Page 4 of His Wicked Wants (West Coast Mobsters #6)
CHAPTER 3
NERO
Another tedious day at Redwood Manor draws to a close.
I’ve been lying idly on the sofa for half an hour, nursing an expensive drink and trying to persuade myself to go to bed, when what I really want to do is go back into the city and find a willing body to take my pleasure with. But they wouldn’t satisfy the need I have. There’s only one person who could do that, and he seems completely unwilling—for now.
The silence of the estate presses in. No traffic hum, no city pulse, just the distant sound of trickling water from fountains and the pool, the occasional rustle of leaves. And when I turn my face toward the window, I see those damn trees in the distance, shadows under the half-moon, hiding the truth of what lies beyond.
Even the air here at Redwood feels too clean, too pure. It needs corrupting.
Just like the body I crave. Shockingly, Gabriel Carstairs seems immune to me—though the way he looked at me by the pool today… I smirk at the memory.
And yet I am here alone.
I toss aside my phone, watching it fall onto the thick rug in front of the sofa. Sandro’s decision to allow me to prove myself came many months ago now, but he has yet to place me in any meaningful role. The work I’ve done for him so far has been well beneath my capabilities—running messages between crews, driving around Eugene Lombardo, the Family lawyer, to meetings when his regular driver was on vacation. Yesterday I spent three hours in a parking garage waiting for a handoff that never happened. And as for this guesthouse that Sandro stashed me in, it feels more like a cage with each passing day. I long for Rome or Naples, Venice or Milan. The longer I stay here, the more I feel like an unwelcome transplant—and Redwood is trying to reject me.
But I must stay. And so I stay.
Recently I’ve been on a few runs with Johnny Jacopo, Sandro’s right-hand man these days. That should have proved more useful to my mission here than it did. But Jacopo—Jack, as they call him—was as tight-lipped as the craftiest old Sicilians are, his silence impenetrable. I didn’t want to push too far. And now a glimmer of hope lies in tomorrow. I have been told to make myself available for lunch with Sandro, whose presence I have not been alone in since my formal request to join his Family. And if my hopes are dashed once more…well, then I must continue to be patient. I arrived at an inopportune time, and I suppose there’s no reason for Sandro to trust me, coming as I did from his mother’s empire.
But there is no reason for him not to trust me, either, if he took me at my word. That’s what rankles. I am Sandro’s oldest friend—his best friend. His trusted right hand in our younger days—but no longer. Now this Jacopo has taken my place, and I’m so bored I’ve taken to playing games with one of the unfortunate staff members here.
Gabriel Carstairs pretends to hate me though he can barely keep his tongue in his head when he looks at me. That’s just the kind of challenge I enjoy, and it doesn’t come around often. Usually, I have my pick—but I find myself tired of the easy pickings. I’m beginning to discover that the sweetest offerings grow on the branches more difficult to reach…and Gabriel grows on the highest branch of all.
But it’s so easy to rouse a response in him that I find myself teasing more than I should. Those green eyes of his flash so beautifully when he’s angry. He stands as straight and unbending as his precious trees, rooted firm in principles I haven’t encountered since…
Well, ever.
I’ve just stripped down to my underwear, the cool night breeze flowing in the open window a pleasure against my skin, wondering how to fill in the time before I sleep, when there’s a furious banging at my front door. Finally—a call to arms, perhaps? But when I take a moment to look through the peephole, it’s not a Castellani member. Far from it.
Perhaps this day will not be a complete loss after all.
I pull open the door and lean against the frame, crossing my arms casually. “Yes?”
Gabriel Carstairs has green eyes, a true emerald green, like the finest stones in La Contessa’s collection. Tonight they seem filled with green fire as he glowers at me, and I have a flash-memory of the viridian flames that led to my first meeting with La Contessa. Indeed, Gabriel might almost look dangerous, if I didn’t know he’s just as harmless as his precious flowers. And he can’t stop those green eyes darting downward to take in my near nudity.
A flush runs up his neck, but he resolutely pulls his gaze back to mine. “How dare you speak to Julian Castellani about those trees?”
I’ve never seen him so riled up, and it sends a thrill of deep pleasure through me. I wonder…yes, I think he’s angry enough to forget himself. So I open the door wider, turn my body in silent invitation, and like a very delicious fly he wanders right into my web, striding past me into the guesthouse. The scent of wine follows him—someone’s taken a little liquid courage.
Perhaps he could stand a little more.
“Would you like a drink?” I’m already pouring myself one from the crystal decanter, the liquid amber in the soft lighting, and enjoying the show immensely as Gabriel paces my living room. His hair, long enough to curl over and around the collar of his dress shirt—the most formal I’ve ever seen him, I think—is tempting me to grab it, just to keep him in place long enough to kiss him breathless. My fingers twitch around the decanter.
