Those last words left a bad taste in my mouth.
I didn’t care about Vinnie, but I’d never once gone against my father about anything. The five of us respected the hell out of him. He was our patriarch, a wise and principled man. In some ways, he may have been a little too much of a traditionalist for my taste. Overall, though, we obeyed him as our leader.
But regardless of how he and Vinnie would view this situation, it had nothing to do with the business between our families, nor between the five families.
This was just about me and Roxy.
“If you want me to stay away, Rox, then you tell me to. Say the words, but don’t use our fathers as a crutch.”
Her eyes flitted back and forth between mine. “I thought I already told you to yesterday at the church.”
Our gazes clashed, the air between our bodies crackling with a tense energy.
I slowly shook my head. “I wasn’t convinced.”
The train glided to a stop at the next station and unloaded the departing passengers. As bodies squeezed around and bumped into us, I didn’t take my eyes off of Roxy, nor did she from me. Something unspoken was passing between us, something that had started yesterday at that church.
But before I could act on it, a sea of passengers flooded the car and crowded around us. When I noticed they were all wearing black and white Brooklyn Nets gear, I realized we were at the Atlantic Avenue station, which was right next to the Barclays Center where the Nets played. And judging from the smiles, laughter, and fist-bumping going on, we had won tonight’s game.
I didn’t want more people around to intrude on this moment with Roxy.
On the plus side, the now-cramped space forced our bodies closer together.
And thank the sweet Lord above, we were close enough that her nipples were grazing my chest.
I nearly groaned out loud at the contact. Friction was exactly what my jutting erection was seeking—and with painful persistence. I did everything humanly possible to avoid lewdly poking her with it.
Then again…
Maybe I should show her exactly how much I wanted her. Maybe she’d like knowing the kind of effect she had on me. After all, I’d like to think the reason her nipples were so stiff was because of her proximity to me.
My eyes caught on the dimple in her bottom lip, and I couldn’t look away.
“Convince me, Rox.”
She sucked that lip between her teeth, biting down right over that dimple.
I felt my forehead break out into a cold sweat, even though it was a million degrees in this goddamn car.
“Convince you of what?” she asked in a breathy voice.
When her gaze dropped to my mouth, I about said to hell with everyone else and just took what I fucking wanted. What I fucking needed. And that was Roxy’s mouth moving beneath my own, her tongue sliding wantonly against mine.
Her expression said she wanted a kiss.
And I’d make sure it was the kiss of the goddamn century.
“Convince me that you want me to stay away from you.”
It was too loud in the car to hear her breathing, but I felt it on my neck. Her chest rose and fell against mine with those quickened breaths. Her thin bra was about to drive me insane. I could feel those distended peaks with her every inhale and exhale. I wondered for a moment what color they were, but I immediately discounted the thought. With her darker complexion, they’d have to be brown. Probably on the small side because her breasts were as well. But they were perfectly round and just high enough to create a healthy amount of cleavage in the right low-cut top.
I needed to feel more than just those nipples, so I moved in closer.
And kept moving until those mounds of flesh were crushed against my pecs.
She sucked in a sharp breath.
My eyes fell shut.
Do not fucking come right now, you moron.
I tipped my head back toward the ceiling for a few beats, breathing through my nose in order to calm myself down.
“How can I convince you if I can’t even convince myself?”
My eyes shot open.
My gaze flew to hers.
Did she really just say that?
Yes, but she didn’t look altogether happy about it. At the very least, she was uncertain. Her head was probably full of doubts. But her eyes were glazed with desire. The way it pooled in her dark irises couldn’t have been missed.
Her mind may have been reeling, but her body seemed to have made its choice.
Looked like the convincing was going to fall to me.
Not a problem.
But if she wanted me to convince her that this was a bad idea, that we were a bad idea, well…
There was no way in fuck that was happening.
I wanted a lot of things from her, but distance was nowhere on that list.
So, I shifted my hips until the heavy bulge in my jeans was pressed flush against her belly. Her eyes widened, her pupils dilating. She glanced down at where our bodies were connected, seeming fascinated by my brazenness. I closed the last tiny bit of space between us, gripping the bar above our heads tighter than was necessary. My hand slid around her waist, stopping on her lower back. It may have felt like a sensual caress to her, but the movement was really to brace her for what I was about to do.
I grinded my erection against her center.
Her knees buckled.
I easily held her up.
Then I grinded again.
Her forehead fell against my chest. The soft moan she let out vibrated against my shirt. When her hands lifted, her fingers digging into the material, I put more pressure on her lower back and pulled her harder against me.
Even through all our clothing, thrusting against that notch between her thighs was seriously one of the best goddamn things I’d ever felt.
I wasn’t prepared for her to grind back.
That was the best goddamn thing I’d ever felt. Her acceptance, her participation.
Her fucking passion.
I’d always known she was passionate inside. Maybe most people couldn’t see that in her. But it was in everything she did. Nobody who was that motivated to succeed in life did so without passion. And I knew that if she applied that kind of spirit to the bedroom, she would come alive.
