The Name of Honor

by Susan Fanetti

  “What do you mean, Giada?”

  “I mean it helps us if Tommy thinks we’re serious.”

  If his frown got any deeper, his face would cave in. “How?”

  “That scene downstairs? When Tommy came up on me?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m thinkin’ about, too, when I say I don’t see how him thinking we’re together is anything but dangerous.”

  “Is this room clean?” she asked before she got into details. She didn’t want any federal types listening in.

  He was offended. “Of course it is.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you. Better to ask than to wonder. Okay. My brother is both stupid and arrogant.” She paused to let him react, but he only continued frowning. “It’s a dangerous combination—”

  “It is.”

  Giada went on as if he hadn’t interrupted, but she smiled. That was the first sign that Angie could be convinced: he was seriously listening, considering, participating. “—but it can also be useful. Tommy doesn’t see things as they are. He sees them as he wishes them to be. He sees himself as a king and the world as his to rule. When facts and reality get in his way, he simply bends his perception around them, and believes they have bent to him. He doesn’t see obstacles, even as he’s slamming into them.”

  “In my observation, he sees them, and he blows them up. What he doesn’t see is all the innocents in the blast area.”

  “Okay, fair point. But that’s when people who don’t understand him get in his way. The trick is to let him think the obstacle is a boost.”

  Angie cocked his head. She had him on the hook.

  “You know that I’ve been cleaning up after my brother for a long time. His personal messes, and his business ones as well.”

  “Yeah. That’s why Nick’s ready to throw to you. You’d be a better don than he is. You already are. You’ve been running things already for years.”

  “Yes. But Tommy doesn’t know that.”

  “Please?”

  “Tommy thinks I’ve been at his beck and call. He thinks I do what I do because I’m subservient to him. You heard him tonight—he thinks he allows me to have what I have, when in truth, I make it possible for him to have what he has. Our father didn’t even give him a vote on the board of our company. Tommy thinks he’s powerful. He’s comfortable in his place at the top. He pays no attention to how he got there, or who’s holding him up, because he thinks he did it himself.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Do you want a drink? Do you want to sit down?”

  “No.” Both were distractions, which she didn’t want. He was interested, but still manifestly wary, and she didn’t want to give him a chance to make distance. She stepped closer, so there was only a handbreadth between them.

  Angie took in a deep breath. “Giada ...”

  “Tommy will see a personal involvement between us as something he can exploit.”

  A dry, not quite amused chuckle left Angie’s throat. “Okay, you’re not comin’ through, doll.”

  That fucking word. “Don’t call me doll.”

  He nodded. “Sorry. Habit.”

  A bad habit. But she accepted the apology with a nod to mirror his and avoided the distraction. “In my family, there’s a rule. It’s been the rule since the days of my grandfather. Married women can’t work.”

  “You mean ...”

  “I mean, if I’d ever married while my father was alive, he would have pushed me out of the company and given even that to Tommy. If I married now, Tommy would want to come for me, too.”

  “Is that even enforceable? I mean, legally. Your family’s kept everything separate, on the surface. On that side of your business, the legality should matter.”

  “As long as Tommy is head of the family, I don’t have the pull I need to change it. But that’s not the point. The point is, if Tommy sees me attached to you, he won’t see me gathering power. He will see me giving it away. He’ll think he has a chance to take the company from me. And he’ll see the potential of a marriage between his sister and a Pagano leader to his advantage as don. He’ll think he can use me.”

  Angie pulled his hands from his pockets and wiped them roughly over his face. “Merda. It’s too fucking late in the day for all this scheming. Are you saying you want to get married?”

  That he’d leapt so far ahead surprised her, and she almost took a step back. “God no! No. Just appear to get close enough to be considering it. If Tommy thinks that’s happening, he’ll sit smugly back. He might even make it easier, because he’ll want to encourage us. He won’t see anything coming when I take him down, even if I run straight at him. I’ll have plenty of room to make my move.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Nobody knows my brother like I do. He will think he’s being clever and I’m being stupid, because that’s what he always thinks. And I told you: I’ve made a living out of convincing people that what I want is what they want. I’m sure. At least sure enough to know it’s well worth the risk.” She took the last step and set her hands on his chest. He sucked in a sharp breath. “So what do you say, Angelo? Do you want to be my fake boyfriend? Check yes or no.”

