“Glad you could make the trip on such short notice,” I added.
His finger tapped against his glass in a nervous gesture, reminding me of his behavior from the other night. “There’s no way I’d have been able to talk Sam out of it, believe me. Not that I wanted to. Jasmine’s her best friend, and she would never have missed this. It’s just that…” He trailed off, looking conflicted.
My senses went on alert. “What’s going on? Everything okay with you two?”
He took a long drink. “Sam’s pregnant.”
Ah. “And you’re…?”
His face broke out into a smile. “I’m fucking thrilled. We both are. God, there’s going to be a mini Sam running around here before too long.”
“You already know it’s a girl?”
He ducked his head, looking sheepish. “Nah. Just a weird gut feeling.”
“Well, congratulations.” I slapped him on the back. “That’s great. And you’re acting like you’ve got food poisoning because…?”
His smile dropped to be replaced by a scowl. “I want her out of this fucking city, Nico. No offense. But with Esposito out there somewhere, I can’t stand her being anywhere near his home turf. As long as we don’t know where he is, I want my wife and baby in New York City as little as possible.”
I got that. I’d felt similarly about Lexi getting in the middle of shit between us and the families. And she wasn’t carrying my child.
“We’re working on tracking him down,” I said. “Ace is monitoring all of his accounts and online activity, and Connelly’s got all ears to the ground. Whether he’s hiding or being held against his will, it can’t last much longer.” Especially since the FBI was leading the massive manhunt. “But you have my word, nothing will happen to your family while you’re in our city.”
Kade nodded, sighing. “I know that. Fair warning from one married man to another?”
I followed his gaze across the garden where it caught on his wife, who happened to be talking to my wife right then.
“You don’t know real fear until your woman tells you she’s carrying your baby,” he said gravely. “You don’t have a fucking clue how far you’ll go to protect her until that day comes. Until you think about someone harming them. I thought the scariest moment of my life was when I saw Sam bleeding out on the floor of the FNN studio.” He shook his head. “Nope. It was the moment I stepped off that plane at Kennedy with my pregnant wife, in Raphael Esposito’s backyard.”
Before I could come up with a response to that, Kade was pulled away by Jasmine’s mother. My eyes inevitably sought out Lexi again, where she now spoke with Gia and Roxy, giggling into her champagne flute.
“Of all the women over the years, Niccolò,” Mom’s voice suddenly said from beside me, “what makes this one so different?”
I tossed her a side glance. “Who says she is different?”
She returned it with one of those I’m your mother and I take no bullshit looks. “A look on my eldest son’s face that I’ve never seen before.”
“Which is?”
“Adoration.”
I guess my talent for camouflaging my emotions was weakening. “Lexi’s a good woman. It would be hard for anyone not to adore her.”
Mom frowned. “I’m sure there have been many good women before her. Is it just the fact that you’ve been forced to keep this one around that has brought about your change in habits and behavior?”
That got a reaction out of me—one of irritation. “You’re saying whatever I may or may not be feeling toward her is due to convenience?”
She shrugged. “You cannot blame a mother’s curiosity.”
“Lexi would have been different even if I’d only been around her for an hour. Many of the women in my past were probably good, but that doesn’t mean they were good for me, regardless of how much time I would have had with them.”
Mom was clearly fighting off a smile.
I rolled my eyes when I realized I’d taken the bait and fallen right into her trap. “Clever, Mom.”
She leaned up to kiss my cheek. “I’m proud of you, son.”
After she walked away, my gaze was a tractor beam on Lexi again.
When I found her this time, she was already watching me. And smiling.
I swear, neither of us batted an eyelash as I crossed the garden to her. The closer I got, the more the pressure in my chest eased, yet my heart felt heavier at the same time. It was the strangest shit I’d ever experienced.
“Having a good time?” I asked.
Her cheeks were beautifully rosy in the chilly October weather. “Very. Your mother has told me several hilarious stories about you as a child that I’m having a hard time believing. She also promised to send me baby pictures.”
“I need you to stay in my room tonight,” I blurted out.
Her eyes widened, then immediately softened. “All night?”
I felt my own eyes go flinty. “Well, you’re not hitting and quitting me in my own fucking bed. So, yes. All night.”
After ten years of doing it myself, I finally understood why women got so miffed about a man bailing on them like that. Watching Lexi walk out my door right after sex, leaving me alone in bed, would sting like a son of a bitch.
She smiled. “It’s a date.”
When I gently cupped her cheek in my hand and kissed her in front of everyone for the first time, I felt my entire family’s astonished expressions burning into my back.
Yeah, yeah. The Wonder Man-Whore has finally found lov—companionship.
Ignoring them, and all the heaviness threatening to weigh me down, I just focused on kissing my girl.
Because right then, she was all that mattered.
I followed Nico into his bedroom later that night with both anticipation and trepidation rushing through my veins. Anticipation because this felt like some sort of step forward, even if we weren’t labeling those steps or even acknowledging the journey.
Trepidation because, well…
“Nico, I have to tell you something before I sleep in here tonight.”
