Page 16 of Sin City Obsession (De Salvo Empire #1)

Chapter eight

Morning Aftercare

“Just keep an eye on him,” Rocco said, speaking sharply while keeping his voice low enough not to carry. “If he looks like he’s going to run, swoop in. Otherwise, hang back for now. Observe.”

“Sure thing,” the soldier on the other end said before the line disconnected.

Rocco bit back a sigh, lowered his phone back to the counter, and took another moment to gather the various items of discarded clothing before making his way back up the steps.

He would have liked to still be asleep in that bed, his legs tangled up with Alessa’s and her head on his shoulder, but they could only ignore the outside world for so long.

Still, he stopped just shy of the mess that had become of the king-sized bed and let his lips lift in a smile that felt a little too warm.

She was exactly where he’d left her when he’d slipped out minutes earlier, the pillow he’d tucked under her head in lieu of himself cradling her face as she lay more on her stomach than her side.

The sheet was high enough to obscure most of her torso, leaving only a tease of her breasts visible, and somehow that added to the allure.

He knew he had wanted her, but he hadn’t been prepared for what it would feel like to have her. The woman was a fucking dream.

Rocco swallowed a brick of confused, half-aroused feelings, set the bundle of fabric down, and detoured into the ensuite bathroom.

He didn’t bother looking in the mirror as he strode straight into the shower and turned it on, adjusting the spray and prepping the temperature before stepping out again.

It wouldn’t take long for the water to warm, but that was good.

They didn’t have a whole lot of time to get themselves decent.

He lowered himself onto the side of the mattress and brushed his fingers through Alessa’s wildly tangled hair. “Time to get up, beautiful,” he said, projecting the words just above a whisper in hopes not to startle her.

Her brow furrowed and she turned her face toward the pillow.

Rocco grinned and trailed his touch, heavier, down her neck. “Alessa. I’m not above ripping this sheet off you and waking you up another way. Open those pretty eyes before I’m forced to choose between your ass and your sore, sweet pussy.”

This time she groaned. “Holy mother, have mercy,” she said, her voice cracking. “I need at least twenty-four hours to recover from whatever the fuck we did last night.”

He chuckled as she pushed herself upright and blinked her bleary brown eyes at him. “Sex, beautiful. We had sex.”

She managed to glare at him. “Sex is what normal people do. What we did was more than that.” She looked down at herself, at the sticky residue that had dried and mostly still adhered to her skin, then out at him.

Some had transferred onto him, of course.

“My skin feels itchy. I can’t believe we slept like this. ”

Rocco hooked his hand around her nape and leaned in as he pulled her forward. “I’m a man of my word, Alessa. And I want a good morning kiss.”

Her fingers splayed over his abdomen. “You might have a problem.” Her tone was teasing, soft, and any other time would have had him hardening in a heartbeat.

Probably they really had gone overboard the night before.

But he put that out of his head and kissed her, slow and deep, enjoying the way she reciprocated as though she felt just as drawn to him as he did to her.

It was arguably a good thing they both needed a little time to let their bodies recover.

Rocco broke the kiss and pulled them both to standing before he could let himself forget anything else.

“C’mon,” he said with a grunt, “much as I would like to laze about and enjoy you all day, neither of us penciled in an off-day. We need to shower and be at least half-dressed before your assigned housekeeper gets here.”

Alessa drew a satisfactorily shaky breath and nodded. “Right. What time is it?”

“Just after ten.”

Her eyes blew wide and she rocked back. “Ten?”

“We followed a hard afternoon with hours of exhaustive fun,” Rocco replied, arching a brow at her visible shock.

“I’ve only been up for maybe fifteen minutes.

Figured I’d let you sleep as much as I could.

” He laid a hand on her hip and aimed her toward the bathroom.

“But now we’re tight on time, so you have to share. ”

Alessa moved forward in silence until they’d stepped into the ensuite. “Rocco…”

He hummed, keeping his inquiry gentle despite his mounting curiosity at her intense surprise. He assumed she didn’t ordinarily sleep so late, but he was pretty sure she didn’t often wear herself out so much before crashing, either. It hadn’t seemed unreasonable to him.