  As she asked, she slipped her hands under his shirt, onto his skin—which was hot and firm and smooth, with a texture like the finest-grain sandpaper, and she was distracted after all. “You shave your chest?”

  The sound he made was part chuckle, part groan. “I get waxed. Almost everywhere.”

  “Really!”

  “I’m a hundred-percent Sicilian, Giada. If I didn’t wax, I’d have to take cover during bear season so I didn’t get shot.”

  She laughed, and he finally really smiled.

  As she trailed her hands over his skin, she said, “I like it. I can feel all the curves and edges of your muscles. You’ve got a great body, Angelo.”

  With a groan loud and rough enough to be a growl, he caught her hands and held them away. “Hey, hold up. I’m not sure this idea’s a good one. I need to run it by my don, for one thing. And even if this is the play, we don’t have to fuck to make it look like we are. You can sit down, and we can have a drink or two. Then you can go back to your room.”

  “Like I’m some half-hour whore?”

  “No! That’s not—no. Jesus, no.” He looked over her head, at the room. “We could—fuck, I don’t know.”

  She wanted an actual relationship with him. A marriage? Probably not, no matter how well they got along. Certainly not while it could ruin her. But when she took a seat at the Council, she wanted the Paganos tied to her as an ally she could always trust.

  Whether Angie interested her or not hadn’t much mattered, but it turned out that he did interest her. She was attracted to him, and she knew damn well he was attracted to her. At a few points during the reception, most keenly during that moment outside the ladies’ room, she’d had tangible physical evidence of her appeal to him.

  “Is it that you don’t want to fuck me?”

  “It’s not that. You’re beautiful. A man’d have to be gay or related to you not to want to fuck you. It’s just—it’s complicated. This whole idea is complicated. A Sacco woman and a Pagano man—that ripples out a ways. Into the Council. Way beyond what Nick meant to do with this game tonight.”

  “Only if it were real. If it’s not real, everything settles when Tommy’s out.”

  “When Tommy’s out and a woman takes his seat, you mean. Giada, nothing settles then. That’s an earthquake. But I’m thinking more about what it says about loyalty right now.”

  “You’re worried about Nick.”

  “He’s my don.”

  “He’s also part of this. We’ll tell him the plan has changed, that we’re going to be together more, and it’s for show.”

  He considered that for a moment. His eyes shifted from hers, and he stared into middle space, working it out. He brought his gaze back. “Let’s say Nick agrees with you, and we make a show of this. We don’t have to really fuck, though. We don’t have an
audience right now.”

  True. But she wanted to fuck him. And she wanted him to want it. “Don’t you like to fuck, Angelo?”

  A smile fought its way into a corner of his mouth. “’Course I do.”

  “So do I. Have you ever been in love?”

  He shook his head.

  “Neither have I. Have you ever wanted to be in love?”

  Another head shake. “No.”

  “Then why wouldn’t we fuck? We’re two healthy people who live in the same world. We have a lot in common. We know the stakes. We’re attracted to each other. We like sex. We’re not interested in love. We’re going to spend a lot of time together—and not with anyone else, in case that needs to be said. We need to be seen to be exclusive. So why not fuck each other?”

  Something she’d said in that little speech had finally landed him; she’d seen the epiphany break over him like he was clearing the surface of deep water. She’d convinced him.

  And yet he hesitated. He stood right before her, regarding her steadily, obviously persuaded, but wouldn’t move. His hands hung straight from shoulders square and rigid.

  Giada was close enough to feel his interest pressing against her, so she closed the deal, and slid her hand down his contoured belly and into his trousers and underwear—boxer briefs.

