Brash Boss

by Roberts, A. S.

  I could feel a puzzled expression on my face and the swirl of anxiety as it forced its way into my bloodstream. I grabbed hold of the lapel of his suit jacket with both hands, knowing I was effectively hanging onto him for dear life. I wanted him and I wanted to be with him always.

  Goodbye wasn’t an option.

  Suddenly, I felt like the stronger of the two of us.

  I knew we were surrounded by people and I knew the noise of people gambling was still to be heard somewhere in the space around us. But I could find none of it, all I could focus on was his eyes on mine and the bleak pain to be found within the depths of them.

  Blinking slowly, he broke eye contact with me and dipped his head down to the side of mine, so his mouth was as close as he could get to my ear without him physically touching it.

  ‘This darkness that has me trapped inside of it… I want to tell you about it.’

  ‘Here?’ I questioned as my eyes flicked around the area we were stood in and the anxiety I had previously been feeling was pushed away as adrenalin flooded my system.

  ‘Right here,’ he replied. ‘You’re facing your demons and I need to face mine.’

  I changed my hold on him, needing to feel the warmth of his body in my arms and not the expensive black fabric I had hold of at the moment. I pushed my hands underneath his suit jacket and wrapped my arms around his waist. I sighed out loud as I felt the warmth of his body escaping the soft, cotton of his shirt and I tried to absorb it to calm the panic building inside of me.

  Am I strong enough? I had no answer, but I hoped I could give him what he had so far given me. This was truly going to be a test of who I was inside. I knew how I made decisions for myself for the rest of my life, hung on this very pivotal moment.

  ‘I killed my father,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘I did it… It wasn’t an order I had carried out for me. I killed him… I squeezed the trigger that ended his existence on earth.’

  There was no emotion attached to his words, it was as though he was reading aloud from a badly written script. For a few seconds, I let his words travel around my head as I tried to come to terms with what he’d just said.

  Maybe another woman would have dropped her arms and let them fall away from his body, as she felt repugnance travel through her. Then, unable to bear the touch of his hands on her skin, she would then break free from his hold and scream at him that he was never to touch or speak to her ever again.

  But I felt nothing like that.

  I pushed myself away from him slightly, to encourage him to look back at me. When he felt me move, I sensed him stiffen in response. I presumed that he thought I was going to break out of his hold at any moment, but when that didn’t happen, he slowly lifted his head and turned back to look at me.

  I hadn’t a clue what I was expecting to find written on his face when he looked at me, but what I found there when his gaze found mine, was a childhood filled with pain and a look of absolute honesty in his eyes.

  ‘Why?’ I questioned.

  ‘To protect those I love… he had taken our mamma away from us and there was no way in hell I was going to let him have Cade or Nonna.’

  I lifted my arms up from his waist and placed my hands on either side of his face.

  ‘Or you,’ I added as I stared up at him.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about me…’

  ‘Well I do… I admire your honesty…’

  ‘Bee?’ He pleaded with me to put him out of his misery.

  ‘I appreciate you telling me the truth…’

  ‘I told you, I always tell the truth,’ he interrupted.

  ‘I accept you for who you are and for what you had to do, because I love you, Nico Morello, with everything I am.’

  One solitary tear came rolling down his face and I brushed it quickly away with my finger. Nico nodded once and bit down onto his bottom lip before moving quickly and hoisting me up into his arms. As my body collided against his, on instinct I wrapped my arms around his neck and placed my head against his frantically beating heart, and only then did I understand the anguish my brash boss of a husband had gone through in a bid to tell me his worst nightmares.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘You have possessed me, angel, and now I mean to possess you.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Bee

  ‘Happy four-month anniversary, mio angelo.’ I felt the warmth of Nico’s breath as it caressed my ear. ‘Now, I wonder what my wife would like me to give her as a gift?’

  I could hear the tease and ultimately the intention in his voice.

