by Mae Doyle
She flushes, her cheeks bright with anger, but I don’t stop. Now that I know what she’s feeling, I don’t want to let her slip away from me. She could leave my house or go back to bed, but the two of us need to talk this out.
And then fuck it out.
“You’ve never been with someone like me, and you’re not sure what’s going to happen. You hate it because you want it so badly. Tell me I’m right.”
“What do you mean someone like you?” She spits back, and I sigh, running my hand through my hair.
“Dangerous. Who will kill for you. Who wants you so badly that you can feel it in every cell of your body. Someone like me who knows how to make you scream and where to touch you to make you come. Admit it, Lucia, you’ve never been with someone like me and you’re afraid of what that means. You’re afraid of something new and different.”
She’s breathing hard, and even though she pulled the blanket back up around her body, I can see her chest heaving. “But I don’t want you. You’re wrong.”
“I’m never wrong.” Reaching out, I grab her waist and pull her towards me. Her skin is hot through the blanket and I slip my hand inside the flap of it, stroking between her thighs before she can pull back. Just like I thought – she’s hot and dripping wet.
She can tell me all she wants that she doesn’t really want me, but her body is giving her away.
“Stop that,” she cries, taking a step back, but I walk with her, sinking my fingers into her pussy up to my knuckles. She sucks in a hard breath and her eyes close for a moment as she enjoys the pleasure of having my hand in her.
“You want me,” I tell her. “You’re afraid, but you don’t have to be. I’m going to marry you, Lucia, and I’ll keep you safe. Nobody else on this earth can do as good a job as I will. I’m the only one who can make sure that nobody hurts you again, but you have to trust me.”
As I talk, I keep stroking her inside. She’s soaking my hand now, and I can feel her legs starting to tremble. My thumb is on her clit, swirling it while my fingers plunge into her.
Her muscles tighten around them to the point that I couldn’t pull them out of her if I wanted to. I don’t ever want to be outside my girl. My cock, my fingers, my tongue…some part of me needs to be in her.
Fucking her.
Claiming her as my own.
“Enzo,” she whispers, and reaches back to grab onto the counter, throwing her head back. The blanket she’s wrapped around herself is forgotten and it slips to the floor, putting her gorgeous tight body on display for me.
Fuck. My cock throbs in me as I finger her, thrusting and stroking inside of her to make her feel good. To give her what she deserves.
To show her that she belongs to me.
“I…I, Enzo,” she mews, suddenly reaching up and clawing at me. I wrap my free arm around her to support her as she shakes and comes, her body tensing and then finally relaxing in my arms. She puts her head on my chest, panting hard as she tries to catch her breath.
“Lucia,” I murmur, dropping my nose to her head so that I can smell her hair, “I love you. You’re mine. I’m going to keep you safe, but you have to let me.”
For a moment, she’s still on my chest, but then she pulls away before quickly bending down to pick up the sheet.
“I don’t know if I can,” she says, and turns to leave the kitchen, but I’m not done with her yet.
Chapter 15
Lucia
“You don’t know if you can? What the hell does that mean, Lucia?” Enzo’s voice stops me in my tracks even though I know that I should just keep on walking. Get out of here. Leave the house, leave him, fuck – leave the whole damn town.
Just get the hell out of dodge so that I don’t have to worry about dealing with him. With the Torenti family and all of the bullshit that that brings.
Okay – so I don’t have to deal with my feelings for him.
It’s complicated, alright? He’s the most dangerous man that I’ve ever met besides my uncle, and certainly the hottest and most attractive guy I’ve ever been near. I feel like I can’t control my body or my brain when I’m around him and that I’m always making stupid fucking mistakes.
The problem is that my body is going to get addicted to the orgasms he gives me if I’m not careful. As much as I’m going to want to pull away from him, I’m not going to be able to.
Once I give in to him – really give in to him – then I have a feeling that I’m never going to be able to tear free. That’s the thing that my dad never wanted from me. He wanted me to be safe and as far away from the Torenti family as possible, and here I am, sleeping with them.
Well, not them, exactly. But he might as well be.
“It means,” I say, turning around to face him and making sure to keep a tight fucking grip on my sheey so that we don’t have a repeat of what just happened in the kitchen, “that I’m not sure if I can trust you. My whole life, my parents told me not to trust the mafia, and what am I doing now? Fucking sleeping with one of them!”
I want to throw something. Not necessarily at him, because the dark look on his face tells me that that would be a serious fuck-up, but just at the wall. I want to scream and break something. I wish that he had neighbors, but we’re so far away from the next house that even if I started to scream, I don’t think that they could hear me.
My stomach drops. Fuck.
“Those same people you were told not to trust? They’re the very same people who kept me safe growing up. I’m happy that you have a perfect little nuclear family, Lucia, but not all of us were that lucky. The Torentis were there for me when my own parents couldn’t be, and now I’m trying to do right by them and take care of you. That’s it. That’s all it is.”
“What do you mean that they were there for you?”
He sighs and leans against the doorframe from the kitchen. When I see that he’s not going to chase me into the living room, I relax and sit down on the sofa. My legs still feel like jelly after he ripped that orgasm from me and it’s hard for me to stand up right now.
