Page 33 of Runaway in the Mafia (The shadows of Cosa Nostra Chronicles #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

VITALE

M y hands fell flat on the mattress instead of naked skin. Memory foam and microcoils beneath me when I wanted it to be velvet and silk. Even before my eyes sprang open, her absence stabbed into my chest like a knife in an open wound. A steady hum of anger built beneath my fingernails.

I’d known it was coming, but the reality was still too fucking intense. My hand fisted around the sheets and found them still warm, but I knew she’d already checked out halfway through our last fuck.

With a groan, I flipped onto my back and ran my hands over my face. Fuck! They still smelled like her. Frustration rattled through my nerves. The whole damn room breathed her scent and I hadn’t even got a taste of her. I’d only fucked her thrice. Thrice. What was that compared to a million times?

I’d fought it all. I’d fought not to come because I felt her pulling away like a physical ache.

Something made her mood swing the last time we fucked.

She checked herself out. This was going to be our last time.

I felt it. Saw it in her eyes. And fuck if I was going to come and give her a way out.

But of course, my fucking dick couldn’t stick to the plan.

Nor could my brain cells by losing consciousness.

Even when I knew she’d slip out when I was out.

Her fucking defiance was turning into heartburn.

Those walls of hers had gone up clattering and clamouring like metal barricades.

I’d had the best night of my life. But she’d decided it wasn’t worth hanging around for.

Left me so I could wake up to sunlight and an empty bed.

Well, if she didn’t want me, I didn’t want her either.

That thought lasted all of two minutes of the tick-tock on the wall. I didn’t care if she wanted me or not. I was having her.

It wasn’t a choice.

I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

My throat tightened, and somewhere in my chest, a metal clasp unfastened.

Despair rolled in, and the smoothness of the night before rolled out.

Like a fucking flat losing air. My hands trembled when I searched through the bedside table for a cigar.

When the Zippo lit, the flame wasn’t steady.

The first puff of nicotine of the day did nothing to quell the turmoil lining my stomach walls.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

My gaze dropped to the floor. My shoulders sagged with the weight of it.

Is this what Carlo had felt? This pure, unrelenting need to fuck.

I growled at my dick. Can you fucking give it a rest?

But now that I’d had her, heard her sultry moans, had her fingers scraping along my skin, had her pussy clenched on my dick…

there was nothing I wouldn’t do to have her.

Again. And again. I’d done everything I could to not become him.

But suddenly I didn’t want anything else.

And the best part? She had melted against my skin like butter into a hot pan.

Mia ammaliatrice.

A temporary reflex, apparently. Three fucks further, she was thinking of running away.

Her mistake. She’d given herself to me. There was nowhere in hell she could run that I wouldn’t catch her.

Fuck her and drag her the fuck back home.

If I had to, I’d chain her to my fucking bed.

Because one thing was clear. Any doubt I might have had was cleared up.

She was no one else’s other than fucking mine.

AHANA

My face burned like I was under Delhi’s scorching heat. I didn’t need to pick my gaze up from the bed to know the dark rage crowding the doorway belonged to him. The man who’d made me come so hard that I could still feel the aftershock like an earthquake long past.

Awareness crawled all over my skin. In case I mistook it for my imagination, goosebumps rode along to prove it.

I wrapped my arms tighter around my knees.

Clasped my elbows with my palms and ducked my head.

Tried to give my full attention to Lia moaning about her tiredness.

But inside me, my thoughts whirled like a twister.

Decadent memories and delicious insinuations filled it.

Olive skin, bronzed chest, strong, lightly dusted hands.

All of this without even counting his weapon of destruction.

The one between his legs. I could build a shrine around it.

To have him inside me. When he had been so hard. And he had been hard. For me.

“Well, hello,” Lia piped up. I took a deep breath and, against my better judgement, lifted my head.

Are yaar! He stood there just in his boxer briefs.

The thought that I’d seen him with far less made my skin heat.

Something he caught with his entire attention on me.

I burned under his microscopic glare. Scandalous words like I’ve got a new addiction and m ade for my cock heated in my ears.

