Page 49 of His Wicked Wants (West Coast Mobsters #6)

CHAPTER 45

NERO

The Castellanis have gathered in the house—the survivors, anyway, along with twenty or so Bernardi faithful. The Espositos all seem to have gone, but I was very grateful for their assistance. We all were. The grand salon is currently filled with the wounded and the weary as a triage area for all of us to receive medical attention. I’ve been poked and prodded by some cranky old doctor, who bandaged my ribs up tight and snorted when I hissed or winced. I would have taken it personally, except that I’d already seen him poke and prod Gino Bernardi, then snort and declare him hospital-bound.

Roxy is sitting near me, holding Charlotte in her arms and rocking the child gently, absently. She was told she could not go to the hospital with her new husband. It was too dangerous—for both of them. Leo Bernardi sent some Castellani guards along with Gino, but there wasn’t much of a fight from Roxy in the end. She looks pale and lost, despite the loyal Bernardi soldiers who have taken up positions around her. Her wedding dress is a splattered canvas of pink, red, and rust.

The child, Charlotte, still clings to Roxy, staring blankly back at me no matter how much I cajole her. In the end, I call over Darian to suggest he make up a room just for the two of them, give them some privacy. “That’s a very good idea, Mr. Andretti,” he says, and bustles off to clear it with his boyfriend.

Gabriel has barely left my side; he stayed in the bathroom with me while I showered away the blood, though when I told him I could piss without a chaperone, he did give me a moment alone. But I found myself anxious to get back to him just as quickly.

And after Charlotte has been carried out by Roxy, I find my mind turning back to darker things.

I can’t believe Ray Ventura sacrificed himself for someone like me.

A spy. A traitor to my oldest friend.

“Are you okay? Do you want an ice pack?” Gabriel must have noticed my face.

“I think I just want to lie down for a while. A few hundred years should do it,” I tell him with a small smile.

I had been thinking of myself as part of this group. But the truth is, I’m merely intruding. I’m not even half the man Ray Ventura was, and I feel like a fraud sitting here among the Castellanis and the Bernardis who have been comparing war wounds. Sharing drinks, stories. Cleanup is already underway around the grounds, and another round of fireworks was set off to encourage the neighbors to assume that all was well at Redwood Manor.

And all I’m doing is taking up oxygen while I sit here. Oxygen that should rightly belong to Ray Ventura.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggest to Gabriel. I can’t sit still another moment, but I also can’t bear to be away from him.

He appears to feel the same way, nodding quietly at my suggestion. And together, we slip out through the mud room, since the kitchen is just as crowded as the salon, and we head back toward my guesthouse.

To get there we need to pass the pool, the site of so much carnage tonight. The blood is still there, although the bodies have been removed. The cleaners that the Castellanis employ are quick workers. By tomorrow, I doubt there will be any sign of what happened here tonight.

But I will never be able to sun myself here by the pool again.

I wonder what has happened to Ventura’s body. I wonder if his wife knows yet that he has died in service to the Castellani family. I have to pause and suck in a breath as pain strikes me in the chest—a little further away from the site of my bruised ribs.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Gabriel asks.

“I am alive,” I tell him. “That’s more than many men can say tonight.”

We reach the guesthouse, which has been trashed, almost as I expected. Gabriel seems more upset than I am.

“You should worry more about your precious plants, little gardener,” I say, mostly to distract him. It works—almost too well. Gabriel gives a gasp and turns as though planning to take off toward the greenhouse. I grab him back. “Don’t run off on your own,” I snap. “We don’t know if there are enemies still lying in wait.”

Gabriel shakes his head. “Raffi said they’ve done a comprehensive sweep of the grounds with the Espositos’ help. If there was anyone here, well…they’re not anymore.”

“Nevertheless,” I tell him. “Don’t run away from me, Gabriel. I don’t want to be separated from you, not tonight.”

He looks at me in the moonlight—a full moon, or thereabouts—and I see a look of understanding cross his face. “Here,” he says, turning up his palm. “Hold my hand, and then you can be sure I won’t run off.”

And so we walk hand in hand toward the great glass greenhouse, which miraculously seems to have survived the invasion. “It really was bullet-resistant,” I say, after we’ve walked around the outskirts.

