Page 40 of The Mafia Enforcer's Temptation

ava

I push him away,my emotions swirling in a wild frenzy. Fury, desire, frustration, need. All of it is competing for the number one spot.

But I’m not giving up hope.

This man wants me, and as much as I hate him and his family, I want him too. And I can work my desire and his to my advantage.

I just… I just need to take a breath and calm the fuck down.

Bitter hate rips through me, along with that intense, bone-melting desire. It doesn’t matter he’s not the Murphy I despise. He’s still a Murphy, and the whole clan can drop dead for all I care.

Paddy—or Piotyr, his Russian-given name—detested them. While he showed me how to build small bombs, he shared war stories that painted them all as vile, cruel, and terrible men.

But… but… I need to keep a strong hold on my mask of vulnerability. I’m never truly vulnerable, but I can fake it, whip it up, and dish it out like the best of them. Men like soft girls who are lost.

I’m not fucking lost, either. I know my destination. I just need to carve out a path for myself, and with this recentunveiling of Dad’s will, that important marriage clause, I need to do it fast.

So I push aside the hate and focus in on that pagan beat of visceral need inside me.

I lift a shaking hand to my lips because they still burn from his kiss, and there’s a rivulet of spiked shock that runs through me at the memory of him licking up the trickle of blood I left on my mouth from when Maria hit me.

The shock is full of erotic desire. It calls to me on a base level. Like when he was on top of me in the dirt and grass and leaves. Like when he kissed me in the dark after he shot Chad. Or when he assaulted my lips against the wall right after we both stabbed that thug Olaf.

And, of course, the hot, otherworldly bathroom sex.

It appeals to something deep inside of me. It scratches up a storm of aching need and satiates in ways no one, or nothing else, has before.

I look at him. He leans against the door, arms folded again, eyelids lowered. My God, he makes my heart spin and twist and the marrow in my bones turns into liquid.

He’s the drumbeat. A savage, ancient sound.

Fuck…

“You can’t say no,” I whisper.

“Just did.”

“But… there’s no one else to turn to.”

Murphy doesn’t smile. He just watches me, the green of his eyes darkening with each passing moment.

This should be easy. They’re hungry, the Murphys. They have to be since they are relative newcomers to the New York criminal world. They were doing security work for Assisi and Iosif, so no matter what Onyx said about them, since they haven’t flexed the de Rosa name and they don’t make big waves, they must want more.

Because of course they do. Every single crime family wants more.

And I have the perfect lure.

More than that, he knows my name. Maybe he asked Romanov, that seems likely. But it doesn’t matter how he knows. The point is, he’s interested enough to find that out. And now I’m making an offer pretty much anyone else would fall over themselves to take.

So why isn’t he taking the crumbs I’m dropping?

I can’t allow myself to think of death and destruction and partnerships beyond this offer. The rest I can plan when I’m on my path to power. To getting Tatiana.

I concentrate on her.

And then I look at him. “I know you want me.”

“You want me, too.”