“You want to know how my night went?” Lia asked, immune to everything.

“No.” His tone was harsh. Tight. Almost angry.

“Well, buon giorno, fratello mio. I’m telling you anyway.” Sarcasm dripped off her tone as she frowned at her brother. “I’m so tired, Vitale. I feel so disoriented and have a monster of a headache.”

“Don’t blame me for catching something.”

She frowned. “Hmm…” Her hands pinched her forehead. “Maybe that’s it.”

“It is. You’re always at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Wow! You’re ruder than your usual self, and that’s saying a lot. Bad night?”

“Great.”

She tilted her head. “Oh, what happened?”

“Plenty.”

“Geez, Vitale.” She kicked off the bed and walked up to him. “At least you slept well. Ahana and I didn’t.”

“Yeah?” His gaze was on me. I flicked past it to comb the wallpaper.

“Although…” Lia paused, and my heart skipped a beat. Suspicion streaked all over her face when she stepped closer to her brother. “Good in your world means you killed someone. Did you?”

He chuckled, but it sounded more like a dark rumble. “It was all good and not yet.”

Why the hell was he still looking at me?

Lia moved past him to the hallway, and he and all his evil intentions stepped inside. I was up and pasted against the wall in a heartbeat.

Why did this man act like an animal? He prowled…

actually prowled… towards me. Slowly, steadily, with a smirk on his lips.

He orbited into the room. I inched my way to the doorway.

Wrong move. Just when I thought I might have actually gotten out of the room in one piece, he pounced.

I screamed. His palm crashed onto my mouth, shutting me up.

“What on—” Lia uttered, as echoes of her feet running downstairs reached the bedroom. A deep, angry growl sounded by my ear.

“Tell her you’re alright, or I’m shutting you up with my cock in your mouth.”

Oh my God.

“What’s it going to be?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. It didn’t matter which game we played. He was the type to win every one of them. I nodded shakily, and his palm left my mouth.

I licked my lips, “Huh…” your brother attacked me? “There’s… a cockroach.”

His scowl burned with irritation.

“Good God, woman.” Lia’s voice was annoyed at the bottom of the steps. “I need coffee. Get Vitale to shoot it or something. I think he needs to kill someone.”

It was my turn to glare at him. His smug look pissed me off. He had me boxed between his arms two feet from the doorway. I’d gone to the effort of scrubbing my skin raw to rub his scent off me. But he seemed to be intent on leaning forward and getting it all over me. I pushed back to the wall.

“You left me hanging, m ia ammaliatrice. Why?”

“What world are you living in? That was never an option.”

“The only world I choose. The one where we fuck. Like rabbits.” He dropped his mouth to the edge of my lip and licked it. My toes curled, and my nails dug into the wall. “You’re a fucking witch.”

“Insulting, are we?”

He pushed his hand underneath my pyjama bottoms, yanked my thong and snapped it back.

Hard. Oh my God. It hit my clit and vibrated on my needy core.

I bit my lip. Put in an inhuman effort into keeping my pelvis from rocking against him.

He had no qualms about it and rubbed against me with a devious smile on his lips.

He grew thick in his boxer briefs. My effect on him was fascinating. Utterly addictive.

“Why don’t you give in?” he rasped.

My thoughts scrambled. “What?”

“Touch me. I know you want to.” He bent his head, pulled the thin skin on my neck, rolled it in his mouth and let it out with a snappy bite. “I know you want to run your tongue on me. Drop to your knees and finish off what you started last night.”

Oh no. No. No. No.

I ducked under his arm and shot halfway across the room, clutching onto the bathroom doorway, before he could catch on.

“This is never going to happen again.”

When he turned, there was maniac written all over him. The kind that was a danger and should be locked up. “I disagree.”

“It’s not up—”

Two long strides, and he was on me. Crowding me in against the bathroom doorway. I didn’t even get the chance to lunge for the door. Let alone slam it shut in his face. “If you even fucking think I’m done with you—”

“Doesn’t anyone want coffee?” A beat later, Lia walked in, carrying three mugs cupped in her hands. I jerked away from him and hit my hip with a sharp sting against the sink.

