Page 32 of Hidden Ties (Made Men #11)
TWENTY-SIX
MEN, GOD BLESS THEM. THEY WERE SO FULL OF THEMSELVES
S itting cross-legged on the bed, she flipped through a computer magazine she had found in the bottom drawer of the nightstand while Sal took his shower.
He had refused to let her take a shower with him after she almost knocked him unconscious while convincing him to try a new sexual position they hadn’t done yet.
A while ago, when Valerie had first opened the drawer, she thought she had found his secret stash of porn.
She’d heard all men had them. She’d decided to do some investigating in his room when she grew bored while he worked.
Did Sal have any pictures or memorabilia from any of his former girlfriends he hadn’t gotten rid of?
She planned to dispose of anything she considered came from a woman but hadn’t found anything except for an old photo of a young boy with a woman standing in front of the exact kind of car Sal owned that Valerie swore she’d never eat Taco Bell in again after knowing the importance of the car and the fast food chain.
The child in the photo, she easily recognized as Sal.
The beautiful woman, she immediately knew to be his mother, Isabella.
His mother had a carefree yet wild allure about her that drew your eyes right to her.
Valerie only wished she could have met her.
She also couldn’t help but notice the demons that haunted her hollow eyes that were reminiscent of the ones Sal carried today.
She pulled the picture closer to her chest before she placed it back where it belonged and started her search back up again. That was when she had found his stash …
As she flipped through the hefty stack of computer magazines, she came to the conclusion they were porn for Sal. She, too, kinda got hot staring at a couple of the computers featured in the magazines.
Growing frustrated that Sal was taking so long, she was about to join him in the shower whether he wanted her to or not, but then the bathroom door opened.
Valerie stretched her legs out as she eyed Sal’s lean body.
He looked like a tasty snack in only wearing a towel wrapped around his hips.
Her eyes drifted to where he had tucked it in low at his waist, which happened to be right below the bullet hole scar he now carried.
“You know, I’ve been thinking.” Valerie eyed the scar that only made him look that much tastier to her while her heart went all mushy whenever she thought about him saving her life that night.“We should discuss our future.”
Sal wadded up the towel he had been using to roughly dry his hair and tossed it toward the laundry hamper that sat in the bathroom; he missed.
She tried not to laugh too hard at the failure, when Sal sheepishly went back to the bathroom to put the towel where it belonged.
He kept his apartment meticulously clean, for reasons she now understood as well .
But, for some reason, he thought he was Michael Jordan when it came to his towels.
She had to kindly remind him more than once he never even played basketball growing up and still had yet to do so, as he continued only sitting behind a computer screen.
It wasn’t like she minded; athletes had never and would never be her thing.
“You want to talk about money or something?” he asked, trying to figure out where she was going with this.
Valerie rolled her eyes at him. “No, I don’t want to talk about money.”
“Good. Because I have enough money to buy you whatever you want. If Game Hookup isn’t interested in your game after the changes you want to make, we’ll be fine.”
She had been hard at work on her game again, reworking some of the characters. She planned to resubmit it within the coming days, but she couldn’t help herself not to get distracted from her point, as her interest in money perked up.
“You do?”
“Yep. Unless you want a mansion like Lucca’s, then we will have to start smaller.”
Her heart turned gooier. She had to selfishly admit she did like that he had money.
After being broke her whole adult life and struggling from paycheck to paycheck, and then to no paycheck, it was nice to not have to worry about how she could afford groceries anymore.
Especially when the groceries just showed up, thanks to Sal.
Even if they were all pretty much organic.
Plus, she could use some money for one of those computer parts she had been ogling in one of his magazines …
She’d lost track of what she had wanted to talk about, when Sal’s voice drew her out of her virtual world and back to the real one.
“Do you not like it here at the Casino Hotel? I thought you did.”
Valerie sighed. “ Love , Sal. I want to talk about love .”
“You want to talk about love in general, or, like, you and me?” he stammered out.
Valerie gave him a warning look. She had stayed at his penthouse for almost a month now since they left the hospital after Sal got shot. Since then, they had yet to separate from each other unless Sal went to work.
She hadn’t yet breached the topic of anything about them as a couple in the future because she had been waiting on three little words from him before she wanted to make plans of what her new future could look like.
Valerie had known up on that rooftop, when she thought he had died, that she had officially fallen in love with him.
She had cried so hard and gotten so scared because she thought she had lost the man of her dreams.
Sal hated the fact she continued to ask other men to be in her games, but Valerie no longer didn’t want to put him in a video game because, like Sal, she was jealous and had no plans on sharing him with the rest of the world.
“Me and you.” She made it clear that now was the time to rip off the Band-Aid to find out if he didn’t have the same feelings she had for him.
If Valerie didn’t find out today, she was never going to recover from having to walk away from him.
Sal could have easily changed his mind about making her his girlfriend over the past month, wishing he had just kept her as a fuck buddy.
After living with her for that long, she supposed he could do that.
“Don’t you think that if we are going to discuss money, we should talk about our feelings first?”
“Suuuure.”
“You know, Sal, you’re looking like less of a snack right about now and more so like a piece of broccoli,” she huffed out in frustration.
Sal could only stare at her in a stupor. “You’re comparing me to food?”
Scooting to the bottom of the bed to where Sal was standing, she untucked his towel and let it drop to the floor. “I adore food.” The words came out huskily. “Some, I love . Like snacks, for instance. Then some, I can leave and never touch them again.”