  I stopped running my hands over my body and momentarily froze as I tried to absorb everything about the man who was now stood behind me in the large walk-in shower. I opened my eyes and looking downwards I watched as his hands came slowly around my sides, flexing his fingers as he did so. He found my hips first and then as his hands slid over the wet soapy skin on my stomach I gasped at the contact. Finally, he wrapped his arms tightly around me and pulled me into him, jerking my back into his naked front.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ I replied in a voice that was already shaking with need for the man.

  ‘You weren’t meant to…’ he answered, before he placed his mouth down several times onto the bare skin of my shoulders and exposed neck and ground his rock-hard cock into the small of my back. My legs began to turn to jelly as his attention on my neck and shoulders continued.

  ‘I thought you were by the pool with our guests?’ I questioned with a slightly reprimanding tone to my voice. ‘What’s wrong, was the water no longer inviting?’ I grinned to myself as I teased him.

  I could see him in my mind swimming the fifty lengths of the pool as he always did each and every morning before breakfast. Most mornings I took myself out onto our large balcony to sip at my coffee and to secretly watch as his well-defined muscles broke through the surface of the water. His strong, lithe body, as it completed lap after lap of the pool, would forever be imprinted inside my head. He commanded the water like he commanded everything else in his life and witnessing it, while knowing he was mine alone, was the biggest aphrodisiac ever. He was the perfect balance to me, so damned good looking in his well-fitting suits, that he turned the heads of women of all ages, but with an air of condescending arrogance that swirled tightly around him. He was the ultimate package. He was caring to those he loved, but he also exuded blatant danger. This made him sexy as hell, to the point that he turned women on and scared the hell out of them all at the same time.

  And he was mine, I couldn’t believe my luck.

  His mouth broke away from kissing across the top of my shoulder and I cursed myself for stupidly asking him a question.

  ‘They’re more like family.’ His mouth contacted with my shoulder again and his teeth nipped at my needy flesh, drawing a long audible inhale from my lips. ‘They can entertain themselves. I have better things to do.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked as his tongue connected with my spine and he ran it slowly up to my hairline, making my back arch in response.

  ‘You,’ he replied.

  ‘And what if I don’t want “doing”?’ I grinned to myself, knowing I was effectively inciting the devil himself.

  ‘There’s no escaping me now, Bee.’ I could hear the smile in his voice, even though his tone of voice had deepened.

  ‘I’m all yours then.’

  ‘Too. Fucking. Right. You. Are.’ In between each word he bit his way across the top of my shoulders. The pain instantly abated and turned into pleasure. ‘You. Are. My. Wife. My. Love. Mio Angelo.’

  With a mixture of relief and pleasure I dipped my head forward, feeling the strong spray of the shower hit my head and the hair that earlier I’d haphazardly piled on top of my head to stop it getting wet. Now it felt like the water was in league with my husband as the strong streams massaged my scalp. Eased by the shower cream that covered my skin, Nico began to move his hands over my body and the pleasure coursing around my system at his tou
ch ramped up several notches.

  ‘How badly do you want to come, Bee?’

  As he asked the question, his hands cupped my heavy feeling breasts and he rolled my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

  ‘Ahhhhh.’ The sound of pleasure leaving my mouth filled the large walk-in shower.

  ‘Tell me,’ he demanded as he pinched my nipples again.

  ‘Badly… very badly,’ I managed to force out.

  ‘Your breasts, angel… they’re beautiful and so very fucking heavy with your need.’ I had to agree with him, my contented life with him had seen me put on all the weight I’d lost in the last year, plus a bit extra. Pleasingly to my new husband, my breasts were now more than adequate to fill his large hands and some.

  ‘Please, I need you to touch me,’ I gasped.

  ‘Lean forward, hands on the tiles in front of you,’ he demanded.

  ‘I need you to…’

  My voice stopped as his hand slid down over my stomach and over my bare mound, before two of his large fingers slipped in between my soaking wet, engorged lips and he pinched my clitoris between his two fingers.

