Page 90 of Scorned Beauty

“Taking care of each other?” I said innocently.

Our eyes met, but hers squinted. “Now don’t speak. Breathe normally.”

She put the listening piece to my chest and listened to my palpitations. Then she stood and put the probe to my back and gave me instructions to hold my breath and release it. I followed her orders automatically, but I was struggling not to react to her nearness. She smelled of coconut and vanilla. Not her usual scent of citrus and floral—she mentioned it was ylang-ylang once. But Sloane had her own essence, and its ability to make my blood surge south was absolute. My cock tented my pants.

Sloane’s body shook. She was trying not to laugh, but she backed away and stared at my erection.

“You’re impossible,” she whispered, both in annoyance and mirth.

I smirked. “What can I say? I feel so much better when you’re around me.”

“I’m serious, Dom.” She sat on a chair and looked me in the eye. “You shouldn’t have driven. At all.”

“I needed to get to you quickly, and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t gonna pass out while running.”

“Well, it would have been worse if you were driving. Lucy called me in a panic.”

She started putting everything away.

“Aren’t you supposed to check my blood pressure? Run an EKG?”

“With your monster cock saying hello? The results would be skewed,” she said dryly.

“Monster, huh?”

My eyes lazily traveled the length of her body. She was wearing a tank top and shorts. Her arms were thinner, but her tits were as full as I remembered. Fuck, this wasn’t helping my erection go down.

She stood up.

“Don’t go.”

She glared at me. “I think you’re the one who should go.”

“Sloane, please,” I whispered. She must have recognized the desperation in my voice because I saw a trace of pity, so I rushed out the words. “Please listen to me. I know I don’t deserve it, especially with the way I turned you away.”

Her face hardened, and I realized my mistake when she sneered, “I thought you’re done slumming?”

I briefly shut my eyes at the memory of those cruel words, but when I opened them, Sloane had already gathered up her stuff and left me to wallow.

I followed her to the bathroom. “Please listen to me.”

“I’m beneath your station, remember?”

The hateful words I said to her clawed inside my chest. Did I deserve her at all? No wonder she didn’t trust me.

“Leave.”

“I should have taken out Grigori when I had the chance,” I continued. I would never win Sloane back if I didn’t come clean. “Sandro asked me if I would consider it.”

“I didn’t expect you to take care of my problems!” she yelled, going into the kitchen. She grabbed a bottled water and handed it to me. “Drink this. That’s why I didn’t want to get involved with anyone from the mob. Mixing business and pleasure was the worst fucking idea of my life. So yes, it’s on me too.”

I was in whiplash with her handing me water, but I guessed my persistence was winning out. I twisted off the cap and took a gulp. I didn’t realize how parched I was. “We both made mistakes, but I had the power to ease your burdens and I didn’t. Selfishly, I thought I could have everything, but having everything was an illusion. The properties that I wanted Grigori to sell to me were for my mother.”

“Your mother?”

She walked over to the living room, and I followed eagerly like a lapdog. I was so gone for this girl and she wasn’t even aware of it. It wasn’t guilt. I simply stopped lying to myself. When I did, my obsession for Sloane flared so fucking bright, I was blind to everything else except her.

“The properties were a Moretti legacy. They owned them for generations. My mother had an arrangement to be married to a high-ranking member of the Russian bratva. Let’s just say, in the underworld, it could have been the match of the century. But they demanded our villas on the Amalfi coast as dowry. All the documents had been signed, but my mother backed out last minute and married Pop instead. The De Luccis aren’t small fish by any means, but we didn’t have the pedigree of the Zahkarovs.” I recounted the series of events that led to Ma’s breakdown and depression. How I did my part to take care of the family. And how her promise to a dying Emilio Moretti to get the properties back had been my vow to her.