She tipped her head into his touch, let him take its weight, and that simple movement, not even a gesture, sent a lightning bolt from his hand into his chest.
“I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Fuck. What was it about this woman that he couldn’t keep his priorities in line when he was around her? She made him stupid. She made him weak. She made him fucking disloyal.
He needed to make her leave right now. Right now. If that meet in Foxborough this afternoon had done nothing else, it had warned Angie how close he was to the edge of a cliff with Nick. Donnie had said as much, afterward. Telling Nick about his night with Giada first thing the next morning had not been enough. Fucking her at all, knowing Nick didn’t want him to, was a betrayal.
And not even Donnie believed there was nothing more between him and Giada. He’d denied it repeatedly, and each time Donnie had simply looked at him like he didn’t know how to help him.
They’d had one night, and had no contact since. But Nick and Donnie were both waiting for him to make another mistake with her.
And here she fucking was. With blood on her face. And it was all he could do not to kiss her.
She was just a chick. What was wrong with him?
“What happened, Giada?” No—he needed to make her leave, not ask questions that would delay her exit. And he needed to get his hand off her.
“I did it. I killed him.” Her eyes flared, and she sucked in a sharp breath. “I killed my brother.”
Holy shit.
He dropped his hand. “Gimme your keys.”
“What? Why?”
“Because there’s a fucking bright red Maserati parked in front of my house, and I only know one person who drives one. I need to get you in my garage. Your keys. Gimme.”
She frowned. “Are you being watched?”
“No. But this is Quiet Cove, not Boston, and your little race car stands out. Your keys. Please.”
They were still in her hand. She gave them over.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
Leaving her standing in his front hall, Angie went to the garage, opened the overhead, trotted through and across his lawn, scanning the surroundings like he was on a job. He got into her car—she was several inches shorter than he, and sitting behind the wheel practically put his knees up around his ears—and pulled her into the space beside his Hellcat.
Fuck and damn, he hoped nobody of note had clocked Giada Sacco driving through the Cove tonight. Because anyone of note would have known that car for its owner, and guessed where she was headed.
Back inside, Giada had moved. The woman was not good at following directions. She stood in his living room, examining the family photos arrayed across the old upright piano, as they’d been all his life. He hadn’t taken much from his family home, but he’d taken those photos and that piano. He’d been the only one to stick lessons out for more than a year.
“Do you play?” she asked, brushing her fingers over the closed fallboard.
“Some. My mom played. She taught us kids.”
A smile pushed her cheek—the one with the blood smear—up, and she met his eyes. “Music and dance lessons. Your mother was a romantic.”
“Yeah, she was.” He felt that fucking pull again, an almost irrepressible urge to get closer to her, put his hands on her. His mouth. But he couldn’t. Everything he’d ever wanted in his life, everything he had, hung in the balance.
“Giada, you gotta tell me why you’re here. Are you hurt? In trouble? What?”
And if so, why was it him she’d come to?
“I ... I need to understand what happened at that meet this afternoon. I have to know Nick’s got my back.”
That was exactly the thing Nick was concerned about—that Giada would use Angie to get intel on him.
Stunned, Angie stumbled a few steps back, as if clearing her blast area. “Are you fucking nuts? You came to me, to my house, at ten o’clock at night, to ask me to rat out my don? You need to get out. Now.”
He lunged forward again and grabbed for her arm, but she yanked it back. “No! That’s not—” He grabbed for her again, and she spun gracefully and went to the middle of the room. “Angie, stop. That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s exactly what you’re asking.” Rather than chase her around the room, he stopped and crossed his arms. “And here’s the thing, Giada: I wouldn’t have an answer even if I wanted to give it. This afternoon was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. Do you understand what that means?”
She did, at once. “My God. Nick’s icing you out.”
The words hurt to hear, even from a third party. Angie didn’t respond.
“Because of us? Because we spent one night together?”
“Because he thinks there’s something between us, and he’s worried you’d use me to get to him. And here you fucking are, asking me to explain him to you.”
A kind of shadow went through her eyes, and Angie gleaned new insight in that dark flash. “That was your plan, wasn’t it? You thought I’d be your stooge.” As insight flowered into anger—and hurt, too—he stepped back again, this time toward the front hall, to usher her out. “Yeah, you need to go.”
Still she didn’t move. She’d shaped her features into a guilty look, but he didn’t believe it. Not now. She was just another chick thinking she could trap him with her pussy. Well, he’d been immune to that all his life.
“Angie, no. That’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I want.”
“No? You’re just straight out trying to ruin my life and get me killed, then?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?” That sickening twist of anger and hurt flared like a fever, and Angie lunged forward again. This time, he got hold of her, and clamped her arms in his hands. He slammed her to him and snarled down into her face. “Why the fuck are you here?
Crushed to his chest, she glared up at him, answering his anger with her own. “I don’t know! It wasn’t to ask about Nick. I said that because it was top of mind, and I don’t have another answer for why I’m here. But I know exactly what that meet was about. It’s why I moved on Tommy now.”