  When she took hold of his girth, he grunted, and his hips spasmed—and then he went still, like he was waiting for something. Damn, this man was a challenge. She had not expected so much willpower from a renowned horndog like Angelo Corti.

  Still holding his gaze—his eyes had regained their wary aspect since she’d grabbed his cock—Giada let her fingers examine what they held. Hard. Thick. Long enough to trail into the leg of his underwear—and oh, to peek out a bit from the hem. Nice. When she trilled her fingers lightly over his tip, his hips twitched again.

  She smiled. “Oh, I definitely want to fuck. Don’t you want to fuck, Angelo?”

  He sighed—a long, deep breath that ended with a soft groan. “Yeah.”

  His hands came up. He cupped them around her face—finally!—and bent down. Giada pulled her hand out of his pants, rose onto her toes, and met him halfway as she hooked her arms around his neck.

  Their first kiss was heavy and hot right from the start—no tentative searching, no coy seduction. Angie’s mouth came down open and hungry, and Giada met it the same. It was a clash more than a kiss. But it was good. His mouth—that slash of an upper lip, the fuller bottom—fit perfectly with hers, and he tasted of expensive scotch. When she closed her lips over his bottom lip and sucked, he rumbled a growl and pushed her to the wall.

  While his sinewy tongue probed her mouth, and hers twisted around it, he tore at the tie of her silk robe. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. The raised sleek of a thick scar on his arm caught a slice of her attention, but before she could consider it, he had her robe open, was shoving down her silk tap pants, and going for his zipper.

  Oh, absolutely not. He was not going to fuck her against the wall with his cock poking through his fly. Not the first time, not even in this ‘fake’ situation. She was not a whore, and she would not be treated like one.

  She yanked her mouth from his and pushed on his chest. His shirt was tangled at his elbows, and he looked a little ridiculous now, staring down at her, panting and confused, his arms bound to his sides by his shirt. His left shoulder was covered with a tattoo, over the ball of the joint and onto his arm: the head of a lion, rendered in black and grey, in minute, nearly lifelike detail.

  “Giada?”

  In addition to the thick slice across his right biceps, there was a scar on his chest, near his shoulder—the ruched crater of a bullet wound—and another, longer, more surgical scar under his ribs. Giada thought of the hit on Quiet Cove last summer, an attack so explosive their world had thought the Paganos might never recover from it—and that specifically Nick Pagano might never recover. The other families had shifted restlessly, watching, seeking the moment a void might open in Rhode Island.

  But Nick had rebounded, and so had his organization, and his town. He’d not only recovered, and repaired, but retaliated. Just a few weeks ago, they had destroyed their enemy in the war that had brought chaos to the little town Nick called home and protected as such. There was no void, no weakness to be exploited. Nick had made his family strong again, maybe stronger than ever.

  Angie had been shot in that hit on Quiet Cove, protecting his don. Giada brushed her fingertips over the marks of his recovery. They were still a bit pinkish; they were only months old.

  He’d also been the one who’d led the final charge against the Ukrainian bratva, erasing them on their own turf. This was a man of honor. A protector with a fierce heart. Maybe that was the reason for the lion.

  When their father had been killed in a similar war, Tommy had stepped into his place immediately—and then made peace with the men who’d killed him. They did business together to this day.

  “Giada?” he asked again, lifting her hands from his chest. “Changing your mind?”

  She brought her gaze to his. “No. But not against the wall. In bed.”

  He smiled—not a cocky grin or a sarcastic smirk, just a smile. “You got it.” He shrugged his arms from his shirt and let it fall. And then he grasped her waist and picked her up.

  Giada didn’t like to be carried. She didn’t find it sexy. Mainly, it made her uncomfortable—too much trust required, more than she was willing to give. But if she complained again, she could derail this night completely, so she set her hands on his shoulders and went along for the ride.

  He set her on the bed and stepped back to shed his clothes. Giada slipped out of hers, too, dropping her robe, camisole and pants to the floor beside the bed. Her little slides had fallen off when he’d picked her up.

