I have fancier skills than that, but you were too aroused and it’s easier to do when I’m on my knees. I would’ve done it earlier, but I thought we were going to have sex, so…”
I can’t even find any words to respond to this. My expectations of Francesca’s oral capabilities were so low, and the reality is so far in the opposite direction. From a purely selfish perspective, I couldn’t be happier about all this. But considering what she said earlier about needing alcohol to get through sex, basically, I’m hesitant to be too jubilant.
I also have no fucking idea how to ask about it. If any of the women I’ve ever been with before had any kind of sexually inflicted mental damage, they never told me about it. It would’ve been kinda weird if they did, all things considered, but this is Francesca. It’s probably a little unfair for all the women before her to think she’s the only one that matters, but, well, she is. The shift in my interest with her is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before, but it’s hit me so naturally I don’t even care to question it.
“Do you like doing it?” I finally ask.
At first I don’t think she’s going to answer me. She’s still tracing shapes on my chest with her finger, dragging her finger tip in little swirls. I want to put it in my mouth. I want her in my mouth, but I’m too unsure of her response to try it. As much as I want to give her back the pleasure she just gave me, this is maybe the first time in my life it’s seemed like that might not be welcome. I don’t want to set off her nerves again, so maybe I should just wait.
Finally Francesca answers me. “It’s stressful. It wasn’t especially easy to learn, because every time I would fuck it up he would get pissed off at me and just… jam it. I couldn’t breathe sometimes. Like, he pushed himself so far and intentionally cut off my oxygen as a consequence for fucking up, and it was always awful. I threw up once. Another time I couldn’t breathe for so long I thought I was going to die like that, and I thought, wow, what a humiliating way to go.” As she says this horrible fucking shit to me, she smiles wryly and shakes her head.
It’s hard to believe I was so relaxed just seconds ago, because now I’m so taut with anger that I feel like I’m going to snap.
“It was worse if I stopped though, so I just had to get good at it. I mean, it’s hard to actually know if you’re good at it, so you just have to pay attention to the feedback to know if you need to adjust. And even though I didn’t expect you’d get mad at me, I still kind of expect it mentally, so it’s stressful. It’s not your fault it’s stressful,” she says, glancing up at me. “It’s just how I was trained.”
And now the motherfucker has ruined blowjobs for me. I have a blowjob queen in my arms, and I can’t even fucking appreciate it.
I’m going to find out who this motherfucker is. If she won’t tell me, I’ll find out myself. And when I do, I’m going to fucking kill him—whether Mateo likes it or not.
Chapter Eleven
Waking up is never my favorite thing to do, but trying to convince myself to get out of bed when Francesca is curled up against me is literally impossible.
The conversation goes something like, “You know, you actually do have work to do today. So you actually do need to book tickets to fly your ass home, because if you don’t show up where you’re supposed to be this afternoon, you’re going to draw attention and your dad’s going to start wondering why all of a sudden you’re so fucking distracted. Then he might have one of his guys look into it, and it’s going to take all of a day for him to figure out you have something going on with a Morelli. From there, all Hell is
going to break loose. Get your lazy ass out of bed and circumvent certain disaster.”
But Francesca is comfortable. If I move, I’ll wake her up.
It’s a good enough reason for me to stay put.
I am in deep shit with this girl. I’m trying to tell myself it’s fine and I’ve got it under control, but I have a sinking feeling that I do not have it under control. For the first time in my adult life, my feelings have me under their control. Of course I couldn’t have surrendered to some romantic bullshit with a woman I could actually have. Of course not. I have to fall for the one who’s going to ruin my whole life.
Especially because I have to kill her ex. I mean, I have to find out who it is first, but then I have to kill him. Apparently her brother isn’t going to like that. I haven’t supported war with her brother because, frankly, he can probably crush us. We have the weight of tradition on our side, the fact that we’re the legitimate Mafia in this town; Mateo’s just some fourth-generation descendant of fucking psycho criminals. But that also means he makes his own rules. He innovates, where we remain traditional. His cover of business investor is actually legitimate enough that he can make friends in the right places, where we’re blatantly mob thugs.