Shit, Roxy would be fucking explosive.
“I know what that’s supposed to feel like,” I whispered against her hair. “I know what I’m supposed to be telling myself. But I’ll be damned if I ever said that”—I thrust hard against her, delighting in her indrawn breath— “feels wrong.”
We were lightly jostled as more passengers de-boarded at the next stop, though I barely registered any of it. Especially since her fingers that clutched my shirt weren’t just holding onto me for support—they were pulling me closer.
“Believe me, I’m as surprised about this as you,” I murmured. “But it’s out there between us now. You know it. I know it. That doesn’t mean anyone else has to know it.”
She shook her head, her face still lowered. “Ace, I don’t think—”
I thrust again.
“That’s not fair,” she grumbled, making me grin.
“What can I say, I have to use every tool in my arsenal.”
“Emphasis on the tool?”
“You tell me.”
She paused.
The fragrance of her hair invaded my senses. The strawberry scent was driving me crazy. It made me hungry to get my mouth on her, all over. To go down on her—fucking feast on her—to see how sweet and juicy she was between her thighs.
When she took too long to respond, I started slowly pumping my hips. The car was still so cramped, no one would be able to see what I was doing. Plus, the train rocked back and forth so much, it was hard not to make constant adjustments to your footing. I cursed under my breath when she returned my thrusts, meeting them with her own.
The rest of her limbs may have gone languid, but her shoulders were still tense.
She was still fighting
this.
But she clearly needed relief as much as I did.
“Still want me to stay away, Rox?” I rasped.
“It’s too dangerous,” she finally whispered. “The other bosses hate your family. If they found out about this, they would take action, even against Papà’s wishes. Who knows what they would do.”
Let them fucking try.
Those bastards didn’t scare me. Most of them were pussies, especially compared to Stefano and the bold liberties he had taken with his self-imposed leadership.
It was the Gabbianos we really had to worry about.
They would unquestionably use a relationship between a D’Angelo and a Rossetti as leverage against both of our families. But since she didn’t mention them specifically, I had to assume Vinnie hadn’t told her about their stateside visit.
And I wasn’t inclined to tell her.
Not just because freaking her out would give her one more reason to deny what was happening between us. I just didn’t want her to be afraid. Didn’t want her knowing how much shit her father was in and how much danger she was potentially in because of it.
She didn’t need to be scared when I was here to protect her.
Keeping her in the dark might just keep her safe.
“You let me worry about all of that.”
She stiffened.
I felt her mentally pulling away from me before her body physically followed. The heat that had been in her eyes minutes ago had cooled. Ice now glinted from them instead when she looked up at me. Her mouth was no longer parted in excitement but flat with resentment.
“Let you worry about it?” she snapped. “Because it wouldn’t involve me, too? Because I wouldn’t be just as complicit? Or do you just think I have too weak a constitution to handle the fallout for something like that?”
She tried to step back, but there wasn’t far to go.
“What? No, of course not. I didn’t mean it that way.”
I didn’t understand where her anger was coming from.
“I know you’ve always seen me as a weak little girl, but I’ve been on my own for a long time now. I’m a lot stronger than you and my father apparently think.”
Her tone was laced with hurt, which was like a knife to the gut. I hadn’t liked seeing Roxy hurt when she was ten years old, and I sure as hell loathed seeing it now. Especially since I was the cause of it, even if I didn’t know why.
“Rox, you’ve got it all wrong. That’s not—”
“And since I’m a big girl now,” she cut in, “I’m old enough to take responsibility for the consequences of my actions and own up to my mistakes.” She waved between us. “And this would be the worst mistake I could make.”
The announcement for the next stop—her stop—came over the PA system. Her eyes remained on me as she began to move toward the doors.
“Rox—”
“Is that convincing enough?”
I winced at her acrid tone.
“No? Then how about this.” She leaned forward, pointing her index finger at me. “Stay away from me, Ace.”
She turned on her heel and marched off the train just before the doors closed.
I was too stunned to follow.
But that didn’t mean I was walking away.
Because even as she’d been wagging that finger at me and spewing furious words, there had still been passion in her eyes. And if her angry passion looked like that, I couldn’t wait to see what her lustful passion looked like.
I had to find out.
No, I was going to.
And anyone who had a problem with that could kiss my ass.
I stared at myself in the mirror in bewilderment, wondering why I looked like the same old me if I didn’t feel like the same old me.
I felt like a hussy, yet I was still a virgin.
The virgin hussy. Heh.
It sounded like one of the romance novels on my Kindle.
Yes, I was twenty-one years old and still a virgin. I wouldn’t say it hadn’t exactly been on purpose, because it was—I’d made that choice. It just wasn’t for lack of trying.
Guys hadn’t wanted to come sniffing around me in high school because of my father and because I’d been kind of an introvert. Determined to get out of my shell more in college, I’d put myself out there and had been mostly disappointed with what I’d found. I’d messed around some, but no one had inspired relationship-type feelings in me.
