Page 23 of The Mastermind (Mafia Rivals #1)

MADDELENA

Unwarranted shame kicked through me and in that moment I wasn’t sure who I hated more – my family for keeping me in the dark or Cesare for dragging my ignorance into the light in such an underhanded way.

Both sensations were equally dismaying enough to loosen my grip on his waist. To attempt to uncoil myself from?—

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he grated.

My breath hitched at the flare of temper in his eyes, but my own anger built.

‘This is why you brought me here, isn’t it? Now you have your answer. I had no hand in this and I don’t have a fucking clue who does.’ I slammed my hands against his rock-hard chest. He didn’t budge. ‘Let me go.’ I hated the hitch in my voice, the bigger one in my chest.

I’d allowed him to seduce me into mindlessness so he could pump me for information.

He was leaving me high and dry when I wanted a very different sort of pumping.

Even if it was heinously forbidden. Even if it could trigger a fucking war.

For a dizzying moment I wondered if this was how past illicit lovers had felt, standing on the precipice, staring danger in the face. Unwilling to turn back.

Juliet Capulet. Anna Karenina. Isolde.

‘Cesare.’

His nostrils flared and I recalled how much he enjoyed me using his name.

‘No fucking chance. Especially not now.’

Before I could ask what he meant, he was kissing me again.

His vigour was intense as the hand on my waist rose to close over my breast. He groaned, moulding me with rough caresses before, with a grunt, he yanked down the top of my bustier.

Heated eyes dropped. ‘Fuck, you’re even more luscious than I remember,’ he slurred. He flicked his thumb over my budded nipple, sending shudders of delight through me.

‘Legs, Maddelena,’ he prompted, biting my lower lip in wicked punishment.

I tightened my legs around his waist, happy with the realisation that he wasn’t stopping after all, relief and need tearing through me in equal measure when I felt him where I wanted him most.

‘You know how long I’ve waited for this?’ He licked the sting from my lips, then nipped them again. ‘Now every time we fuck, I’m going to take you up against a wall at least once, until the madness you stoked is gone.’

I thrilled at the ‘every time we fuck’ but chose to remain silent on the subject.

It was now a blatant and undeniable fact that I was weak when it came to Cesare Salvatore.

That I was circling the depths of an unfathomable kind of hell if this came out.

But already I was priming myself for the next time. And the next.

And if Bonafacio was truly plotting to marry me off despite my flaws, then I intended to gorge myself on?—

I yelped at the not-so-gentle pinch of my nipples.

‘ Duci .’ It was a snapped endearment that shut off my unwanted train of thought.

I blinked.

‘I’m going to give you one guess on how I feel about you being distracted by anything besides what’s happening between us right now.’ Without waiting for an answer, he stepped back, disentangling us so my feet dropped to the floor. ‘Strip.’

The growled command went straight to my pussy. My hands shook as I attacked my pants, nearly ripping the zipper. When they pooled at my feet, I kicked them away.

Cesare devoured every exposed inch, his breathing a little erratic when he lingered longest on the stretch of silk and lace framing my hips and cupping my damp centre.

He licked his lips and dragged his eyes upward as I reached beneath my left arm and lowered the zipper. The stiff, boned bustier parted and fell away.

And for the first time in my life, at the grand old age of thirty-one, I was caught beneath the naked hunger of a breathtaking man.

It was almost as if fate had planned things this way.

My first was a disastrous fumble in the backseat of Ciara’s boyfriend’s borrowed Toyota after an even worse double date. It’d left me never wanting to repeat the experience.

Then, after the harrowing night of bloody carnage that had left devastation in its wake, sex had been an ineffectual way to cope that had left both parties deeply disappointed.

Unfortunately, I’d re-boarded that broken wagon and repeated the cringe-worthy experience a few more times before finally throwing in the towel and accepting that the kind of sex I saw in movies and read in books was a complete hoax.

So, right here and now, basking in the fiery focus of a very aroused Cesare Salvatore, the most breathtaking man I’d ever known, felt like dancing in pure sunshine after a cleansing rain.

And if there was more pleasure in store – please, God – then I was about to have my mind blown in the best wa y.

‘Finish, baby.’ He jerked his head at my panties.

My breasts swayed with my movement as I hooked my fingers into the sides of my panties and tugged them down.

‘Fuck,’ he rasped.

He attacked his own shirt, instantly distracting me with the unveiling of inked bronzed skin lovingly etched with swirling patterns, a Sicilian inscription I intended to read…

later, all encasing a mouthwatering eight-pack.