“Let’s go in,” he tells me. “I want to check for damage inside. Those assholes might have broken in.”

“Let me do a sweep first.” I take out my gun. “I mean it, Gabriel,” I tell him when he groans. “I’m taking no further chances tonight on your safety.”

I head into the greenhouse, senses heightened once more for any hiding enemies. But after I have walked the rows, checked everywhere, including the garden shed where we once took shelter, I beckon him in. “There is no damage,” I tell him. But he wants to look around anyway, and I wander behind him as he goes, watch him touching each plant as though bestowing some of his energy into it.

He stops by the garden shed and then tugs me into it, arms snaking over my shoulders with deliberate slowness. “I’m still not sure if you were lying that day,” he says with a small smile, looking up into my face. The darkness wraps us in privacy, broken only by the moonlight reflecting in the still-open door that allows me to see him faintly. “About never building anything in your life. About only knowing how to destroy.”

I stroke his face, trace my nose over his. “It was true,” I admit, while I breathe in the essence of him—life and green things and stubbornness and hope . The pulse in his neck flutters beneath my touch as I slide my fingers over his skin.

“You protected me tonight,” he says. “You built a wall between me and death. That’s creation, not destruction.” His voice carries a tremor, but it’s not fear. I know what men sound like when they fear me. Gabriel has no fear of me at all—that is the most wondrous thing. “I think you’ve been building things all along here at Redwood. But they’re things you can’t see . Things like trust. Safety. Friendship. And…love.”

I catch my breath. The truth of his words settles in my chest like the warm honey in his apple pie tea, sweet and healing. My arms wrap tight around him until I can feel the heat of him through our clothes and I bend my head down to press my lips against his neck.

Because now I am afraid. I am afraid I misunderstand him, my little gardener. And that would be my ultimate destruction.

“I have learned so much from watching you,” I confess against his warm, beating pulse, “Your patience. Your care. The way you nurture life and beauty, both here on the grounds and around this city.”

He makes a soft sound, tilting his head back, offering his throat to my mouth, the moonlight silvering his skin. His hand finds my chest again, just as it did that first time, trembling slightly as it rests over my thundering heart.

“Nero…” he breathes, and this time when he says my name, it holds none of the uncertainty he had the last time we were here in this place. Instead, it carries everything we almost lost tonight…and everything we still might become together.

But I am still afraid. Afraid of losing him when Sandro sends me away.

Of losing him when he finds out what I really am.

A spy and a traitor.

“I want you,” I tell him, because I can’t say yet what I really feel for him. “Now.”

“I want you, too,” he assures me. “But you’re injured, and I don’t know if it’s a great?—”

I kiss him. I can’t stand to hear all that sympathy and solicitude that he has for me when I don’t deserve it, so I kiss him to silence him, and to show him how much I need him.

How much I…

“Please,” I gasp out, breaking away my mouth with difficulty. “Please, can we just…”

He slides his hands into my hair. “Of course we can. Should we go back up to the house? Or we could?—”

“Here,” I tell him, pulling at the borrowed t-shirt that someone somewhere gave him to wear.

Here among the plants and the smell of fresh soil. It feels right, somehow. And Gabriel seems to feel it, too, nodding as his head reappears from the top that I have pulled off of him. He strips down his pants just as I unbutton mine, my need driving me now.

My need for him. My need to remind myself that I am still alive, and so is he, and that there are still good things in this world.

One of them is right here before me.

My cock is hard already, thick and heavy and ready for him. He’s naked just as quickly, and when I pull him against me, his shaft slides against mine, the hot, velvet skin making me groan.

“Turn around,” I tell him, and he does it without question, bracing himself against the wall of the shed.

“Use this,” he says, twisting to grab one of the unopened jars set on a shelf on the wall. He pushes it into my hand?—

“Coconut oil?” I say blankly.

Gabriel gives a faint grin over his shoulders. “The gardeners—the actual gardeners—use it for their hands if they get too dry or cracked. And I’m totally up for a quickie, but I need to be able to walk after.”

“I won’t hurt you, tesoro . Not this time. Only pleasure—and only if you want it.”