We’d entered the room hand-in-hand. At my words, he turned around and pulled me closer to him by our interlocked fingers. “I knew it. You have one of those unsightly, full head gear retainers that you sleep with every night, don’t you?”
The more this playful side of him came out—a side I suspected was part of the real man beneath—the harder I fell. “What year do you think it is? Do they even make those anymore? Though I should warn you that my morning bedhead is unsightly enough.”
Lifting my hand to his mouth, he laid the most sensual kiss on my wrist. “What is it?”
“Sometimes I have…nightmares.”
His body stiffened, his expression hardening. “Nightmares about what?”
All kinds of things. “Just bad memories.”
He tipped my chin up to look me in the eyes. I hadn’t even realized I’d lowered it. Too lost in thoughts I’d rather forget. “The fire?” he asked softly.
I nodded. “And the nights when I was alone on the streets. I remember being so tired all the time because every night I would shiver so badly I could never fall asleep for very long.” My smile was tight. “Twenty years later and I’m still losing sleep over those nights. No matter whether I dream about fire or ice, I always wake up sweating and shivering at the same time.” And screaming. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
His hand slid over my jawline, gripping it firmly. “As long as you’re in my bed, Lexi, there will be no bad dreams. I’ll chase them all away.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ll be right beside you whenever they try to come for you. I’ll make sure you go back to sleep knowing there’s no safer place in the world for you than the spot right next to me.”
My mouth slowly spread into a smile. “Heroic.”
I so badly wanted his words to be true.
The last time I’d slept all night with a man, it had ended badly and had turned me off the experie
nce entirely. It was back during my modeling days when I’d briefly hooked up with one of the guys in my temporary circle of friends. Someone who was just trying to climb up the social ladder. The first night we’d spent together, I’d been yanked out of my nightmare by the sounds of my own screams and his voice yelling at me to wake up. Then he’d put an exclamation point on his exit by stating that he didn’t have the time or patience to deal with someone else’s “baggage.”
Before that, in my younger years when I lived at my father’s estate, Dimitri had always been there to hold me after I’d awoken screaming in terror. I suspected that after the first few times it happened, he’d started standing guard outside my bedroom all night, ready to come to the rescue.
But surprisingly, I wasn’t afraid of sleeping next to Nico all night. After all, he hadn’t sprinted in the opposite direction after hearing about my shadowed past.
That’s because he doesn’t understand how damaged you really are yet.
But I sensed an inner pain in him, too. Maybe Nico was the first person actually capable of shouldering the weight of my baggage.
Breaking our intense eye contact, he slanted his mouth over mine in an all-consuming kiss that had me swaying in my heels. If I’d learned anything about Nico during our short-lived marriage, it was that he communicated more with his body than with his words. And because his physical language was so potent, I could usually interpret it with reasonable accuracy.
Now, I wanted the words.
I wanted to learn the inner workings of my husband’s mind. I wanted to hear those private thoughts he kept so close to the vest. What made him tick and how he reasoned through his decisions. How he problem solved, how he rationalized.
He gathered the material of my maxi dress up my legs until it bunched around my hips. He released a tormented groan when his hands dove underneath the chiffon and trailed over the flesh-colored teddy I wore. I guess to confirm that the garment was one piece, he pulled down the neckline of my dress just enough to expose the delicate lace bodice covering my breasts.
“All day,” he breathed, gaze focused on my chest. “All damn day this dress has been swishing and swaying around your body, driving me fucking crazy, making my hands shake with the need to have them on you. And that whole fucking time, you were hiding this underneath? You’re downright insidious, woman.”
Okay. Words? Check.
I pushed his tuxedo jacket off his shoulders, delighting in the erotic sound of it swooshing to the floor. “Or perhaps I’m just calculating. Perhaps I knew exactly what to wear in order to get exactly what I want.”
His upper lip curled as my fingers worked on the buttons of his shirt. “Which is?”
After popping open the final button, my fingers traveled lower until they were cupping his heavy bulge. “This ripping into me so hard and deep that I’ll be sore for at least the next two days.”
Hissing between his teeth, he yanked my face close enough that our lips brushed. “Then your calculations were spot on, legs.” He took my lower lip between his teeth and tugged. “But let’s make it three days.”
With that promise hanging in the thick, sexualized air of his bedroom, he dragged my dress over my head and tossed it across the room. His eyes crawled salaciously over the teddy as he shrugged his shirt off his shoulders.
“Damn you, Lexi,” he whispered. “Why do you have to get to me like this?”
The question might have been rhetorical, but I also felt it deserved an answer. It was a confession, of a sort. He was admitting that I’d burrowed under his skin in some fashion. He felt something for me, however minute it might be. Between that admission and his vow to chase away the demons from my past, I wanted to give him something that would put us back on equal ground.
“Because you got to me first.”
His eyes flew up to mine.
So much passed between us in those brief, simmering moments that tears stung the back of my eyes. I was so overwhelmed with too many emotions I couldn’t categorize, couldn’t name, that my body’s first reaction was to purge them like toxins.
But I didn’t want to rid myself of them.