“No, I don’t want a drink,” he says frostily, stopping to glare at me again. His reflection multiplies blackly in the windows on either side, a squadron of angry, green-eyed beauties. “I want you to answer a question.”
Intriguing. “Ask away.”
“I want you to tell me, Mr. Andretti, why you delight in devastation and destruction? Why you’re so determined to tear things down, to destroy life wherever you can?”
I grin, coming close to him with my drink in hand. The ice clinks against crystal like tiny warning bells, but Gabriel Carstairs is too furious to heed them. “What is it about a few old trees that gets you so heated, my friend?”
“I am not your friend,” he spits. But when I take a step closer, really move into his personal space, he doesn’t back away. The cloud of wine gives way to his natural scent, and I breathe him in deeply.
“Not yet,” I agree, “but we could change that. We could change it right now, in fact.” I raise one eyebrow in unmistakable suggestion.
He sucks in a breath. Oh, he’s tempted, I can see that, both in his face and in his many reflections around the room. A score of Gabriels, all trying not to want me. I reach up to a lock of light brown hair that curls under his earlobe. It’s as soft as it looks, silk between my fingertips.
“I’d be happy to take this conversation into the bedroom,” I tell him in my most seductive voice, the one that no man has been able to resist. And surely not Gabriel Carstairs, not when I’m standing almost naked in front of him, and sliding a firm hand around the back of his neck. I let my thumb brush under his jaw, feel the pulse in his neck jump, and put down my drink. “What do you say? You could educate me in environmental studies all you like, and…perhaps I can introduce you to some new wood?”
Too crude. His eyes, which had been softening like early spring, turn hard and wintery once more. “If you think I have any interest in entering your bed, Mr. Andretti, you’re more of a fool than I already took you for.” He shakes his head to rid himself of my hand and takes a step back. “Don’t you ever try to go behind my back again. Do you hear me?”
I sigh and shrug, letting the movement ripple across my bare chest. “There is a happier way this argument could end, but if you’re determined to be unpleasant?—”
“Mr. Andretti, you need to learn that although you might live on the grounds of this estate, you do not have a right to take anything in it for your own. Plants or people.” His voice shakes slightly on the last words.
I pick up my drink again and take a sip, letting the crystal rest against my lower lip as I look at him once more from under my lashes. “Will you be so brutal with Roxanne Rochford, I wonder, when she asks you to remove a few plants for her wedding? Or am I the only one who raises this fire in you, Gabriel?”
It’s the first time I’ve ever let his given name leave my lips, and I can tell by the flash of shock across his face that he knows it, too.
“I’ve said my piece,” he says stiffly. “And if you really want to know, no, Ms. Rochford will not get this kind of treatment from me, but that’s because she would never ask for something so unreasonable.”
“Ah. I see you haven’t yet met the woman in person.”
Gabriel looks around the guesthouse, almost confused to find himself inside my lair. The moonlight streaming through the windows paints him in silver and shadow. “I’ve said what I came to say.”
“So you assured me already. You’re sure there’s nothing else you feel a deep need to confess to while you’re here?” Might as well give it one more shot.
But I’ve lost him. He walks away backward, colliding with an armchair that he gives a startled glance and sidesteps on his way to the door, making sure to keep his eyes on me as though I’m a dangerous animal.
And indeed, I am.
“Don’t do it again,” he says when he reaches the door, his hand fumbling for the knob.
“There are few men in this world who have the right to give me commands. And unfortunately for you, you are not one of them. So I look forward to meeting on the battlefield again tomorrow, Mr. Carstairs. Arrivederci .” I raise my glass to him in a mocking toast.
He gives an irritated huff as he storms out and slams the door behind him.
Not quite what I hoped when I first sighted him through the peephole, but he certainly makes things more interesting around here. I drain my glass, savoring the heady moment. I enjoy a hunt. Under La Contessa’s tutelage, I learned how to track my prey, to corner it, then make it come willingly into my hands. I’ve applied those lessons in bedrooms and boardrooms across Europe.
And in the backstreets, too, where the blood spilled is no metaphor.
But these days I don’t get much of a chase. Men roll over too easily for me—and a little conquest now and then is good for the soul. Especially when the prey is this delicious.
But Gabriel Carstairs is not like the willingly-ravished socialites or minor royals I’m used to in Europe. He’s pure in a way I haven’t encountered before. Part of me wants to drag him into my world of darkness, to tear his soul apart and devour it.
And part of me—a part unfamiliar, a part I don’t understand—wants to preserve that green fire in his eyes, to keep it burning bright even as I claim him.
Yes. Gabriel Carstairs might be something I haven’t come across in years: a challenge worthy of my full attention.
And I promised him another battle tomorrow, after all.