“That’s rather harsh,” he commented, staring her down with lust in his enormously deep eyes. “Some foods just need to cook a bit longer before you can enjoy the full taste.”
Her hand went to his joystick, running her thumb tenderly over the head. “I don’t. I only need one taste to see if I like something.”
Letting her hand slide down his cock, she covered the head with her mouth before she started sucking his cock fully into her mouth.
Sal’s thigh muscles started bulging as he got hot.
She loved it when his made man facade transformed into a normal one who was never sure if he was going to get laid or not.
His vulnerability that he was slowly showing her more every day made her want to make him happier, which in turned made her happier.
Clasping his dick tighter in her hand, she glided up and down on his cock smoothly while using her tongue to flick across his head when she reached the tip.
Sal ran his fingers through her hair before holding on. He was so gentle with her, as if afraid he might hurt her if he were to let himself go. Men, God bless them. They were so full of themselves.
His engorged cock got hotter and thicker, as if he were going to climax at any second, but she wasn’t going to let that happen just yet. She wanted to go along for the ride.
Removing him from her mouth, she let her lips travel to the inside of his thigh. “I love you, Sal,”she said, placing a kiss on his sensitive skin. She felt the skin underneath her mouth jump, as if he was afraid. “Are you afraid I’m going to bite you?”
“N-No.”
“You jumped when I told you I loved you.”
“Okay, maybe I did think you were going to bite me,” he admitted.
Standing, she turned them around until his back was to the bed and pushed him down. Then she watched the bed shake when he landed hard on the mattress.
Her hands moved up to her hips, then higher, and she slung her blue-black hair over her shoulder. “Salvatore Lastra, do you love me or not?”
“Oh, I love you,” he promised, his eyes sliding down her form.
Satisfied with his answer … for now, she launched herself at him, landing on his chest. “I’m going to show you how much I love you,” she bragged then gave him a warning glare. “Then you can show me how much you love me.”
Not taking it personally that Sal looked afraid, she went back to her favorite pastime activity. Gaming had been her number one for so long that she was still excited about the change in hobbies.
She lined her center up with his shaft, then lowered herself on top of him, moaning in ecstasy as she sank deeper. “You always feel so good.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Your dick speaks for itself.” She let him in on the secret that she bet any woman who had slept with him before had been desperate for seconds, but Valerie was prideful in being the only one.
Taking all of him inside of her to the hilt, she lowered her heavy head onto his chest, and his arms surrounded her as he clasped her to him.
“You okay?” he asked, worry in his heady tone. “You stopped moving.”
“I’m enjoying the moment.”
Sal’s chest started shaking underneath her cheek in a small laugh.
Unable to sit still long, she straightened to start moving on him again.
His beautiful eyes watched her as he twirled a strand of her hair around his finger, using the end of the strand to lightly tease her nipple.
“I love you, Valerie. You didn’t have to ask me if I love you.
It was plain to see if you’d just looked.
I love that when you get scared, you act crazy.
I love that we share the same love of computers.
I especially love that you love sex,” he groaned, bucking his hips under hers.
He stopped his teasing to grab her hips in a tight grip, pulling her harder down on him.
“You have a crazy-as-fuck sense of humor and do even crazier things without thinking them through. But you still frighten me, Valerie, and that’s the truth. ”
She stopped riding him. “How do I still frighten you?”
Flipping her over without warning, he pressed into her beneath him until she felt surrounded by him. “Because I thought I might lose you up on that rooftop, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to survive if anything ever happens to you.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“You can’t promise that any more than me not dying during a blue moon.” Sal’s large hand cupped her cheek as his voice went so small from pain. “I’d die if I had to go back to being alone … and I don’t want to be alone again.”
“You won’t ever be alone,” Valerie promised him while secretly promising to herself that Sal would never have to feel that pain again, not if she could help it.“You have too much family now,” she softly reminded him of the blessing he had found.
Arching under Sal when he started moving again, she raised her legs to his hips, holding on tightly as Sal showed her just how much he loved her.
And when she felt him climax inside of her, she let herself break apart in his arms, whispering in his ear how much she loved him, wanting to make up for all the times she had wanted to tell him over the past month.
She expected Sal to go to sleep after they had sex and was thinking about sneaking a snack. However, her eyes flew open when she felt herself lifted out of the bed.
“Why are you taking me to the bathroom? I was going to sleep.”
Sal turned on the shower. “No, you weren’t. You were waiting for me to fall asleep so you could get a MoonPie. You sleep a total of four hours, and you’re done for the next twenty. All the sugar you’re consuming keeps you from getting more sleep.”
She didn’t bother to tell The Great Salvatore that he was, in fact, wrong and that he didn’t know everything about her yet.
Until she had turned eighteen and left home, every gram of sugar she had consumed had been monitored.
Her stepmother had been a fanatic about it, believing the same thing Sal did—that sugar was the culprit of only needing a few hours of sleep and constantly being hyped up.
It wasn’t the sugar; it was simply how she was wired.
She just didn’t require a lot of sleep, and she was always hyped up because life was too short to miss out on what made you happy.
“So, you think a shower is going to help me sleep?” She wasn’t against the shower; she would just rather have the snack. Not to mention two showers in one night was a bit excessive for him.
“No, I thought you might want to try that position we tried the last time that didn’t work.”
I can wait to eat …
“You think you’ll be able to make me exhausted enough to sleep longer?”
Sal nodded slyly, like a fox. “Yes.”
Taking off her favorite oversized T-shirt she had stolen from Sal, she opened the shower door. “I’m always ready to play, baby. Just don’t blame me when you’re lagging.”