Then came that one drunken night.
The one where I’d been so frustrated with my inexperience that I’d gotten pretty tipsy and latched on to a guy who had been hitting on me for weeks prior. Long story short, he hadn’t even gotten it inside me before his geyser had gone off. Then I’d promptly dashed off to the bathroom and thrown up all the wine coolers I’d guzzled down.
I wasn’t sure of the two of us who had been more mortified.
The humiliation of that night was enough for me to decide that I was not going to become another cliché. Drunken college girl loses virginity in smelly dorm room. Nope, not going to happen. I was going to wait until I at least liked the guy so I might actually want to remember it.
And here we were.
Which was why I couldn’t believe the way I’d behaved on the subway. After years of waiting, I hadn’t even hesitated to rub myself against Ace and reveal just how desperate I was to be touched. I’d been easy and pathetic.
I was disgusted with myself.
What’s the big deal? the face staring back at me asked. So, you rubbed up against Ace a little on a crowded subway. Some drunk guy did the same thing to you last week when he mistook you for his fiancé.
Yet I couldn’t stop hearing his words over and over in my head. Convince me, Rox. Whispered into my ear as I was trying to fall asleep at night. Breathed against my neck while I was writing something on my clipboard at work. Even reverberating off the walls when I was soaping up in the shower.
For three days straight it had been like that.
Ace was everywhere.
You could imagine all the time I’d spent counting to distract myself. I’d counted backwards from a million by sevens at least five times.
Every time it happened, I forced myself to repeat his other words from the subway. You just let me worry about all of that.
Something snapped inside me the second those words had sunk in. My father was somewhat of an old school chauvinist when it came to women being involved in what he considered “men’s business.” And if Ace had developed that same way of thinking, then my long-time crush was going to fizzle out quicker than I would have ever thought possible.
It wasn’t even that I wanted to be involved in the business with the other families.
Mafia. You can say it. Your father is in the mafia.
I cringed.
Yeah, I could say it, but I didn’t want to. It wasn’t something I was particularly proud of. I’d seen the deeds our family lineage was capable of. I didn’t look at the situation through rose-colored lenses. I knew full-well my father was a criminal to some degree.
Evil, no.
He wasn’t like his third cousin, Raphael Esposito.
Papà’s morals were just…flawed.
I grabbed my purse off my bed and shut my bedroom door behind me. Our three-story home was more of a mansion than a brownstone. The interior was draped in opulent fabrics, Parisian rugs, and expensive marble imported from Italy. Very little had changed in the last five years. Mamà had decorated the entire place herself, and Papà clearly hadn’t wanted to alter what she had created.
But there was one major difference now: how cold it felt.
And I wasn’t talking about the temperature.
The beautiful gray marble floors looked dreary to me now. They appeared almost black in some lighting, blanketing the rooms in darkness regardless of whether or not the curtains were open. The only smells to detect were the lingering ones from the cleaning service that came in once a week to scrub the place from top to bottom. Mamà’s vanilla perf
umes no longer drifted in and out of doorways.
The place felt more like a mausoleum that had been erected in hers and Filip’s memories, rather than an actual home with living inhabitants. The spirit of our once happy family was entombed here and was gradually fading away with time and residual anguish.
“Where are you off to?” Papà asked as I entered the kitchen.
I hadn’t realized he was in here, or else I would have avoided coming in. I wasn’t a very good liar, which was inconvenient since everything about my life had recently become a lie. Trying to hold even a normal conversation with him was becoming nerve-wracking.
“Oh, just out for a few drinks with a friend.”
At least that wasn’t a complete lie.
It just wasn’t the complete truth either.
To cover the time I was gone when I was working at the hospital, I’d told him I was doing a lot of volunteer work at the Red Cross and a couple of free clinics. I’d insisted it would look great on my resumé, which wasn’t a lie. Too bad it just wasn’t real.
But I couldn’t exactly say I was going to do volunteer work dressed like this. My high-waisted hunter green shorts and white tank bodysuit wasn’t an outfit you wanted to work in. Not to mention the cork wedges on my feet with a pretty silk ribbon that wrapped around my ankle. I was already regretting the bodysuit, though. Some of my friends at Yale had talked me into buying it one day, even though it wasn’t really my thing.
Now I remembered why.
It was like wearing a damn leotard. I hadn’t worn one of those since becoming a ballet class dropout at six years old. How could girls stand to have this ride up their asses all freaking day? Who the hell enjoyed having a permanent wedgie?
And I thought thongs were annoying.
“Good, good,” he said, nodding his head. Then he peeked up at me coyly. “Would this be a boy friend?”
I rolled my eyes. “Like I would tell you one way or the other. I remember how you used to vet any boy who so much as asked me to the movies when I was in middle school.”
He’d certainly gotten what he wanted, too. No one ever asked me out again after those few incidents.
Scars and Sins (Brooklyn Brothers Book 2) Page 6