  When he was naked, she took in the sight of him. Broad and strong. He hadn’t lied—he was hairless everywhere but a neatly trimmed black patch on his pubic bone. Even his balls were bare. He looked like a bronze statue—an erotic one; his cock jutted out like a construction beam.

  “You’re gorgeous, G,” he muttered.

  She smiled and raised her arms. “So are you. Get down here.”

  He settled on the bed beside her, propped on his elbow to lean over her. His crucifix dangled between them.

  Giada found herself feeling a little awkward; it wasn’t often she was in bed with someone she had any expectation of seeing again, unless it was an escort, like Tristan, whom she was paying. There was a dance to be done. With an escort, or a one-night stand, she choreographed. But Angie was a typical Italian-American man from their traditional Italian-American world. He’d want to lead.

  She couldn’t let him.

  His hand went to her breast, cupped it, plumped it, brushed over her nipple with his thumb, coaxed it high and taut. His eyes left her face to watch his hand, and hers followed. It was a good hand, broad and long-fingered, the nails blunt and even with the tips of his fingers, the palm firm but not rough. It was his right hand, and he wore a ring, a carved onyx set in gold.

  “There’s silicone in here,” he said.

  Giada almost flinched, but caught herself before she did. The only man who’d ever commented on her augmentation was Tristan, who’d known about it at the time of the surgery and whose expert eyes she’d trusted for critique. She didn’t like lying here on her back while this man, whom she’d seduced rather than paid, had the gall to remark on it, and she hated waiting to see if he’d have something unkind to say. Men loved the look of augmented breasts but swore they wanted ‘real’ ones. As if hers were somehow imaginary now.

  She’d had the surgery for herself, to look the way she wanted to look, and she hated this lash of vulnerability she felt.

  “Yes” was all she said.

  His eyes came to hers. “It’s beautiful work. I don’t see the scars at all. They look good enough to eat.” Proving his point, he ducked his head and drew a nipple into his mouth, firmly, and began
a rhythmic sucking, pulling her flesh against his teeth.

  A sudden, intense charge of pleasure pushed a cry from her throat—a feral, needy, high-pitched note. She wrapped her arms around his head and held him in place.

  As he suckled her, his hand left her breast and skimmed down her side, to her thigh. He pulled her legs apart and shifted over her, still suckling, now moving to her other breast and paying it the same attention.

  His mouth felt good—felt brilliant, in fact—and arousal sizzled and swirled through her blood, but he was already positioning himself to push in.

  That was disappointing. She was hoping to get off, but she couldn’t get off that way, and no doubt he’d consider the event complete as soon as he was finished. This was why she stuck with professionals, or men she could boss around. She wasn’t used to caring if she offended the man she was with by telling him what to do.

  Her passive silence unsettled her, but she didn’t know how he’d take direction. Right now, she was rethinking the whole plan.

  He released her nipple and rose up. “Do I need a condom?”

  “Assuming you’re as healthy as I am, no. I had my tubes tied years ago.”

  A frown creased his brow. “You did?”

  Nothing was going as she’d hoped. Now, while he lay on her, between her legs, his cock resting on her pubic bone, they were going to discuss her decision not to have children? More potential for censure and critique? Now?

  “Yes.” Again, she didn’t bother with more answer than that. If he made a fuss, she’d knee him in his waxed balls.

  “I never wanted kids, either. I don’t mind playing Uncle Ange, but I like being able to leave them behind when they start whining.”

  That was the second time in a matter of minutes he’d surprised her with a good response. A not-Neanderthal response. Giada wanted to stop talking before her luck broke. “Ange—shut up and fuck me.”

  He laughed. “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned back and got hold of himself.

  She was really hot for him, but there was no way his cock, beautiful as it was, was going to make her come. She’d never had a vaginal orgasm in her life. And if she lay beneath him, in this position, and just got fucked, her head would go to some dark places. If they were going to spend time together, that couldn’t happen.