Tommy’s eyes twinkle as his lips curl into a teasing grin. “You’re up early. What’s the occasion?”
I give his arm a light punch, heat rising in my cheeks as I step into the foyer. He gathers me close for a hug, whispering a ‘happy birthday’ against my ear. His cologne wafts under my nose, and mixed with the sweet aromas permeating the air, my knees buckle.
Please never let go…
I swallow hard as he pulls away, as if he suddenly remembers he’s not supposed to be acting this way with me. He sweeps a hand through his hair and averts his eyes the way he always does when he finds himself exposed, when the walls that usually surround him are only at half-mast.
Because of me.
What will he think when he reads the passages in my pretty pink and black notebook? The dark thoughts that have plagued me, and the dim sliver of light that I’ve been clinging to since the day of the accident, hoping it will finally shine through the murk and bring me the happiness I’ve only dared to wish for?
He’s been holding back for months, battling with himself and the reasons he won’t take a step forward, and the tension between us is so thick, it nearly chokes me every time we’re together.
He thinks I don’t remember.
And every day, it kills me a little more, so much so that I can’t seem to forget.
I won’t let any more time pass.
Today, I am officially a woman.
An adult, free to make her own choices.
And I’ve made my first one.
I refuse to let him hide behind our age difference. I won’t accept his excuses of my family and his work anymore.
I want Tommy Marcone, and as the daughter of Freddie Cassarella, I’ve mastered the art of getting what I want.
Today is the day I collect.
My birthday wish come true.
“Thanks.” I force a smile. I should be used to this behavior by now, but every time, it hurts a little bit more.
Please take the pain away, Tommy…
He backs away even farther as if he doesn’t trust what he might do if his feet stay planted next to mine. He nods his head toward the kitchen. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
I follow him, the aroma floating into the air makes my mouth water. “Oh my God,” I murmur, stepping toward the counter and gaping at the multi-tiered black and white fondant-covered cake. There are black and white swirls adorning each layer, and tiny pearls and sparkles encrusted into the top and sides of the cake. And laying in the center of the top tier are two long-stemmed entwined calla lilies. I reach out to trace the top of the flowers, and my eyes float toward Tommy’s heated gaze.
“Your favorites,” he says in a gruff voice. “Made out of chocolate.”
“This cake is gorgeous,” I whisper, gazing at each tiny detail that, altogether, makes for the most incredible piece of edible art I’ve ever seen in my life. Tears spring to my eyes. “Thank you so much for this.”
He smiles, and tiny pink dots of color appear in his cheeks.
He’s actually blushing.
Holy crap, I think I just fell a little more in love with him, if that’s even possible.
He clears his throat. “I, ah, wanted you to have a special cake for tonight.” Then he turns away and pulls open the refrigerator door and pulls out a flat plate with a cake in the shape of a single white calla lily. He places it in front of me and hands me a knife.
“This is for us right now. I hope you haven’t had breakfast yet,” he murmurs, grabbing a lighter from the side of the stove and lighting the candle — the yellow stamen in the center of the flower.
And then…I have to grip the counter to hold myself upright…he sings to me in the softest voice I’ve ever heard him use. Blood rushes between my ears, my heart throbbing against my chest. When he finishes, I squeeze my eyes shut and blow.
I have only one wish.
It’s to be here.
With him.
Forever.
My eyes flutter open, and I see Tommy smiling at me. “Did you make your wish?” he whispers.
“Yes,” I rasp. My skin prickles, goosebumps shooting up my arms and down my legs.
“Don’t tell me what it is,” he says. “Otherwise it won’t come true.”
I open my mouth to tell him that I don’t want to say the words, I want to show him instead, but a blaring ringtone jolts me from acting out my biggest fantasy. He steps away from the counter and grabs his phone. “Hey. Yeah, I’m home. Yes, asshole, I’m baking. Don’t give me any shit for it, or the next time I see you, I’ll bring you fucking stale, store-bought cake and cookies.” He rolls his eyes at me, flashing one of his famous panty-melting smirks. “How’s the baby? How’s Tali?” He traces a finger over the side of the wall as he talks, his deep voice rumbling through me, the vibrations making everything tingle. “Has Alek tried to kill you yet?” Then he laughs, a hearty laugh that I’ve never heard before. My heart clenches. I want to hear it again.
Why haven’t I heard it before?
Why can’t I make him laugh like that?
I clutch the edge of the countertop, staring down at the cake I just wished over, sadness washing over me.
Will he ever be that comfortable with me?
Can I make him laugh like that? Or is that just more of him holding back for some bullshit reason?
He talks to whoever is on the other line for a few more minutes and then hangs up the phone.
So many thoughts loop through my mind, I’m startled when he brushes past me with his cake decorating tools. “Who was that?” I ask without trying to seem nosy.
“My brother, Cristian.”
“Oh,” I say, nodding “His wife just had the baby, right? And that’s who your sister Gianna is staying with in Monaco?”
Tommy nods. “Yeah. She went there to help out for a few weeks, but I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“Really?” I furrow my brow. “You think she’d just leave everything behind like that? Her work, the rest of her family?”