Pissing Mateo off just isn’t a great idea. He’s a vicious, vengeful son of a bitch with no moral compass. It makes me sweat just thinking about crossing him, but what the fuck does she expect me to do? Just let this scumbag keep walking around, never having to pay for what he did to her? Unacceptable.
The list of impossible shit I need to do just keeps on growing.
Maybe I could talk to Adrian. I definitely can’t ask him point blank who her psycho ex is, because he’s too perceptive for that shit. But if I could find a way to bring it naturally into the conversation, maybe…
It couldn’t be Adrian, could it? I know they grew up together, but once he was old enough, he left. He did show back up out of nowhere a few years ago, though. I don’t know how he came to work for Mateo, only that he did. I’m not sure how old she was when she was involved with this guy, but that timeline might check out. Adrian is definitely capable of some sadistic shit, and I’ve never known him to be interested in women, so I could see him using one as a means to an end. He could’ve easily used Francesca to get back into Mateo’s good graces.
Fuck, I hope it’s not Adrian.
I can’t kill Adrian. Not unless I want to die myself. Mateo would take it as an insult if I killed any member of his crew, but if I killed Adrian, he wouldn’t rest until he had my severed head on a spike outside of his house. Mateo isn’t loyal to a lot of people, but we all know better than to fuck with his only friend. Assuming we even could—Adrian is extremely proficient, so he wouldn’t be an easy man to kill. He’s a little less guarded when he comes around to help me with this Willow stuff, but I’d have to attack like a real coward to take him down myself.
I try to shuffle back through any mention she’s made of Adrian. I wasn’t paying attention, but I don’t think she seemed especially tense when his name came up. I need to bring him up again, that way I can gauge her reaction. I don’t know what I’ll do if it is Adrian, but I need to know one way or the other.
“Do you always look this fierce in the morning?”
My gaze drifts to Francesca, instantly softening. Her hair’s a mess, there’s makeup smudged beneath her eyes, and she still looks half-asleep. Obviously I have to kiss her.
She loops her arm around my neck and kisses me back, but pulls back after a minute and covers her mouth. “I didn’t bring a tooth brush.”
“I think it’s going to be okay,” I say, as she moves out of my arms and nearly gets off the bed. Suddenly remembering she’s naked, she drags the sheet over and bundles it around herself.
“I’m gonna take a quick shower,” she tells me.
“I will embed that visual in my head for safe-keeping.”
She flicks a smile at me over her shoulder, then disappears inside the bathroom.
Luckily when I get to my phone, I see it’s early enough that I should be able to get back home before I miss anything. I’m going to be cutting it really close on my first stop, but I book us two tickets for a noon flight and grab a $12 bottle of water off the mini bar.
Francesca emerges a few minutes later. I take a quick shower myself, then we grab all our stuff and head out for a quick breakfast before we have to get to the airport.
“Breakfast food is the greatest,” Francesca states, stabbing a piece of pancake. She lifts it, watching as a stream of syrup drips off the soggy bite and onto the plate. She pops it into her mouth with an exaggerated, “Mmmm.”
A lazy grin steals across my face. “Watching you eat it, I’m inclined to agree.”
Her eyes widen. “Is breakfast food not your favorite?”
“I like breakfast food. I just like dinner food better.”
Francesca shakes her head. “Breakfast food all the way. Waffles. French toast. Bacon. Sausage. Hash browns. Warm, fluffy biscuits. Creamy sausage gravy. There are so many amazing choices.”
“The same can be said of dinner,” I point out. “Even more choices, frankly. And vegetables. If we always had breakfast, when would we ever get our vegetables?”
“We wouldn’t; we would get happiness instead.”
“We would get fat,” I inform her, taking a bite of my omelet.
“I can think of worse things. Like a world without breakfast.”
“See, mine would’ve been a world without you. Nice to see how I rate,” I joke.
Francesca laughs. “I guess you’re just more of a romantic than me.”
“I’m really not,” I say dryly. “I can see why you would believe that, but no.”
