“Wake up. It’s time for church.” Luca slapped Gabrielle’s ass beneath the bedclothes, jerking her out of a delicious dream where she’d been slathered in chocolate sauce and he’d been licking it off.
“Church?” Gabrielle looked up from the comfort of Luca’s massive bed. “I don’t go to church.”
“You do today.” He ripped the bedclothes off her, and the freezing air sent a wave of goosebumps rippling across her skin.
“Hey. Give me the covers back. Sunday is my sleep-in day. And I’m tired. Every time I tried to sleep, I was manhandled into some twisted sexual position, poked, and prodded—”
“Poked?” Luca gave an indignant sniff. “I do not poke. I pleasure.”
“Fine.” She pulled the pillow over her head. “I was pleasured. Again and again and again. Now I need the pleasure of sleep.”
“Once I left you on your back,” he reminded her.
“Oh yes.” She reached behind her, feeling for the sheet. “That was the time I woke up with your cock pressed against my lips. You’re lucky I wasn’t dreaming about biting into something.”
“You liked it when I fucked your face.” His voice dropped to a sensual purr. “You were very, very wet.”
Gabrielle was glad of the pillow that hid the sudden burn in her cheeks. She was still not used to his dirty talking, but man, did it ever turn her on.
The bed dipped, and his hand smoothed down her back and over her ass. “You have to stop this, or we won’t get out of here.”
“I’m not doing anything except trying to sleep.”
He idly traced patterns on her skin, sending a ripple of desire down her spine. “I’ve been up for hours reading the notes you made last night about the Garcia investigation. You have an incredible memory for detail.”
“That case was my whole life for two years.” She sighed. “It’s strange, but I felt like I knew him, although he rarely went out in public so we never got a physical description. Because I was the most junior detective on the case, I read and filed every piece of paper and every digital file. I knew everything, but no one was interested in what I had to say. Every time I told them I knew where he would be, they said it wasn’t a good time. I started thinking someone was thwarting the investigation, or there was some higher political agenda at work.”
“Not all cops are good cops.” His warm lips brushed up her spine, licking over the mark he’d made yesterday afternoon when he fucked her in the desert as an appetizer for what he had planned when he got her home.
“Any ideas about how to find him?” she asked, her mind snapping into work mode. “I don’t know what happened after the raid. I thought he might leave the city until things cooled down.”
“Frankie has sources that confirmed he’s here, but underground.”
“I guess that makes sense. We thought he had some connection to the city,” she said. “Or it just might be that Vegas works best as a central hub for his distribution chain.”
“Or he might have forged a new, very powerful alliance and needs to be here to make it stick.” He shifted on the bed, rolling closer. His hand slid between her legs, and he slicked a finger through her labia.
Gabrielle moved restlessly against his questing finger. “Do you know who he’s allied with?”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t tell me?” She tried to turn, and he pressed her back down to the bed. “That could be our way in, Luca.”
“That route is closed to us.”
Gabrielle sighed. “If we could get our hands on some money…”
His finger stopped its gentle torment. “Why do you need money?”
“He only meets in person with powerful people—the ones who are major distributors of his product. The figure we heard was $500,000. If you happened to have that much money kicking around, and a few underworld connections, we could arrange a meeting.”
“We?”
She looked back over her shoulder. “We’re doing this together. Remember when you told me I was magnificent when I rescued you? I will be even more magnificent when I capture Garcia and throw him in jail.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so free with my praise,” he muttered. “It seems to have gone to your head.”
“You like girls with guns,” she reminded him. “You said that when I saved your ass from the Albanians who shot up my house.” She cut herself off, suddenly remembering why she’d gone to the restaurant yesterday. In all the confusion, she’d never asked him the question that had sent her to him in the first place. But when he pressed a kiss to the scar on her back, the exit wound of the bullet that had brought them together, she decided she didn’t want to hear the truth.
“I was covering you while you saved Max.” He dropped his weight from his elbows, pinning her to the bed.
She laughed, straining against him. “Are you going to squish me until I agree?”
“I’ll fuck you until you agree.” He nuzzled her neck, his breath warm on her skin. “And Garcia won’t be going to jail. He’ll be coming with me to pay for what he did to Little Ricky.”
“No.” She pushed herself up, only to be flattened on the bed by the weight of Luca’s body as he moved to lie on top of her. She shivered at the brush of his cool shirt on her back, the press of the buckle of his belt, the hard shaft pressed against the cleft of her ass. “He has to answer for his crimes in a court of law,” she continued, trying to keep her arousal in check. “He’ll be tried, and no doubt he’ll be found guilty and he’ll spend the rest of his life rotting in jail.”
“That’s not justice. Sitting in jail eating three meals a day, continuing to run his drug empire from behind bars while Little Ricky and David are no longer on this earth? That’s a travesty. Justice means he suffers the way he made your husband suffer, the way he made Little Ricky suffer, and countless others. Justice means he sits naked in a cold, dark room not knowing where the next blow will fall or how long he will scream. Justice means a long, slow painful death.”
“I can’t.” She buried her head in the bedspread. “I can’t condone that.”