“She’s had a really hard time since my father died,” he says, using one of his tools to create a few more decorative swirls on my birthday party cake. “I know she felt suffocated here with me, Ant, and Vince keeping such a close eye on her. She threw out a few hints to me before she left, but I never said anything to the other guys. They’d flip their shit if they knew she wasn’t coming home.”
“Why?” I lean forward onto my hand as I watch his skilled hands work their magic.
“Because she’s the only girl in our family, and without our parents, we kind of all feel like it’s our job to protect her. But I also know she wants her own life, away from all of the reminders of this place…everything we lost, all of the pain and the anger and the sadness. It was choking the life out of her. So when she left, I knew it was for good. And she deserves to live without me and my brothers breathing down her neck.” He stops and looks around the kitchen, a deep sigh making his shoulders sag. A sad smile appears on his face. “You know, I didn’t change a single thing in this kitchen when I took over the house.”
“Because of your mom?” I whisper.
He nods, running his hand over the shiny granite countertop. “She loved everything about this kitchen, and I wanted to remember every detail of her in it, of us working side by side. Changing it just felt wrong to me, like I’d be erasing so much of my memory of her and the time we spent together.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t know, maybe I cling to those memories so much because the memories of my father are so dark. Keeping her memory alive helps me bury the other shit.” He flashes a sheepish smile. “I guess that sounds pretty stupid, huh? Like I’m not really dealing with my feelings about my Pop.”
I shake my head. “No, I think you should do whatever feels right to you. I mean, I’ve never lost anyone close to me before, so I can’t really speak from experience, but I know it must hurt like hell. So you should do whatever you can to ease the pain.”
“You’ve nev
er lost anyone, but you’ve lost out on things you wanted for your own life,” he says, leaning back against his stove. “How do you deal with it?”
I blink fast, my fingers turning white from gripping the countertop so tight.
The journal.
It’s burning such a hole in my handbag right now.
“I, ah, I write,” I say. “In a journal.”
“Does that work for you?”
“Yes and no…” My voice trails off and I twirl a strand of hair around my finger. “I guess it helps me to get out my feelings about the loss of a career, but it also makes me realize that there are other things that I may want even more…things I, um, don’t know for sure that I can ever have.” Heat rises up the sides of my neck, and I can feel it creep into my cheeks until little flames fester just under the surface of my skin.
“I want you to have everything. You have that chance, Gemma, to figure out who you are away from all of this. I never had that choice. I had to figure out who I wanted to be in the middle of this shit. Cooking became my lifeline, my own way of dealing with things I couldn’t control. My kitchen is my space. I’m in complete control here, and cooking is the only thing that helps me forget everything I’m battling. That my family is battling. It’s my one break from reality.” He shakes his head. “You know, the Marcone blood always attracts sharks. Fucking armies of them. And fighting off those bastards means I can’t live the way I really want.” Tommy stares at me for a second before speaking again. “There are a lot of things I want that I know I can’t ever have. Sometimes that’s worse than losing them in the first place. At least then, I could say I had them once,” he mutters, pushing back his hair and letting out a deep sigh.
My eyes flit toward my handbag, and I bite down on my lower lip. I want so badly to give the journal to him, to open up about everything I want and everything I’ve grown to love.
But I can’t handle another loss, and from minute to minute trying to figure out what the hell Tommy really wants and if I even rank on that list is near-impossible.
So I choose self-preservation.
For now.
“How’s your aim these days?” he says, jolting me from my inner battle.
I force a smile. “Really good. Maybe I should try for a career as a sniper.” A chuckle slips from my lips. “No pun intended.”
He snickers. “You can make good money as an assassin. But if you wanna be really infamous, you need to be good at using more than just a gun. You need a trademark weapon, you know? Anyone can learn to fire a gun.”
I furrow my brow. “You mean like a knife?”
“Too general.” He fills one of his decorating tools with some kind of pearlized white concoction and tests it out on a piece of black fondant, making a smiley face. Then he draws a five-pointed star sticking out of one of the eyes.
My obsession — Tommy Marcone, the Chef of Death.
How sick and twisted is it that this conversation is making my heart pound uncontrollably and my knees wobble?
“So what would you see me using?” I ask, licking my lips as his hands work the tool.
What else can those hands do? I’d like nothing more than to find out.
Right now!
An image of him wrapping my naked body in this fondant flashes across my mind. A chill zips down my spine. God, how I’d love to feel his hands all over it, molding it against me.
Fuck the tools.
He glances over at me with a mischievous glint in his eye. “Maybe a grappling hook. Or a three-razor blade throwing star. Or a chain whip. Really make shit interesting, you know?”
“What would I do with a whip?” I can barely croak out the words, this exchange is making me so damn hot.
Maybe there’s a little BDSM in me.
Or maybe I want there to be…
“There are lots of possibilities,” he says in a teasing voice.
“Why don’t you show me sometime?” I say, inching closer to him.
He pauses for a few seconds, the smile fading from his lips. Is it because he realized what he just said? “Because,” he finally responds. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous for who?” I ask, breathless.
His brows furrow. “Both of us,” he mumbles, turning back to the cake.