  ‘Ohhhh, Nic…’

  ‘Shhhhh… now do as you’re told.’

  Sparks of pleasure ignited from that small area and reverberated rapidly throughout my body. Now a woman drunk on the pleasure I knew only he could offer me, I leant forward and felt out in front of me for the tiles he had demanded I should place my hands on. At last the cold reassurance was beneath my palms and I relaxed into whatever Nico was willing to give me.

  ‘Spread your legs wide for me, angel.’

  Feeling the coarse flooring, abrasive beneath my feet, I slowly began to open my legs and primed myself for whatever was coming next.

  Nico moved quickly as his need for me took over.

  With the fingers of one hand still holding my clitoris, his other left my body and without any warning he guided his cock along my soaking wet slit just once, before he pressed the heel of his hand onto my pubic bone and pushed himself fully inside me in one thrust.

  A groan left his mouth at our initial contact. Hearing his carnal expression unleashed, a scream of absolute pleasure left my mouth and ricocheted off the green marble walls of the shower.

  His hand lifted and after pushing his fingers into my hair he twisted his hand through it, and winding it around his fist he pulled my head up and turned it towards him. For the first time today, I laid eyes on my husband.

  He was breath-taking, with his dark, wet hair framing his masculine face and deep, dark brown eyes. His need and love for me was sent wordlessly to me as our eyes connected.

  ‘Do you want to fuck?’ His eyebrows lifted and a smile twitched the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You know I do,’ I managed to reply.

  The moment he knew he had me securely in his hold, he started to move in and out of me. At first it was painstakingly slow as if he wanted me to feel every single millimetre of where our flesh touched each other’s. With a gleam in his eye he began all too slowly to rub one of his fingers over the engorged flesh of my clitoris and slowly he drove us on.

  Upwards we climbed together, towards the pleasure we knew we would both find in our mutual release.

  ‘Can you feel me loving you, mio angelo?’

  His words of love fell effortlessly out of his mouth and I nodded at him unable to say a word.

  ‘Now, I’m burning for you, Bee… I need to fuck you hard.’

  ‘Then do it,’ I forced out of my mouth. ‘Fuck me and make me yours forever.’

  The force he unleashed on us both was unyielding. I had no guarantees if the need we had for each other would always be this strong or demanding, but somewhere deep down inside of me I knew it would always be like this between us.

  With our eyes fixed on each other’s we rode wave after wave of pleasure until we arrived at the crest together and fell over the edge of our orgasms simultaneously.

  Eventually, our heavy breathing and cries of pleasure subsided and after removing himself from me, he pulled me down onto his lap as he sat down on the floor of the shower.

  All I could hear was the water as it cascaded from the overly large showerhead and all I could feel was the beat of our hearts as they spoke to each other with words of love.

  In those few silent moments, as we held onto each other tightly, I understood that I had everything I hadn’t even realised I was looking for and I hoped that fate would be kinder to me from now on.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Nico

  I watched from behind my sunglasses as Bee finally emerged from the villa to come down and sit beside the pool.

  ‘Look at me, Bee,’ came a shout from Bruce who was using his water wings to good effect in the shallow end, going between Nonna and his mom. I watched Bee dip down and ruffle his dark head of hair after he’d splashed his way to the edge.

  But looking at her through the darkened lenses wasn’t nearly enough. I hooked my index finger into the top bar, dragged them down my nose and looked admiringly at her over the top of the glasses. At last I could see her properly and the sudden jolt inside my chest let me know just how far fucking gone I was for the woman. My cock stirred in my shorts, even though I’d only recently emptied everything I had inside of her. Casually I adjusted myself, making sure no one else would be able to see how much I wanted her. But it wasn’t that part of my body that was causing me to worry, it was the fact that my heart skipped a few beats as I allowed myself to run my eyes up and down her.