His fists clenched in the doorway. He looked violent enough to blow a hole through the door. With his fist.

“Huh…” Lia’s gaze was sceptical, “What’s going on?”

His nostrils flared as he gritted his teeth. His glare zeroed in on me. Telling me we were anything but done. His gaze lifted to the ceiling. “Fucking cockroaches,” he hissed. Then he pushed off the wall and stormed out of the room, leaving me dishevelled and Lia confused.

“Did he at least shoot it?”

Lia was watching me. Innocence in her eyes, but something veiled behind it. I mutely shook my head.

“No wonder he’s pissed off.” She dropped the coffee cups on the bedside table and took something from her pocket. “You might want to get that dress looked at.” She opened her palm. “I found like three buttons downstairs.”

I stayed away from him like he was the gasoline to my oil. I used Lia as my human shield and stuck to her like super glue. His death glares that roasted me into a million pieces, I ignored. Well. Tried to, at least. I lasted through breakfast, and then I announced a migraine from hell.

“Well, I’ve got one myself,” Lia announced for the tenth time. Thankfully. “Can we just go home, Vitale?”

Yes!

I didn’t hang around for his opinion. I packed fast enough to break a record. Before the two of them were out, I was ready, in the car on the back seat.

The passenger door flew open, and Lia popped her head in. “Why don’t you sit in front?”

I scrunched my forehead and ran a line along it. “Nah. I just want to sleep it out here.”

“Okay.” She hesitated for a second before she moved to the boot with her bag.

She was good. Really good. But suddenly I knew it.

She knew what was going on. I didn’t have time to register that before the door beside me pulled open, and he loomed over me.

Dark, angry with a chip on his shoulder, rage in his eyes.

“Not going to win an Oscar with that performance.”

“What performance?”

“You don’t have a fucking headache, Ahana.

” He shoved his hand into my hair, fisted it, and yanked me close to his face.

The seatbelt snagged. My breath hitched.

“That’s not the way you scrunch your forehead when you have one of your actual fucking headaches.

If you’d asked me, I would have given you a lesson or two.

On acting.” He nodded towards my shocked face.

“Among others,” he muttered before he shoved me back.

“I don’t need lessons.”

“You don’t have a choice. Those lessons are fucking coming.”

He slammed the door so hard that I thought I might actually get a headache.

But I didn’t think it was wise to tell him that.

His glare burned me from the rearview mirror as he started the engine.

I decided there was an easier solution. So I closed my eyes and pretended for the entire ride home.

Worked on those acting skills I apparently needed.

Coincidentally, my eyes snapped open the moment the engine cut out.

Without a single word, I stumbled out and raced up the stairs to my room.

Exploding into the room with a sigh of relief, I locked the door and slid against it to the floor.

It lasted all of three minutes before dread sank in.

Two things became apparent. One, the heavy, deep thud on the floorboards coming my way, I knew all too well. Second— Shit. Shit. Shit.

The door rattled on the other end, and a murderous growl followed it. “Open the fucking door, Ahana.”

He must have been furious. His voice must have been loud. But it sounded like I was far below, under water, gasping for breath.

Mistakes screamed at me.

A trill on the far end and an angry conversation on a phone.

“Fuck.”

He must have punched the door because I slid forward from the force of it.

“We’re not fucking done, Ahana.” He must have crouched down because suddenly his voice was close. Too close. “And don’t you dare run away because I swear to God you do not want to meet the fucking monster in me.”

He waited. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Could hardly breathe in my panic-crowded chest. Finally, his footsteps retreated. I was only half aware of it.

I had to run. I had less of a choice than last night. Because then I’d been too lust-induced. Too na?ve to realise what had bothered me. He’d been inside me. Raw. Three times.

If Rajesh found out, he’d put me through a grinder and shred me into a million pieces. The six times he’d beat me to a pulp would look like child’s play.

He wouldn’t. I was going to make sure of it.

Because I realised a third thing. I was in too deep. This shouldn’t be about me. It should be about them. It was time I put my family before myself. It was time I realised this life wasn’t meant for me.