“But you want it.” His breath was hot temptation in her ear. “Deep down in your very heart, you want the kind of vengeance only I can give you.”
“No.”
“Yes, bella. You are not the straight-laced cop you pretend to be. Beneath your uniform beats a rebel heart. That’s how we found our way together. You didn’t break with the police when you decided to work with me to find Garcia. You broke with them the day you went rogue and got shot—the day we found each other.”
She squirmed to get away, but he was too heavy, too warm, his stubble an erotic burn, his breath a whispered promise, his cock too tantalizingly hard, for any serious effort. Yes, she wanted it. In her most secret heart, she wanted more than a prison sentence. She wanted Garcia to taste the kind of pain she had gone through when she lost David and her unborn child. She wanted justice. Mafia style.
“He’s too dangerous to go after without back-up,” she said as the last threads of her resolve faded away beneath the pounding of her newly awakened rebel heart.
He huffed out an indignant breath. “I’m dangerous. My friends are dangerous.”
“You’re dangerously sexy.” She wiggled her ass against him to let him know that for now, the discussion was over. They didn’t have the money or the information to get close to Garcia. So why not turn her attention to something else she wanted …
Luca’s body tensed and he growled. “You’re sexy, showing me your sexy body, reminding me of last night, saying sexy things…” He hooked his knees between hers and shoved her legs apart. “Open for me,” he demanded.
“Not again.” Her arousal kicked up a notch at the sharp edge to his voice. “How can you be hard again? It’s only been an hour.”
“Because it’s you.” He pushed her head down to the mattress, baring her nape to the heated slide of his lips.
She’d never experienced Luca like this—forceful, aggressive, and more dominant than he’d ever been before. His urgency was unsettling, and a thrill of fear shot through her body.
Kneeling behind her, he lifted her ass, positioning her on her knees with her head and shoulders pinned to the bed. He thrust his hand between her legs, and roughly shoved her knees apart. “I’m going to fuck you hard,” he growled softly in her ear. “And you’re going to lie there and take my cock as deep as it can go. You will not move. The more you struggle, the rougher I’m going to be, and when you come, you’re going to scream my name.”
She heard the clank of his belt buckle, the whisper of fabric, and then the thick head of his cock circled her wet entrance.
“Brace yourself, bella, because I’m going to fuck you until you understand that I will let nothing and no one hurt you.” He entered her in one hard thrust. “And then I want you to come to church and meet my mother.”
* * *
Gabrielle squeezed Luca’s hand as they made their way down the aisle of the Sacred Heart Church, trying to ignore the curious glances and whispers around her. Her mother had taken her to church on Sundays when she was a little girl, but the visits had ended with her mother’s death. After her family moved to Nevada, Sundays were either spent watching her brothers play sports or in hospital as Patrick wrestled yet again with his addiction.
She smoothed down her dress, mauve with cap sleeves, a crew neckline, suede strip waist accents, and a pleated, A-line skirt. She didn’t own many dresses, so Nicole had lent her the relatively modest outfit when she’d returned home to change. Nicole hadn’t been in contact with Clint since last Friday night at Red 27, but she’d been in good spirits, picking up extra shifts at the casino and updating her profile on online dating sites with Cissy.
“We’ll sit here.” Luca gestured her to a pew a few rows from the back. “It’s not right to join the family until you’ve been formally introduced.”
“It’s also not right to have marked up your girlfriend so much that beneath her dress she looks like she was attacked by a wild animal,” she whispered, testing out the word “girlfriend” to see how he would react.
Luca gave a satisfied rumble. “I like my marks on you.”
“You’re making this sound very serious.”
“If it wasn’t serious,” he said, squeezing her hand. “We wouldn’t be here.”
A few people stopped to talk to Luca as they passed by, and she was greeted with hugs and kisses. Although unused to so much affection, she swallowed her discomfort and forced a smile for the cousins, friends, aunts, and uncles who were clearly intrigued about her relationship with Luca. When she finally had a chance to sit down, she spotted Matteo near the front beside a woman with short, dark wavy hair.
“That’s Ma,” he said following her gaze. “She doesn’t want to look old so she gets my sister, Angela, to dye her hair. Every week it’s a different shade, sometimes red, sometimes brown, once it was jet black. Angela is on her left. She’s a hairdresser. She’s a blonde like my mother, but she’s dyed her hair brown. Alex, my younger brother, is beside her.” He gave a wry smile. “Normal hair color.”
“It’s a beautiful church.” She studied the giant stained-glass windows behind the altar and in the vestibules along the sides of the church. Light and airy, with highly polished floors, and modern pot lights in the ceiling, it had a relaxed, welcoming feel.
“Ma thinks it’s too modern. Some very generous benefactors funded the renovation a few years ago. I think it’s a huge improvement.”
“Is she very traditional?”
Luca laughed. “Only when it comes to family, food, and religion.”
After the service, everyone gathered outside, huddling in the shade of the trees planted along the walkway. Luca tugged her through the gauntlet of well-wishers toward his family but they were intercepted by Matteo before he could introduce her.