She wedged her hands between them and shoved at him, but Angie didn’t budge. “I killed my brother tonight! I stood in front of all his capos and called him a coward, and I pushed his buttons until he came for me, and then I killed him. I never killed anyone before. And I feel nothing! He’s dead, I killed him, and I don’t feel it! I killed my brother, I stepped over his body, and I got in my car and I drove here. And I’m here because ... I don’t know! Because I want to feel something.”
Angie kissed her.
When he thought of it during the moments of existential crisis that would pepper his near future, he’d think of her agitation, of the tension in her body, of the sheen in her eyes and the break in her voice, and the way her surge of emotion seemed to piss her off and scare her at the same time. He’d try to tell himself that he meant to comfort her. She was a woman in distress, and he was only comforting her.
But the truth he felt right now, as his mouth covered hers, would never let that lie take root. He was on fire for her, and that was the reason he was doing this crazy thing. His mouth claimed hers, his tongue plunged in, and his body blazed with need and want.
He released Giada’s arms to hold her properly, and she coiled her arms around his neck at once, bending backward into his embrace, forming her body to the shape of his. She sighed, and he caught the sweetness of it on his tongue.
Fuck, what he was laying down for this.
That thought, of everything he had, the life he’d made for himself, the life he loved, the man he’d become, hanging in the balance against his insane, out-of-nowhere desire for this woman—a woman, just a woman—pushed through, made a firebreak, and he pulled back. Not much; all he could manage was to turn his mouth from hers and rest against her cheek. Her scattered breaths brushed over his jawline; her heaving breast swelled and shran
k against his hold.
“What are we doing? I can’t fucking do this.” The voice didn’t sound like his own; it was too desperate, too confounded.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Giada’s fingers brushed through his hair, and over the evening stubble of his cheek; the scrape was audible, like a whisper of static between them. He had to shave twice a day to keep his beard down, and he’d been surprised by their trip to Foxborough, so he’d never gotten around to the second shave.
She didn’t move to get free of his embrace, and he didn’t move to release her.
“Angelo,” she murmured.
She’d called him by his full name again and again that night in New York, and the sound of it at his ear now went straight through his already aching cock.
“I can’t,” he said again. But still couldn’t move.
Her thumb brushed over his bottom lip, and he opened his eyes. She gazed up at him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He was good at reading people. He understood when they were outright lying, when they were telling the whole truth, when they were trying to tell enough truths to keep their secrets, when they were lying with the truth. He knew what to look for, all the tells.
He believed her.
At some point, Nick had been where Angie was now, with a woman who changed everything. Donnie, too. A moment that shifted all their ideas of the future, stretched them out to make room for someone else. A moment they hadn’t seen coming, a woman they hadn’t seen coming. They’d made reckless decisions, too, bringing innocent women into their bloody world. Bev Pagano had been horribly hurt because Nick loved her and his enemies had sought to hurt him by hurting her.
Maybe Angie was capable of love after all, but not with an innocent. With a woman who was one of them. An ally, with her own power, who understood what their life was, what the dangers were.
How could that be wrong?
He would never betray Nick. Not ever, for anyone—and he believed Giada wouldn’t ask him to. If he was wrong, and she did, he’d know what to do. Because he’d never betray his don.
And God, he wanted this. What he felt was new, bigger and more dangerous than he understood. If it was love, or if it was the thing love grew from, so be it. He wanted it.
“I won’t ever betray Nick,” he said now, filling the words with the resolve of truth.
“I’ll never ask you to.”
“You already have.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean it to be that. It was a mistake.”
“This is a betrayal.” Try as he might, he couldn’t shake that truth, the one that gave the lie to everything else: in Nick’s mind, this was a betrayal.
“Why?”
Still frozen at the brink of another kiss, of far more than a kiss, Angie pondered that question. Why was this a betrayal? When had he ever indicated that he was anything less than entirely and wholeheartedly a Pagano man? Why couldn’t Nick trust him with this, with her?
“I don’t know,” he answered and jumped off the edge. He kissed her again.
Once he’d given in, he couldn’t stop. In New York, she’d wanted to be loved in bed, she’d wanted control, she’d wanted lavish attention. Now, Angie pawed at her clothes, yanking her leather jacket off her shoulders and down her arms, throwing it away, tearing at her silk blouse, the zipper of her wool skirt.
But she was in the same frenzy, fumbling with him to rid herself of all those gorgeous clothes, tugging at his t-shirt, at the waistband of his sweatpants.
All the while, their mouths clashed, their tongues and teeth and breath colliding, their sex sounds filling the room. She was a moaner, and each one ended on a high note like surprise.
When Giada kicked off her shoes and suddenly dropped several inches in height, the kiss broke, and for a second, they stopped, gasping, and stared at each other. Giada wore only her underwear—a beautiful matched set of silk and lace in a pink so light it was like a blush.
Angie was still as fully dressed as he had been, in t-shirt and sweats, though more stretched and rumpled. He snatched them both off and tossed them away. Now he stood naked before her.
