Page 26 of Runaway in the Mafia (The shadows of Cosa Nostra Chronicles #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY

AHANA

“ N o.”

Ada startled at my outburst. Her hands trembled when she put the espresso down. “Oh, of course not.” Her voice was full of trepidation when she asked, “Did Vitale do anything he shouldn’t have?”

Yes! He made me all needy. I shouldn’t want to want him.

But I kept that part of me hidden from her. The dark, needy, selfish part. “No. Of course not.” There was a calmness in my tone that belied the fire he’d ignited in me. I forced a smile through shaky lips. “I’ll take it.”

I leaned in to grab the cup. She pulled it away, just out of reach. Her brow furrowed in deep thought. “He’s different with you.” She almost muttered to herself.

“What do you mean?”

She didn’t answer. Only shook her head. “I’ll switch off the stove and take it to him.

” Her glance shifted out the window, where Lia was fast asleep on one of the lounge chairs.

“A made man as a son, and my daughters… one’s too far from home.

My eldest won’t speak to me, and my youngest is lazy.

I did something wrong.” She sighed. “That girl needs to get up.”

“Nah. I can take it.” Should have just stayed in my room.

The mood was explosive today. I’d lit the fuse in the morning, and the wick was short and the dynamite too close.

The burn had reached into my veins. My brain was short-wired, and I was on edge.

His gaze had burned through my dress to where my thong should have been just an hour ago when he’d passed me and Lia in the hallway.

No doubt he had laser eyes. He knew I wouldn’t put on another pair just to let him get to victory.

A victory for which I was letting go of my sanity.

He had clearly taken my brain along with my satin.

I slipped off the chair. “Just to the office, right?” I asked nonchalantly as I released the hot espresso from her protective fingers.

“No.” Her tone was tight. “The library. He doesn’t work there ever since he caught—” she winced. “ Beddra Matri , the sauce is burning.” She turned around to stir wildly.

No, it isn’t.

The black porcelain in my hand was scalding and the steam from it blistering.

But it didn’t stop me from pausing in front of the office door.

Curiosity made me jiggle the handle. I expected it to be locked.

But it twisted under my hand and gave way.

One of the maids must have cleaned it. I didn’t step into the room.

This was as far as guilt took me. Standing in the doorway, I peeped in.

This way, I didn’t feel like I was betraying a certain dark gaze.

There wasn’t anything special about it. Just a battered oak desk, filing cabinets and a dark room.

I gently pulled the door closed. There was only one conclusion to that.

It wasn’t the room itself that spoke of a crime and a deadbeat.

It was the memories of it that held this household in a frozen heartbeat.

My chest panged. Hurt for their agony was a tangible line that traced my heart.

A mother with regret, a daughter hiding her anger under a false facade, and a son who was determined to repent for his father’s sins.

I didn’t know if Ada’s eldest daughter, Orietta, not speaking to her had something to do with it as well, but Carlo, the former don, had done a masterpiece on his family.

He had tormented his family. So deeply that the wounds were still bleeding a year after his death.

Was this the reason Vitale had killed him? Did anyone even know of it, or had he whispered that secret in my ears as a test?

I was so distracted with my thoughts that I had already padded to the library.

It was that or I had somehow convinced myself the encounter a few hours earlier was only in my imagination.

Or somewhere within the dark hollow of my consciousness, I desired to see him.

Whatever it was, it brought my hands to the door and knocked.

It made my feet move to his irritated, “Come in.”

Hey Bhagwan!

He wasn’t of this world. That was the only logical explanation.

He was already a walking sin. The kind of gorgeousness that made a woman’s knee wobble and her heart beat jump like a ping-pong ball.

But with glasses, black framed and light, and a silver Mont Blanc between his fingers, he was a weapon. Loaded. Ready to destroy.

With one hand on the door, a step was all I could manage before doubt pulled me to a halt.

His annoyed gaze shifted. It scorched me.

My skin burned like I was standing in front of an open flame.

The room was dark and intense. The air was sultry and unfiltered evil.

His mood matched it perfectly, and the need to run overtook me.

But my insane mind didn’t follow the logic of it.

It let the door slip past my trembling fingers, and when it clicked shut behind me, softly, I knew it without a doubt.

This was bad. The kind of bad with a sinkhole to hell.

Pāpā would often say my will to succeed would pull me through anything. I proved him right. Faking a confidence I didn’t feel, I pulled my shoulders straight and moved to his desk. Only the slight tremble of fragile porcelain in my hand could have given me away.

One step and he pulled his glasses off. No barrier anymore between us.

Two and he took the tip of his Mont Blanc to his teeth.

Three and four. He lounged back in his seat.

His gaze sparked. He was a panther. Dark, powerful, and ready to pounce.

Not today, I thought stupidly.

My hand reached for the table. Maddeningly, somewhere in my mind was a thought.

I’d put the cup down and walk out of the room.