I wanted to lock them down deep inside, nurture them, care for them, until those seedlings sprouted more feelings and more feelings, until they grew into something that could sustain life itself. Until they could sustain me.
Then his mouth was back on mine, and we were suddenly melded together.
As if our bodies had liquified, we melted onto the mattress. Unable to get close enough, our limbs tangled, our lower halves rolling against each other with smooth sensuality.
I made a whimpering noise when I noticed there was still too much clothing separating us. With one hand supporting himself over me, Nico used his other to shove his slacks down his legs, eventually toeing them off, all while his eyes remained on mine.
The curtains on his floor-to-ceiling windows were open, inviting enough of the lights from the city to pour into the room so that I could feast on his form looming powerfully above me.
My height had always prevented me from feeling small or delicate in a man’s arms. But in Nico’s? I was light as a feather. Even more, he sensed when I needed him to treat me with care, like a precious gem, and when I wanted him to use my body roughly, bawdily.
Completely naked now, my hands ran over his chiseled abdominals that flexed beneath my palms. I traced over the tattoo of his family crest, his biceps rippling when his hands clenched at his sides. To keep himself from pinning me down?
Then my eyes caught on the series of words tattooed in black ink along his right side. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at them before. When I leaned up and he realized what I was doing, he tensed, shifting his attention to the wall above our heads.
Guilt can be to the soul what a bullet can be to the body.
I peeked up at him after reading the words. I could tell he was waiting for me to ask what they meant. They obviously held profound meaning for him to ink them onto his body for eternity.
Words can wait another day.
I took both of his hands in mine and placed them over my breasts. Seeming grateful that I wasn’t asking for an explanation, the tension drained from his shoulders as he covered my body with his nakedness.
“As much as I love the idea of leaving my smell all over your lingerie,”—his fingers untied the delicate bow lacing the teddy together—“I want to feel every inch of your bare skin against mine.”
No arguments here.
It was a poignant moment, being naked together for the first time.
Making love naked together for the first time.
Taking great care, he slipped the teddy’s straps down my arms and slowly peeled the material down my body. Almost as if he’d never done such a thing before and wanted to get it right. Once my legs were free and I was splayed out for his pleasure, he scrubbed the gauzy lace over his chest.
All over it. Up and down.
Then he wrapped it around his hand and fisted his cock with it. Taking lazy strokes, the lace slid all over his shaft.
He was leaving his scent on it.
His gaze never left mine, his mouth even stretching into a smug grin whenever my eyelids drooped. Something about that almost-primitive display sent a lightning bolt of arousal straight to my core.
Satisfied with the job he’d done, he let the flimsy lace flutter to the floor. “So pretty.”
After lowering himself back over me, his mouth latched onto my nipple, tongue laving, lips pulling on the peak with gentle suction. He ran his short beard over the sensitive tip in a nuzzling motion. “And so soft.”
I folded my legs over his, drawing him as close as I could, but I needed something inside me. Something between my inner thighs, putting pressure on that spot where all my pleasure centers were concentrated.
“Please, Nico,” I begged. “I’m burning up. I need everything.”
He released my nipple with a growl. “I’ll give you all I’ve fucking got, legs. You’ve already
taken most of it anyway.”
Grabbing protection from his bedside drawer, he tore open the packet with his teeth and rolled the latex on. Then his hands covered mine, our fingers intertwining.
The energy in the room stopped buzzing when our eyes met.
“Do you want it back?” I breathed.
A match lit the amber fires of his irises. “Never.”
With a single, jarring punch of his hips, we were connected.
Those words hung suspended over our heads as we both chased our releases. Proof that something more was happening between us. Proof that feelings existed here.
But they were also a taunt. Like our feelings themselves were saying yeah, that’s right, you can’t ignore us anymore—now, what are you gonna do about us?
But because words could wait another day, that was the last one spoken until we each nose-dived into whatever was below the clifftop we’d been perched on. We’d been above the clouds. And with that thick sheet of white spread out below us, we couldn’t see what we were heading into when we plummeted over that edge.
Although, I suspected they were forbidden lands. The kinds with Trespassers Will Be Shot signs littering the ground.
Which scared the bloody hell out of me.
Because in our case, that was a very real and literal possibility.
She was so goddamn beautiful I almost couldn’t stand it.
Every time she went out in public, I wanted to slaughter every motherfucker who even glanced in her direction. I could admit I was selfish enough to never want anyone else to behold her beauty again because I wanted it all for myself. I didn’t want to share what was supposed to be only mine.
But as desperately as I wanted Lexi’s light to only shine in my direction, it would be a crime to not gift the rest of the world with it. There was already too much bad out there. You couldn’t prevent someone as good and pure as Lexi from casting her kindness and grace upon as many people as she could.
Yes, the world might need people like her in it.
But I needed her more.
So, I made my decision.
While watching her peaceful form breathe deeply and evenly in my bed, I decided that she wasn’t going anywhere. I was keeping her. Whatever I had to do, I would do in a heartbeat. She just had to promise that she wouldn’t leave.
Booze and Bullets (Brooklyn Brothers #3) Page 24