That, and as my adrenaline crashes, it’s really fucking hard to stand up. My body wants to curl up with him and get some rest, but my mind won’t shut the fuck up long enough for that to happen.
“My mom was a whore who didn’t want me.” His eyes narrow at me and I swallow hard, thinking about the comment I made about not wanting to be one of his whores.
“Enzo,” I say, but he holds up a hand.
“No, you want to know? You get it all, Lucia. She was a whore and gave me to my dad. He worked for your uncle and I spent a hell of a lot of time there when I was younger. Not as much time now, and I don’t always make it to Sunday family dinners, but that’s because I’m fucking slammed on Sunday with bets. I owe your family everything, Lucia. And I know that you think they’re the bad guys, but they’re not. In my story, they’re the heroes. You need to get over yourself and understand that they’re not the devils that your parents made them out to be.”
I can’t believe him, but the look on his face tells me that he’s telling me the truth. I just…I listened to my parents for years. They always told me to stay away from the Torentis – that we were family, but that it couldn’t go farther than that.
That they couldn’t be trusted.
That being around them would end up with me dead.
What if they were wrong?
If I am to believe Enzo, he is standing here in front of me because of my uncle, not in spite of him. I want to tell Enzo that I think I understand, but his phone chirps and he pulls it from his pocket.
He frowns, a dark expression sweeping across his face before he types out a fast reply.
“What is it?” I ask, without thinking about whether or not its my place or whether or not he’s going to answer me.
“I have business to attend to. You’ll stay here.” He slips his phone into his pocket and looks at me, sighing. “There will be cars with rookies in them. That’s how your cousin did it to make sure that his gir
l didn’t do something fucking stupid. Don’t leave the house, Lucia. Don’t make calls. Don’t try to burn the place down so that you’ll be rescued.”
My mouth is dry and I swallow hard. “Where are you going? Why can’t I come?”
“Because, Lucia,” he says, walking across the living room to call the dogs in from the yard. “You don’t want to be a part of this life, remember? You don’t want anything to do with the Torenti name.”
Mack and Frank come flying into the house and Enzo locks the door. I notice that he uses a key and then slips it into the pocket of his pants.
I also notice how his pants are snug on his cock. How I can see the muscles in his arms. How he looks like me like he wants to bend me over the sofa and fuck me.
“You’re locking me in?” If I keep staring at his body like this then I’m sure he’ll notice. “I’ll break a window.”
“You break a window, Lucia, and the guys out there looking for you will let me know. After they shoot you. Listen, sweetheart, I told Pops that I’d do everything possible to keep you safe, and I’m going to. That means that I can’t let you run around without protection. It means that until we make sure there’s no threat to you, you sit your ass down and watch some tv.”
He tosses me the remote and I reach and grab it without really thinking about it. “And the dogs? What if they have to go out? Am I going to get shot for opening the door for a dog to piss?”
Enzo laughs and I feel all of the muscles south of my navel tightening. “They’re fine until I get back. You just sit tight, sweetheart. Make yourself at home. Eat something. Shower. Fuck it, I don’t care what you do, but you stick that pretty little red head of yours out of the house and I’ll be putting you in a building’s foundation, you understand?”
Swallowing hard, I nod. I understand. I understand that Enzo and the rest of the Torenti family are completely insane. I thought that I felt some compassion for him a bit ago when he told me about his parents, but that was stupid on my part. It’s no wonder that my parents wanted me to stay as far away from them as possible.
There’s absolutely no way that I can be safe when I’m near them.
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” he says from across the room. He turns and his jacket lifts up a little as he reaches to get his keys and I see his gun strapped to his hip.
“Do you always wear that?” I blurt out. I shouldn’t care. I really shouldn’t give a shit if he always wears a gun or not, but I need to know if he’s going to go use it on someone.
For me.
“This?” He lightly runs his fingers along the gun and then smiles at me. “Of course I do, Lucia. How the hell else do you think that I’m going to run my business? Stay safe? Keep you safe?”
Oh. I swallow hard again and nod as he crosses the living room and then leaves, closing the door firmly behind him. He locks it from the outside, but I don’t move until I hear him back down the driveway.
Only then do I cross to the window and lift the curtain so that I can look out. “Be safe,” I whisper.
Fucking hell. Why do I care about that? The words are out of my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying. Scoffing to myself, I drop the curtain and turn to the kitchen.
He told me to make myself at home. If I can’t leave then I’m going to do just that, starting with whatever he has in the fridge.
Chapter 16
Enzo
By the time I pull into Pops’ driveway, it’s packed with cars. I knew that he was going to call everyone in to help with this, but I’m still a little surprised.
Lucia is his niece. His blood. They didn’t know each other as she grew up, but that wasn’t his fault, and now he’s doing everything that he can to protect her. I just hope that it’s enough, but looking around at all of the vehicles here, I have a pretty good feeling that it’s going to be.
Now she just needs to get over herself and allow her family to help her. If she would only listen. I shake my head and walk up to the front porch, letting myself in without knocking.