  ‘You are so fucked,’ Trip uttered under his breath from the bed closest to mine.

  I heard him, but not being able to tear my eyes away from my wife, I ignored his quip.

  ‘And by not denying it, tells me you love the woman… this is the beginning and end of your life, Nic.’ He laughed out loud at his own words. ‘And this moment was brought to you by The Beatles… Help!’ He didn’t stop there but started singing the words at the top of his voice, which made his son and the three woman who were paying the small boy attention turn their heads and look at us both.

  Bee looked over and smiled, before turning her gaze once again back to the pool. Her hair was once again coiled messily on top of her head, despite my fingers having pulled it down not an hour ago and her skin was sun kissed. But there was more, I narrowed my eyes to focus on her better and it clicked. Finally, she stood up to continue her walk around the edge of the water. I watched her walking with a confidence that I hadn’t ever seen her own before and knew that it looked better on her than anything. Her eyes found mine again and she smiled shyly at me, but at the same time added an extra wiggle to her walk. With the yellow bikini hugging her curves and voluptuous breasts I was jealous as hell of the white chiffon wrap draped over her shoulders, as it blew on the gentle breeze and caressed her skin.

  I heard myself clear my throat and I knew immediately, when her eyes darted to mine and she grinned, that I’d been caught admiring her. There was no getting away from the fact I’d married the best goddamn looking woman I’d ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on.

  The only thing that concerned me was the dark shadows under her eyes. She’d been tired since we’d got back from Vegas over a week ago and I had put it down to her struggling to adjust to the jet leg. I’d left her in bed this morning while I swam my normal lengths of the pool, but when she still hadn’t surfaced afterwards my need to touch her had driven me to go and find her. Morning shower sex with my beautiful wife was now chalked up as one of my most favourite things to do.

  I jumped up from the bed I’d been lounging on and reached out to take her hand in mine. The electric charge that travelled up my arm at the simple connection of her flesh on mine momentarily threw me, as it did every time we touched.

  ‘Where do you want to sit?’ I questioned, as I led her by the hand to come closer to me, like a starving man desperate for sustenance.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘I want to be out here with you all, but not in the dir
ect sun… I think I had too much yesterday.’

  ‘You’re okay though?’ I questioned.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled back at me and placing a hand to my chest she carried on. ‘I’m fine, as I say, I think I had too much sun. I might have lived in Vegas most of my life, but we’re normally indoors avoiding it, aren’t we?’

  ‘We are.’ Reluctantly I let go of her hand and pulled the bed I’d been sitting on under the shade of the large, canvas canopy next to me. ‘Come and sit with me.’

  I threw one leg over the other side of the bed, sat down and grabbing her hand again I guided her to sit down in between my legs and pulled her back into me. The warm skin of her back pressed into my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and held her, understanding quickly that I felt at peace with her there. The darkness that normally had its talons so far down into my skin that its spurs abraded my bones was nowhere to be found and I sighed out loud with the realisation.

  No more secrets, Cade. As I spoke to my brother in my head, I tightened my hold on the woman leaning against me and kissed the top of her head.

  It seemed that my mamma had always been right. I was a man who needed the love of a wife, but whether I deserved her or not remained to be seen. I only knew that I would do anything to protect my angel, even if it meant protecting her from me.

  * * *

  ‘Let’s cross over to the shade.’ I led Bee by the hand across the unmade track to walk in the shade the buildings were offering.

  ‘Phew, that’s better,’ she spoke, and I turned towards her.

  ‘The buildings in Crete were designed a long time ago to reflect a lot of heat, to keep the people inside cooler. So, once we get up to the church and inside the thick walls it’ll be much more comfortable.’

  She looked back up at me and smiled. ‘Do you know, for a man whose reputation precedes him as a disagreeable, dominating, arrogant asshat, you make a pretty good husband.’

  I shook my head at her, laughing as I mulled over her words. ‘That’s quite a list… but an arrogant asshat?’