“Papa!” He ran and threw his arms around his father. “You’re here. You’re here.”
Laughing, Luca swept him up and into his arms. “It’s Sunday. Of course, I’m here.”
“You never come to church.” Matteo looked over at Gabrielle and smiled. “Hi Miss Gabrielle.”
“Hi, Matteo.” She ruffled his hair. “I see you’re wearing a suit just like your dad. You look very handsome.”
He beamed and patted his little suit jacket. “Nonna bought me a tie just like Papa’s.”
Gabrielle looked up and caught Luca’s mother watching them. She smiled, but Luca’s mother didn’t smile back.
Oh God. She’d had a good relationship with David’s parents, although they lived in Florida and didn’t visit often. They had both been warm and welcoming and as supportive as they could be after David’s death.
“Ma!” Luca kissed his mother on both cheeks while holding Matteo, and they spoke briefly in Italian.
Gabrielle clutched her purse and tried to calm the frantic thudding of her heart. She’d faced down hardened criminals almost every day on the beat, survived two shootings, and stalked a vicious drug dealer in a dark warehouse. So why was she scared of Luca’s mother?
“Ma. I want you to meet Gabrielle Fawkes.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Rizzoli.” Gabrielle smiled again and dutifully leaned down so Luca’s mother could kiss her cheeks.
“Are you Italian?” Luca’s mother asked. “You don’t look Italian.”
“No. I’m half Irish, and half a mix of English, Scottish, and a little Swedish.”
His mother’s face fell and she looked up at Luca, who towered over her five-foot-three-inch frame. “She’s not Italian.”
“No, Ma.” He put his free hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “But it’s not the end of the world.”
“And she’s too thin,” Luca’s mother said to him, as if Gabrielle wasn’t standing right there. “Look at her. You own a restaurant. Don’t you feed her?”
“Ma. She’s perfect.”
“Bring her for dinner. I’ll feed her. Everyone’s coming over. Gino’s coming over. Daniel’s coming over. Josie’s coming cover. Donna’s coming over and bringing all the kids…”
“She’s coming over.”
That settled, Gabrielle was quizzed about where she lived and who she lived with, what she drove, who her family was and where they had lived over the years. She answered questions about her mother and her father, her stepmother, and her stepbrothers. She even mentioned Patrick, although not how he died.
“What do you do?” his mother asked.
Gabrielle looked to Luca for help and he shrugged.
“I’m a police detective,” she said quietly.
Luca’s mother stared at her for a long time and then her gaze flicked to Luca. “Nico?”
There was more to the question than Gabrielle understood because Luca’s smile faded and he shook his head. His mother’s face softened, and then she huffed out a determined breath.
“She should meet Josie.” She gave Gabrielle’s arm a firm squeeze. “Come for dinner. Meet Josie. You have a lot in common.”
“We have to get going, Ma. I’m going to pick up Paolo and bring him over so he gets a good meal, and the deli is on the way. You need us to pick up anything?” Luca put Matteo down and clasped Gabrielle’s hand.
“I need more mozzarella,” she said. “The wet one. Alex goes through it like water. And don’t forget your laundry.”
Gabrielle looked over, amused. “Your mother does your laundry?” she asked in a low voice.
Totally unembarrassed, Luca shrugged. “It makes her happy.”
More kissing. More hugs. While Matteo played on the grass, she met Luca’s sister, Angela, who greeted her warmly, and his brother Alex who seemed detached and ill-at-ease, and acted so very much like Patrick she was sure he was high. After being introduced to a dizzying array of relatives, they went to collect Matteo for the ride home.
“You all have the same scowl,” she said when Matteo kicked up a fuss about being dragged away from his friends. “You, your sister, your mum, and Matteo. I didn’t get to see Alex frown, but you all get a funny crease in the center of your forehead and you all narrow your eyes the same way. It makes me laugh.”
“Everyone’s forehead creases when they scowl,” he said tightly.
“But everyone doesn’t get this V.” She traced gently on Matteo’s forehead, and he forgot about his tantrum and grinned.
“You have it, too.” She reached up and Luca clasped her hand and drew it away. Gabrielle cringed inwardly, realizing she’d broken the unwritten rule about comparing him to his son and braced herself for the storm.
“I think that went well.” Luca said, as if their unspoken altercation hadn’t happened.
“She hated me.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. “She doesn’t know you.”
“I don’t want to cause trouble for your family. Maybe I shouldn’t come for dinner.”
“You have to come over.” Matteo bounced along the sidewalk beside them. “You’re Papa’s girl. You have to be there.”
“That’s right.” Luca stopped and pulled her into his arms. “You go where I go.”
Sensing an opportunity, she leaned up and whispered in his ear. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Except if I’m going after Garcia,” he said quickly. “Then where I go, you don’t go.”
She gave him a smug look. “Too late. You can’t change the deal.”
Luca scowled. “I can do anything.”
“Can you make five hundred thousand dollars appear out of thin air? Because if you can’t, then this discussion is irrelevant.”
Luca stilled, his face growing thoughtful. “Actually, I can.”