Unhurt. Unchanged. But somewhere between the languid air and the desk, he cuffed my wrist and proved me wrong.

The cup clattered onto his desk, the dark liquid blackening it.

He couldn’t have cared for the papers soaking underneath it because his gaze burned on me and only me, as he pulled me around the desk, right up to him.

There wasn’t a sane thought in my mind to pull away.

There was no thought at all. I was a trailer.

With no engine. That he pulled and tugged with his supercar.

I was three feet away from him. He was the gasoline, and I was ready to ignite.

His gaze bit into my edges and with just an arm’s width away, it burned into my soul. But still, I held his in mine because I was nothing if not adamant, and giving in wasn’t an option.

A light laugh escaped him. The only sound that had passed in this room.

It was all cocooned and intimate. The warmth of it caught at the hollow of my rib cage.

I stored it within my chest with a lock and a key.

I’d never heard this laugh before, and something told me it was only for me.

It was insane. That thought and how it made me feel.

But I ignored it because all of it was anything but sane.

He made me lose my morals. Made me feel feverish and out of control.

And confused. But he made me feel something else, too.

A delicious happiness and a devilish desire.

One that seeped into my pores like warm, thick honey.

His cuff on my wrist tugged, and I ended up a breath away from his bent knee. When he inhaled, the warm fabric of his cotton pants grated on my naked skin. Like sandpaper gliding on velvet. I was too sensitive, and he was too rough. This thing between him and me, was not meant to be.

It didn’t make me pull away. It didn’t make him stop, either.

From bunching my dress up with the aid of brushed titanium curled into a luxury pen.

It glided up innocently. It wasn’t his touch, I comforted myself.

It was just an object. The coldness of the metal climbed up the inside of my thigh.

Inch by inch, it conquered a path it shouldn’t.

It should have sent an icy chill running through me.

Preferably shrivel the need pulsing between my legs.

At the very least, leave me unaffected and cold, like coming out of the house and realising it was just another dreary day.

It did nothing. Nothing other than burn me.

Like he’d taken a hot metal rod and trailed it up my thigh instead.

“I’ve been thinking…” his voice rasped as he flicked his wrist to glance at his Panerai.

“For the past four hours and twenty-four minutes…” The titanium in his other hand bit into my flesh, a full hand away from where I needed it to be, but too far up to be anywhere appropriate.

“What I’ll find in between…” he didn’t finish his thoughts, but the metal climbing higher was right at the edge, at the split of my thigh.

Inside, my core clenched. My pulse spiked.

Outside, my hand gripped the edge of the desk.

This was so wrong. On so many levels.

Telling myself that didn’t make me pull away. My will, which had always been my constant companion, which had helped me have the courage to walk out of another situation, surrendered. Armour clattered, and I stood before him. Fragile and wanting.

His next words, filled with need, only yanked me in, right up to him. The thick black line I’d drawn dissolved like powder in water until no evidence remained of the line I had once drawn as a border of sin. “Are you wet, mia ammaliatrice?”

My hand clenched on the desk. It bit onto the brass studs nailed to the leather edges. I commanded it to hold me upright because the rest of my body was jelly on sticks.

“You know I’ll have to find out myself if you don’t answer me.” Yes. I prayed that he did. And as if he’d heard my prayer, the thin metal of the fountain pen swallowed the gap and entered territory that wasn’t his to take nor mine to give.

My eyes squeezed shut and a cold sweat slid down my spine.

Metal soothed my line. What remained of my willpower pooled out.

Morality vanished. Need was all I could see.

All I could feel and taste. My vision blurred, and the effort to hold myself up and not sink into the metal was insane.

It shook my body from the effort of it. I fought it, but somehow, I couldn’t stop myself from spreading my thighs.

Not much. Just an inch. But it screamed my want like I’d hopped onto his desk and spread my legs wide.

His breath hissed. A second later, the thin barrel slipped in, and a sob tore from me.

A pulsing need took over me. Hey Bhagwan.

How could I be turned on by a pen, of all things?

It was nothing. It vanished in thickness.

Was cold as hell. Yet it was hot and steel and inside me.

Worst part of it? It was so much more than I’d ever felt before.

He wasn’t even touching me, yet I could feel him.

His thumb was just a breath away from my clit.

I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop myself if I’d been tied down by metal chains.

I rolled my hips and pulled the metal another inch in.

“Jesus fuck,” he groaned. “How are you this hot?” My gaze dropped, and it collided with his. Heat sizzled in his eyes. Reflected mine. His other hand fisted on his thigh so hard that his veins popped out.

I should pull away. I really should. But instead, I cramped around the thin metal and moaned out my lust. My nerves were alight, and I was all tingly.

My pulse drummed so hard it felt like I was a part of it.

Then he gave the slightest push. The flick of his thumb on my clit, and I combusted and came for the very first time.

He had barely touched me.

I was right about one thing. I should never have stepped into this room.