“You’ve never taken your previous girlfriends to the ballet?”
I snort, the idea is so ridiculous. “Never.”
“Or had semi-platonic sleepovers,” she adds, smiling as she cuts off another piece of pancake.
“Not even in high school.”
Her gaze moves from her plate to me as she chews, a look of contemplation on her face. “Be honest, what did you think of me that first time you saw me at the bakery?”
Now that I actually care about her, my initial interest in her sort of pisses me off. I won’t lie though. “I thought you had an incredible mouth and I wanted to know what kind of dirty things you could do with it.”
A little surprised laugh shoots out of her and she offers up a teasing smile. “Now you know.”
I don’t even want to go there. “What did you think of me?”
“I thought you were really attractive and I kind of hoped you’d come back. Until Adrian came in and told me who you actually were, then I just thought you were an asshole.”
I’m relieved that she gave me the opening I needed to bring him up. I keep it casual, but I watch her for any signs of distress. “What do you think of Adrian?”
Her brow furrows as she cuts off some more pancake. “Adrian? I don’t really think of Adrian. He eats his salad without dressing,” she says, as if just thinking of something. She points her fork at me, nodding. “That’s really weird. I mean, it has to be so dry.”
Smiling faintly, I ask, “You have dinner with Adrian enough to know his eating habits?”
“Of course. I sit right by him at dinner. I serve him on Sundays. He hates chocolate lava cake, too.”
Suddenly I’m less worried about him being her ex and more worried about why the hell she’s serving him his dinner. “Why do you serve him?”
“Because Mateo killed off all the other women. No Luciana, no Beth. I’m pretty much a one-woman show on Sundays. Alec dates, but he doesn’t bring them around Mateo. Everyone else is single right now, so I’m the token woman. The idea of Sunday dinner works a lot better when there are more of us, but for now I play maid on Sundays.”
“Does Adrian ever date? I’ve never actually seen him with a woman.”
Slanting me a funny look, she says, “Why, you wanna date him?”
I roll my eyes. “He’s not my type.”
“Why so curious?”
I shrug nonchalantly, taking a sip of my orange juice. I watch her, but not obviously. “Ever think about dating him?”
Francesca shakes her head. “Not really. He has a major crush on our maid. He wouldn’t go for me, and like I said, dangerous men aren’t really my type either.”
This is all very reassuring. Adrian isn’t the guy who fucked her up.
“Why all the sudden interest in Adrian?” she asks again, her gaze locked on me.
I understand her being a little cautious that I’m asking about her brother’s main guy, but I still don’t fucking like it. I want all her loyalty for myself; fuck her brother. I offer up an explanation anyway though, to set her mind at ease. “Adrian’s been helping me out with something on the side. I was a little leery at first, but it seems like he just wants to help.”
Now she frowns. “He’s helping you with something? Does my brother know?”
I shrug. “Not sure. It doesn’t seem like he knows. It’s nothing he should care about.”
“Well, what is it?”
She’s still frowning. I take a drink of my orange juice and take my time answering. “I have a half-sister; I think I mentioned her, Willow? We’re not close, but something really bad was done to her. She was kidnapped, dragged right out of her house in the middle of the night and stashed in a house rumored to be run by your brother’s crew. Delmonico, specifically. You asked how I knew of him, well, this is how he got on my radar. Supposedly he had a crew abduct Willow to strike out at my dad. It went pretty bad for her. She was treated like anyone else who gets mixed up in that shit would be treated.” Francesca’s already pale. I don’t think I have to explain what exactly that entails. “Anyway, she got out. One of the guys on the crew was working with the police so the operation got busted. The girls all made it out okay, but if you haven’t noticed, I don’t take too kindly to people fucking with the women in my family, whether we’re close or not. To make matters worse, a video was made of my sister being mistreated. People sent it around. It got sent to me. So I decided to step in and figure out what the fuck happened and then, you know, handle it. That’s how I ended up at your bakery, actually. I went to your brother directly to see if he really was responsible for what happened to Willow.”