Well, that idea was shot down fast.
“I don’t see how training me to use a new weapon would be a problem,” I say, pretending that my blood isn’t still simmering in my veins at the mere thought of Tommy dangling that whip over me. I ignore the tension surrounding us even though it’s suffocating me. “How is it any different than target practice at the gun club?” I try to keep my voice even, my tone flippant, but it doesn’t work on Tommy.
He sees right through me.
Has he been able to do that all of this time?
“Forget the guns. Look, we both know what this is, Gem, and what I want…” His voice trails off for a moment and my heart stills, waiting for him to finish his thought. He shakes his head and lets out a dry laugh. “I already told you. It’s nothing I can ever have. There are a lot of reasons why things have to be this way, and it’s something I have to deal with. So you should figure out who you wanna be, what you wanna be, and just go for it.” He sweeps a hand through his hair. “Don’t waste any more of your time wishing for something that will never happen. You’re too smart for that. You’re gonna do something amazing with your life. Don’t piss it away chasing something you’ll never catch.”
Blood rushes between my ears. I was definitely not expecting to hear any of that. Sharp breaths slice at my lungs as my mind screams, ‘But you love me! I heard you say it!’
My mouth, on the other hand, is too shocked to speak.
And then I have to wonder…did I really hear him say it?
Or was it all a drug-induced dream?
Because if he said it and meant it, how could he possibly turn me away? How could he ignore what’s been crackling between us for all this time?
I’d been convinced I heard those words clear as day, that it wasn’t just a fantasy courtesy of all the morphine that was being pumped into me the day of my knee injury.
I have a choice to make. Right now.
I can crumble and run away.
Or I can swallow the gaggle of tears caught in my throat, force a smile, and pretend that my heart hasn’t just been shredded by his words.
Have some fucking pride, goddammit!
He can’t break me.
I won’t let him.
I take a deep breath.
Well, at least I won’t show him.
I plaster a bright smile on my face. “Well, you did say once that I’d make a good sous chef. Your sous chef, remember?” I glance at the cake. “Looks like it needs a little more decoration. Show me how?”
Because if standing next to him is the closest I can come to finding true happiness today of all days, I’ll take it and worry about everything else tomorrow.
I may officially be a woman today, but in so many ways, I’m still such a stupid kid.
And a glutton for punishment.
He narrows his eyes at me, a small smile lifting his lips as his hand works the tool once again along the sides of the cake. “Okay, watch for a minute first.”
“Did your mother teach you how to decorate cakes?” I ask, pleading with myself not to cry.
“Nah. She wasn’t really artsy like that. I picked the crafty shit up on my own. But she taught me how to make sure the inside tastes as good as the outside looks.” His eyes flit over toward me and a chill slides down my spine under his heated gaze. He straightens up and holds out the tool. “You ready to give it a shot?”
My eyes widen as his hungry gaze rakes over my body in that fleeting moment, and suddenly, I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone.
Good God. He just pretty much told me we’re never going to happen, and then he looks at me like he wants to devour me like I’m his last meal.
Does he enjoy twisting my panties like that?
I bite down on my lower lip, thinking about tearing off said panties and jumping on top of him. “On second thought, maybe I’m not ready to be a sous chef yet. You’re doing such a beautiful job on your own. Besides, I, ah, wasn’t really blessed with the artsy gene. I, um, don’t want to mess it up.” A nervous giggle escapes my lips as he pulls me toward him, positioning me in front of the cake.
“You won’t,” he murmurs, placing the tool in my hand. “Here, I’ll do it with you.”
My heart pounds as his chest presses against my back and his hand covers mine. “Just take it slow,” he says, guiding my hand in a series of peaks and swirls that even I marvel at once we’re finished.
“Wow,” I breathe. “Amazing.”
The warmth of his muscled chest against me wakes the butterflies deep in my belly. They swarm faster and faster when his fingers lace with mine, pressing me into the counter. The decorating tool slips from my hand, clattering onto the surface next to the cake. I feel his heartbeat in time with my own, thumping louder and faster until suddenly, the heat of his lips scorches a path down the side of my neck. They sweep the skin along the back of my ear, his teeth gently tugging at the earlobe. I let out a sharp gasp, the realization that maybe I read him right after all crashing over me like an all-consuming wave.
And I’m more than happy to be carried away by the swell of his desire.
I’m drowning in all that is him, the same way I have been every day for the past year.
The only thing different is that this time, I can actually breathe.
This is what I’d been waiting for, what I’d hoped would eventually come, and what I was told only minutes earlier never would.
Oh God, if this really is a dream, please don’t ever let me wake up.
His strong hands slide down the sides of my torso, gripping my hips and flipping me around to face him.
Lust flickers in the depths of his dark eyes as he stares me down, melting me from the inside out. His fingers dig into my flesh, pulling me toward him, and I move as if I’m floating on air.
“Is this what you want, Tommy?” My voice is barely louder than a whisper, and I almost don’t hear the words. “Am I what you want? Because you said you can never—”
Taken: A Dark Italian Mafia Romance (Men of Mayhem Book 3) Page 7