Page 40

We stared at each other as if both of us remembered that time. Two months before my fifteenth birthday, Dad had grounded me because he found out I’d been skipping classes to spend time with Sandro. No matter how innocent the circumstances were, it had been an ugly confrontation. With no phone, and under Dad’s scrutiny of my every movement, Mom intervened. Sandro had reached out to her, knowing my birthday was coming up and he had to leave the country for a while. Dad had relented, but the men in my family had been downright hostile during my birthday party. Sandro didn’t seem to care. A few weeks after he left, I received a package. In it was a Russian nesting doll. And then, months after, he seemed to have fallen off the grid. At first, I thought Dad found a way to get rid of him until I heard Dom telling Dad that Sandro was in a Russian prison. I was distraught. My grades plummeted.

Sandro returned for his father’s funeral after being gone for a year. The way it was told, the Rossis negotiated his release.

Post-Russian-prison Sandro was different from the man I knew. Much darker. More tattoos. Much, much more. He ignored my calls and didn’t even talk to me for another six months.

The timer on the rigatoni interrupted my excursion into my memories.

“I’ll get that,” Sandro said.

The oven was a side by side instead of the stacked configuration. He grabbed a dishtowel, and I moved aside to give him room to maneuver the hot Pyrex out of the oven.

“Smells good, baby.” He set it on the counter.

Like my siblings, Sandro wasn’t helpless in the kitchen. When he was sixteen, he asked Mom if he could work at Eamonn’s for the summer as a prep cook. But his parents shut that down. Distaste saturated my tongue. Carmelo and Wilma Rossi were the biggest asshole parents I’d ever met. They always favored Frankie over Sandro in mafia gatherings, it was a wonder why Sandro accompanied them at all. Mom once told me it was all for show. Carmelo died from a heart attack, and from what I’d last heard about Wilma, she was in a psychiatric hospital. Rumor was that Frankie’s mental issues came from his mother’s side of the family.

After Sandro grabbed the second Pyrex and laid it to cool beside the first one, he grabbed my hand and led me to a barstool. Maybe he wanted to chat some more, but we didn’t have to act like a couple when people weren’t around.

He sat on the barstool and pulled me on top of his lap.

“Sandro!”

“You’re saying no to a shoulder massage?” And as if to show me exactly what I would be missing, his fingers kneaded the tight muscles below my neck.

“Oh, God,” I moaned at the unexpected and sheer relief that overwhelmed me. “Don’t stop.”

He mumbled a softfuckand then hissed in my ear. “Keep making those sounds, Bianca, and I’ll make you see God for sure.”

The pressure of his fingers made me want to purr, but the threat in his voice sent a pulse of wetness between my thighs. I thought of sliding off his lap, but I wasn’t willing to forsake a massage for propriety. Throwing all caution to the wind, I shimmied my ass up his muscular thighs and landed on his erection.

He groaned, “Bianca.”

I bit my lower lip. Flames licked between my legs and tingled up my entire body. Playing with fire was an understatement, but I was tired of Sandro’s sexual innuendos. It was time to see if he was all bark and this was another game to him. I twisted around on his lap. Now I was straddling him. His hard and big cock nestled against my pussy.

We were face to face.

His eyes glittered with unmasked heat. I shivered with excitement.He isn’t yanking me back into an obsession with him, I told myself, but can’t I be a little curious? I struggled to keep my arousal under control. Mind over body.

“Bianca, what?” I challenged him.

The words barely crossed my lips when I lost his eyes and he was kissing me. His tongue forced my mouth wide open and…

Holy hell!

Unlike earlier, where it felt like a shut-up kiss—which pissed me off—this one was unrestrained need.

My mind barely registered this because I was so busy feeling him everywhere. I was rubbing myself on his erection while he devoured my lips. His hands were under my ass, squeezing the flesh there, and helping me along. Pressure building. Core swollen. Wet. Slippery. I tore my lips from Sandro andconcentrated on my pleasure. My fingers dug into his shoulders as I used them for leverage to rub myself to an orgasm.

“That’s it, baby,” he growled hoarsely. “Take what you need.”

“God, Sandro, I’m close!”

I continued rocking against him until a wave of exquisite pleasure fractured me in the middle. My pussy pulsed and pulsed, and the more I clenched my thighs around his, the more intense the throbbing became.So good. So good. I buried my face in the crook of his neck while my release came over me in a rush. Sandro simply hugged me. Murmuring in my ear how glorious I looked when I came.

My clit was still sensitive. The slightest pressure against his erection sent shock waves of sensations that were addictive as hell.

“It won’t stop,” I whispered in his ear.

Sandro gave a choked chuckle. “Mind giving my poor cock some mercy before I blow behind my pants?”