Courtesy of a brother who needed to keep himself in prime health for the same reason Cesare did, I knew not every man could achieve the coveted eight-pack.

‘You like what you see, bedda ?’

‘Yes.’ There was really no point playing coy or pretending he wasn’t an exceptional, mouthwatering specimen. Virile and masculine. And with the massive bulge pressing so aggressively against his fly…

Yeah, I was saving embarrassment for when my inexperience inevitably filtered through because even now, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. All I knew was that I wanted to lick every inch of Cesare’s skin.

A smug grin curved his lips as he caught my eager gaze on the belt he was releasing. The sound of his zipper lowering flooded my mouth with drool so fast I flushed.

‘I would give my pinkie to know what’s going through that mind of yours.’

I pressed my lips together and prayed my gaucheness wouldn’t spill.

With a move brimming with confidence, he stepped out of his loafers and dragged off his jeans and briefs.

Cesare was thick. And long.

The prospect of taking all of that inside me made my thighs clench in half dread, half anticipation.

It would hurt. No two ways about it. My past experiences may have been little more than forgettable fumbles in the dark but I’d been present enough to know that none of them had been this endowed.

Oh God.

‘Maddelena?’

My gaze jerked up to his half smile and crooking finger. I took a step, then stumbled, my heels getting caught in the panties I hadn’t fully taken off.

He lunged, he caught me, swung me into his arms.

‘It’ll fit or I’ll fucking die trying,’ he rasped in my ear. Then he marched towards the archway leading to an inner suite with a massive king-size bed.

Planting one knee on the bed, he dropped me into the middle, his hooded gaze watching my tits bounce.

One large hand closed over his length, caressing from root to tip, as the other trailed down my throat, lingering at my clavicle, the upper slope of my breast, toying with my nipple.

When I shuddered again, a thick groan left his throat before he cursed and let go.

‘You’re so fucking responsive. And those dirty little sounds you make…’ He shook his head. ‘You were made for fucking, bedda , and I’m going to fuck you so hard you’ll forget your name as you scream mine.’

He turned away long enough to tug open the nightstand drawer and toss a condom onto the bed. Then he prowled over me, dropped onto his elbows and recaptured my lips.

I lost myself to delirium a second time as he kissed his way down my body. With the last experience fresh in my mind, I thought I knew what to expect.

I was wrong. He took me to the brink repeatedly, making me hiss and cry in bittersweet frustration. And then he plunged two fingers inside me.

The sting of it yanked my head from the pillow. ‘Cesare!’

Cesare

‘Damn, you’re as tight as a locked vault.’

I paused for a second, sucked in oxygen and control before I blew prematurely.

‘What’s the key to opening you up, I wonder?

Shall I play with your little clit, baby?

’ I thumbed the swollen nub, revelled in her gasp and shudder, then her slight give as she grew slicker, more relaxed. I pushed in and she tensed up again.

‘Fuck, baby. You’re gonna kill me before I get in this sweet pussy, aren’t you?’

I flicked her bundle of oversensitive nerves again and her mouth gaped as she sucked in desperate breaths. I was confident in that moment that no one else had made her feel like this.

That widening of her eyes? The way they clung to mine with a sheen of wonder? It reeked of inexperience. And while the primal beast inside me roared with outrage for not being her first, I wasn’t hypocritical enough to take her to task for it.

But fuck if I didn’t vow, here and now, to make sure Maddelena Mancinelli would never be free of the memory of me possessing her body.

‘God, it… it hurts.’

‘Not my fault,’ I gritted out, swooping in for another taste of her delicious wetness. ‘It’s yours. For being so insanely tight.’

I leaned over her, still keeping the rubbing of her clit going as I caught her nipple between my fingers, and was rewarded with hissed shudders and another glorious inch inside. ‘There you go. I’ve found another key, haven’t I? Good girl. Relax for me.’

Sweat beaded on my forehead, dripped down my face.

Pressure collected in the small of my back, and I knew I was almost out of time. Her pussy was fucking magic and I was about to be swept away. Removing my hand from her hot channel, I grabbed her knee and pressed it to her chest, opening her up as wide as possible.

‘Sorry, baby, we’re out of time.’

Tugging on a condom, I notched myself at her entrance and pushed in. ‘ Jesus . Maddelena.’ Her name was appropriate. This felt almost spiritual.