I’m family. Well, practically. Hopefully now Lucia sees that, although I have a feeling that it will take a lot more than our discussion this morning for her to finally understand what her family means to me and how much we all want to help her.
When I walk into the dining room, I nod at everyone. Roque and Arlo are in their seats by Pops. Johnny’s earned himself a seat at the table. Matty, Valentino, and Ricky are all at the end, all watching Pops to see how this meeting’s going to go.
I slip into my spot between Johnny and Arlo and grab the coffee at my seat. It’s a little cool for my liking, but I need something to help me prepare myself for the day that we’ve got coming up, and I need to somehow take my mind off of Lucia.
But holy hell, that’s hard. She’s fucking delicious, and the only place that I want to be right now is at my house, fucking her.
Yeah, that won’t ever happen if we can’t keep her safe. I told her that we’d do everything in our power to make sure that she wasn’t ever in danger, and now we have to do just that.
Last night may have cut the problem off at the head when we killed Giorgio and his fucking goons, but a solution always opens up more problems, and now we have to deal with those.
“You good?” Pops waits until I’m done with my coffee to ask me, and when I nod and put my mug down, he clears his throat.
“You all know what went down with Giorgio last night.” It’s not a question, but everyone around the table nods anyway. “Well, the shit hasn’t stopped there. He was a powerful man, with lots of connections all around the country. Hell, all around the world. We stirred the shit, gentlemen, and now it’s coming back to get us. People think that we’re weak right now, and we have to be at our strongest. The last thing that we need is for a family who has a beef with us to take a shot.”
He pauses, but nobody so much as moves. We all know that no matter what he tells us, we’re in it for the long haul. It doesn’t matter what kind of shit goes down or what the threat is. The Torentis are always there for each other.
Always.
No matter what. Torenti blood may not run through my veins, but it might as well. Just like Johnny, I’ve earned my seat at the table. Even if Lucia weren’t a Torenti, she matters to me, so she matters to them.
It’s as simple as that. That’s something that she doesn’t get about being part of the family. No matter what you’re up against, you’re not alone. It’s impressive that she thinks she can handle everything on her own, and amazing what she’s managed by herself, but she doesn’t have to do those things anymore. She has me.
She has us.
“What’s this mean for us?” Roque leans forward, his hands braced on the table. He’s always ready to handle any shit that the family gets into. “Are they coming for us? Do we need to call in some favors from some of our contacts?”
Pops shakes his head. “No, we don’t need to do that, not yet, anyway. They’re coming for us, yeah, but I don’t know how bad it will be. All I know is that we can handle it, just like we handled it last night, right?
Everyone around the table nods.
“What’s the first step?” Arlo’s ready for action. We all want to get this taken care of as quickly as possible so that we don’t tie up the whole weekend dealing with a feud. The sooner we put it to rest, the sooner we can all sink our cocks in some pussy.
“I’ve got some people finding out how credible the threat really is. They’re going to let me know how much action we need to take and if we need backup.” Pops stretches and cracks his back. “I know that it’s going to be an issue, but I honestly don’t know how much of a problem it’s going to be.”
Even as he talks us down, something isn’t sitting right with me. These assholes were willing to go into the courthouse in the middle of the day to kidnap Lucia. It’s great that we managed to put them in their place for a while, but it’s not going to be enough.
“They’re not going to stop,” I say, breaking the silence. Everyone
looks at me and I explain why I think that this is a bigger deal than we may want it to be. “I think that we need to prepare for the worst. Hope for the best, that sort of thing.”
Pops stares at me for a moment before nodding. “You may be right, Enzo. If they were willing to go that far to hurt Lucia, then they’re not going to stop until they think that they’ve managed to bring us to our knees.”
Before I can feel too good about the hard-earned praise from Pops, his phone goes off. It’s on the table and it buzzes, moving a few inches before he grabs it.
“What is it?” His words are clipped and his face is tight. Pops is pretty easy to read once you get to know him, and I know that everyone around the table is thinking the exact same thing that I am.
Something’s fucked.
“When?” Pops nods and gets up from his seat, the phone still pressed to his ear, the voice on the other end obviously pissing him off more and more. We all rise with him and pull our keys from our pockets. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know where we’re going or what we’re walking into.
Pops knows that when the family needs us, we’ll all follow.
We’re all on the driveway before he hangs up the phone with an angry jab and drops it into his pocket. “They hit the Claw and Crown,” he says, a muscle in his face twitching.
I sigh and run my hand through my hair. The Claw and Crown is our bar. It’s where we sometimes conduct business that involves other families and it brings in a nice bit of income for us. For someone to hit it sends a message that they’re pissed and that they’re coming for us.
“Who the fuck was it?” Valentino has his phone out and looks ready to make some calls, but Pops waves it away.
“Not sure yet. Obviously, it was an associate of Giorgio, the dead bastard. I’m going down there now to check out the damage.” He turns to me. “You’re with me, Enzo. The rest of you, work your contacts. Find out who the fuck it was. Let me know as soon as you get any intel so we can blast this motherfucker off of the planet.”