Her gaze slid from his face, down his body, and her hand followed, skimming around his neck, hooking for a moment on the chain of his crucifix, then continuing downward, over his chest, his belly, taking the measure of every scar.
It was like her fingers were on fire. She left a trail of flame behind so hot Angie felt marked. When she wrapped her hand around his shaft, it felt so good it hurt, and he grunted and flinched at the pain and the pleasure.
That frenzy took him over again and he grabbed her, lifted her off her feet, and took them both down to the carpet.
Again, she was with him, matching his intensity with her own, not holding him off or looking for control. He tore her panties down and away, hearing a rip but not caring, hooked her leg around his waist, found her pussy—ah God, so hot and soft, already throbbing.
“Sei tutta bagnata!” he groaned and shoved himself in. She cried out, arching her back like a dancer.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, this was good. This was a woman who was as safe with him as she was anywhere—who was safer with him. The rush of that knowledge was as potent as his desire for the woman herself. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Angie heard himself chanting that word out loud. He bunched his body over hers and filled his mouth with a lace-covered breast while he chased a rocking rhythm. She cried out again, called his name, called “Angelo!” and curled her fingers in his hair, holding him to her. Her hips slammed with his, countering his thrusts, deepening each surge.
God, it felt so good to fuck her. The pleasure filled his whole body, swelled his chest until it ached. He’d never known anything like this before, and he’d had some wicked wild sex in his life.
She wanted multiple stimulation, and he wasn’t so far gone he couldn’t give her what she wanted, but the way she writhed inside his hold, he had almost all he could handle, and his brain was leaving the station. He had one hand on her ass, trying to hold her enough to maintain his tempo. Shifting that hand, he slid his fingers into the cleft of her ass, found the taut skin of her anus, so slick with her juices, and pushed a finger in.
Her body froze at once.
Fuck, he’d made a wrong move. She was too classy for ass play; of course she was. Angie removed his finger and released her breast. Lifting his head, he saw her staring at him, but both their emotions were tangled and hazy just now, and he couldn’t read what he saw.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “I like it—I just didn’t ... I only—” She paused and calmed her breathing. “I really like it.”
“Yeah?” Smiling, relieved and delighted, he pushed his finger in again and watched her pupils, already wide with lust, dilate until her pale eyes were nearly black. “Ti piace cosi?”
She bit sexily down on her bottom lip as she nodded and twisted her hips. His cock kicked inside her, looking for more.
He hooked his finger a little around her rim, gave it a gentle tug. The sound that burst from her pretty mouth then nearly set him off. “Ah fuck, Giada. Sei spettacolare.”
“Fammi venire!”
He’d been with other Italian American women, but none who knew the language of their heritage as well as he. He’d been with women in Italy, who spoke it far better than he, but they’d been professionals, and he didn’t chitchat with hookers.
Since the passings of his parents, he hardly spoke Italian except for business.
Speaking that language now, in these dirty, frantic whispers, and hearing it back from this woman in the same timbre of lust, added gasoline to the blaze between them. “Lo farò, belladonna. Ti farò venire tutta la notte.”
He bent again to take her breast into his mouth, flexed his finger inside her beautiful tight ass, rocked his cock in her sleek pussy, and fell into the pleasure of making this spectacular woman come as hard as he had ever made a woman come. All night long.
~oOo~
Ang
ie woke with a start and opened his eyes in a dark room. He was in his bed, and alone.
Fuck.
Sitting up, he grabbed his phone off the nightstand and checked the time. Not yet two—he could only have been asleep half an hour, forty-five minutes at the most.
He switched on the lamp and blinked the glare from his eyes. The first thing he saw was Giada’s pretty pink bra, draped over the swirled-glass pillar on his tall dresser. It was just a knickknack, an art piece he’d picked up at a little glassworker’s studio in town that had gone bust long ago, but he’d bought it for his mom one Christmas, and she’d kept it dear the rest of her life.
He wondered what she’d think of Giada’s bra hanging by its silky strap around her favorite of his gifts, or how it had gotten there, tossed by his hand as he’d finally gotten her to his bed, after they’d fucked their way up the stairs.
He wondered what she’d think of Giada.
Setting that nowhere thought aside, he focused on his relief that she was apparently still in the house. But not in his bathroom, or at least not the master, the open door of which he was looking at right now.
He got up, looked around for his clothes, remembered they were on the living room floor, pulled a fresh pair of sweatpants from a drawer, yanked them on, and went hunting for the woman who was free range in his house.
He found her downstairs, in his kitchen, staring out the window over his sink. She wore his t-shirt, and the sight of that, with her tousled hair and sleek bare legs, hardened his cock yet again. Damn, this woman had not only repaired his equipment issues, she’d upgraded him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d fucked a woman five times in one night—hell, in like four hours—and he could go again right now.
He was going to be fifty in a few weeks, but middle age could fuck right the hell off. He was young and vigorous, and had boner number six of the night to prove it. He was virile as a goddamn teenager.
“Hey,” he said, and leaned against the wall at the entry to the room.
She spun, surprised, and he saw she had her phone in her hand. “Hi. Hi.”
The Name of Honor Page 16