She let him lead them into the large walk-in shower, a tiled structure with multiple showerheads spraying out at them. Even with both of them in it simultaneously, there was ample room. And as Rocco had anticipated, the water was perfectly heated.

Alessa turned from him and tilted her face up, into the nearest spray. A soft moan escaped her as the water sluiced over her skin.

Rocco watched, briefly transfixed. Until his gaze snagged on the quickly soaking bandage on her arm. He cursed. That probably wasn’t supposed to get wet so soon. “We should move your arm out of the water,” he said, though it was too late to save the gauze.

Alessa drew a deep breath, reached over, and tugged the gauze from her skin. “My arm’s fine. If it didn’t split last night, there’s nothing to worry about.”

He really wanted to argue that, but he kept his mouth shut.

The truth made him feel a bit like an ass.

He watched her toss the gauze out over the external half-wall of the mostly open shower, his eyes trailing her every movement.

Her body was lithe and beautiful and for the first time he actually felt like he had to have more than a little luck to have had the creature before him so wrapped around him just hours ago.

Women like her could, and often did, toy with any man they chose.

But Alessa was different. She didn’t want a toy. And she sure as hell wasn’t one.

Rocco grabbed the body soap while she stood back under the central spray and squeezed a liberal amount onto the long-handled scrubbing brush he assumed she had brought with her.

It certainly wasn’t a standard amenity. Then he moved up behind her and angled the brush around, carefully and deliberately pressing the bristles to her skin.

It would be the most effective way to clean off the residue he’d left behind.

Alessa gasped softly. “I can—”

“Let me,” he said, never ceasing his movements with the brush. “I made you dirty, I’ll clean you up.”

She drew a deeper breath, then relaxed into him. “This … doesn’t feel like … whatever I thought we were doing last night. ”

Rocco dipped two fingers into the suds lathered up on her skin and gently rubbed them around her nipples, not wanting to drag the coarser material of the bristles there.

He felt her quiver, but she made no move to stop him.

“Maybe you misunderstood my intentions, then, beautiful,” he murmured over her ear.

“Last night was never a one-time thing for me.” He moved the brush lower, keeping the back-and-forth scrubbing motion as consistent as he could, and dipped it between her legs.

Her head dropped against his shoulder as he worked the brush along her inner thigh. “Anything more,” she said on a soft gasp, “complicates … everything.”

He switched hands in order to repeat the process for her other thigh and pressed a single, soft kiss beneath her ear. “I don’t give a fuck. We’ll figure out what needs to be figured out.”

Alessa laid a hand over his forearm, her grip just firm enough to stall his motion. “Rocco.”

He lifted his head and let her straighten, let her reclaim the brush, let her turn to face him.

The confliction was as evident in her eyes as the desire.

Rocco quietly pulled her arm forward until the bristles and their remaining lather were pressed over his own chest. He didn’t look away from her eyes.

He made no effort to hide whatever showed on his face.

The raw truth was that she was right, and for as thoroughly as he understood that, he couldn’t find a single part of him that still cared.

He was on the precipice of becoming the Don, there were a thousand things he ought to have been focusing on or at least concerned about.

And the only one he could even identify was the woman in front of him.

The woman who’d matched him, surprised him, and unraveled him from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

He waited until she had finished scrubbing away what had transferred onto him, until the brush was rinsed and set aside and they were standing together where the multi-angled spray met. He trailed his fingers up her arm, careful not to directly touch the wound they really should have kept dry.

“I might not even be here tomorrow, you know,” Alessa said, her voice still a whisper.

His stare snapped to hers, only to find her gaze turned downward, to where her fingers rested on his chest. He couldn’t quite tell if she looked sad or was just trying to avoid getting the water in her eyes.

So he smoothed her hair away from her face and tilted her chin up just enough to see those orbs of milk chocolate again.

“Since it seems I didn’t make this abundantly clear last night, I’ll spell it out for you.

” He stepped closer, crowding her, his larger frame dispersing some of the water that had been falling onto her face.

“You are mine, Alessa. Complications and consequences be fucking damned.”