“I do.” He turns, his face serious, and kisses me hard. “I’m not some fragile flower, Nero. You know that. Now get inside me.”

“So bossy,” I mutter. But I open the jar as ordered and grease up my throbbing dick with a scoop of the fragrant stuff. It melts fast into liquid, and Gabriel has returned to his position against the wall, offering his ass to me. I slick up his hole and my cock jerks in anticipation. I can’t wait to feel the heat of him, the tight clasp, but first...

“Are you mine, Gabriel? Tell me you’re mine. Let me hear it.”

“I’m yours,” he promises. “I am.”

And then, holding him open, I line up the blunt head of my dick against his knot and press inside.

The coconut oil makes the glide easier, but he’s still tight as hell, and Gabriel moans loudly, his head going back as I drive in deep, too frantic for finesse. I bottom out and force myself to stay there, let him adjust around me. He’s so hot and so welcoming, and I want him more than I ever have before. “Tell me when,” I pant against his ear. “I need you, tesoro , but you must tell me when I can?—”

“Move,” he tells me. “Fuck me. Please, Nero. Fuck me.”

That’s all I need to hear. I pull out a little, grip his hips hard, and fuck into him, forcing a gasp out of him. My hips start moving of their own accord. Harder. Deeper. Faster . I rest my head between his shoulder blades and watch the way my cock slides in and out of him, the way his body stretches to take me, and I’m lost.

I can’t stop, can’t hold back, and the noises coming out of Gabriel’s mouth tell me he’s close, too. He’s braced against the wall, his arms tense. His head is back, and his body is arching into me, his slick channel accepting and giving way to my cock as I plunder him.

“Touch yourself,” I pant, pulling him away from the wall and lifting him up onto his toes. I can get even deeper into him now, his muscles working greedily at my cock. I wrap an arm around his chest, a hand over his throat. He’s hot and tight and perfect , and he clenches tighter on me with every thrust, making me shudder. “Come for me,” I beg him.

His hand flies down to his cock, and a moment later, he’s coming, pulsing over his fist and onto the floor. I don’t slow, though. I keep driving into him, a feverish fuck in the face of all of the death and destruction of the night. Gabriel is crying out, a series of hoarse, desperate cries that make me want him even more.

Need him.

And there’s something else there, something I have never felt before. I think—I think I?—

But his orgasm has made him impossibly tight, over-sensitive so that he’s wriggling around in my arms, and the pressure in my cock is so intense… My hips stutter, slam home once more, and I empty into him, fill him with my cream, a groan ripping out of my chest as the pleasure crashes through me.

And then, with a final sigh, I collapse against him, pinning him to the wall, my body wrapped around him, cock still inside him. I can’t stop the shuddering that wracks me, the relief of knowing that he’s still alive. Still here. With me.

I can’t let him go.

But in the end, I have to. Gabriel stirs, his ass wriggles until I fall out of him, the smell of coconut oil rising up again between us. “That was…” He stops, shaking his head.

I know how he feels. I lack the words, too.

And there are things I want to tell him. Things he deserves to hear from me. Words I never thought I would utter, to describe feelings I never thought I would feel. But before I can do that, I need to clear the way. I need to make sure I am the kind of person he deserves.

“I must speak with Sandro,” I tell him quietly, after we have dressed. “You will wait in the kitchen up at the big house while I do. Please, Gabriel,” I add quickly, as he starts to protest. “It’s important. There are things I want to tell you—but before I do, I must speak to Sandro.”

He studies me closely. “So I’m just supposed to give way to you again?”

“I wouldn’t ask it if it wasn’t vital.”

“Then I’ll bend,” he says simply. “But Nero—you’re right. We do need to have a conversation ourselves after that.”

I pull him to me, kiss him breathless. “After I speak to Sandro, we will. And I will explain everything, everything.”

He nods slowly, lets me take his hand and lead him back out of the greenhouse. As we walk through the grounds, I rehearse the confession I’ll make to Sandro, clinging to a desperate hope that my oldest friend will forgive what even I cannot forgive in myself. Gabriel’s hand feels warm in mine, a warmth that I know I don’t deserve—and I want to deserve it.

But the path to redemption must begin with a confession.