Janina quickly discovered there was something therapeutic about working in harmony with Kieran in the kitchen, chopping the tomatoes and other vegetables to go into the meat part of the spag-bol, while he put the spaghetti on to boil and cooked the beef and onions in a shallow pan.
It was more than therapeutic. It actually felt domesticated. Much like she would imagine any normal couple might prepare their evening meal together.
Not that she and Kieran were a couple, she inwardly snorted.
Or normal, come to that!
Kieran was acting head of security for the capo dei capi of the Italian Mafia, and Janina was the daughter of a pakhan of the Russian bratva.
So, no, not even remotely normal.
Except right now, they were.
She glanced over her shoulder at Kieran as he stood next to the stove stirring the meat in the pan. He was sophisticated and handsome in his tailored suits, but even more strikingly male in fitted jeans and that tight black polo shirt. His forearms were covered in a light dusting of dark blond hair, the collar of the polo unbuttoned to reveal the start of a similar light fuzz on his chest.
“Ouch,” Janina cried out as she felt the searing pain as her chopping knife sliced into her finger.
Damn it, now her finger was bleeding, when she should have been concentrating on the carrot she was chopping on the board. Blood welled to the surface as she dropped the knife and raised that finger to her mouth. The unpleasant metallic taste of blood instantly flooded her mouth.
“What the hell…!” Kieran moved the frying pan out of harm’s way before hurrying across the kitchen. “What have you done?”
She winced. “It’s just a small cut,” she dismissed around the digit in her mouth.
“Let me see.” He reached for her hand. “Janina.” He raised a compelling brow when she didn’t immediately comply.
She glared at him from beneath her lashes as she removed and then slowly lifted her cut finger for him to look at. “It isn’t even bleeding much any—well, maybe just a little,” she acknowledged as fresh blood welled to the surface. It bubbled there for a couple of seconds before dilating into a star-shaped pattern in the saliva on her skin, succeeding in making it look ten times worse than it was.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Kieran snapped as he lifted her finger and licked away the excess blood before placing it in his own mouth.
Everything instantly froze.
Time.
Movement.
Even the air Janina breathed seemed to grow heavy with expectation.
Her mouth had fallen open the moment the rasp of Kieran’s tongue licked the blood from her finger. She’d become as rigid and unmoving as a statue the moment he then sucked that finger into the wet heat of his mouth.
Her gaze became riveted and held captive by his glittering green eyes as he slowly and deliberately sucked on her finger, ingesting her blood and sending hot shards of pleasure to throb and wet between her thighs.
Because it felt as if Kieran were sucking on something else of hers, a nipple maybe, or perhaps even her clit. Whatever, the intimacy of that moment was beyond anything Janina had ever experienced before.
Ever.
She hadn’t felt this level of arousal when her two past boyfriends kissed her, let alone did something as innocuous as stemming the flow of blood from a cut on her finger.
And yet it was so much more than that.
She was totally aware of having her finger in Kieran’s mouth, feeling the movement of his throat as he swallowed down her blood in his saliva. It felt sensual, even erotic.
Kieran seemed just as affected, the sensual lapping of his tongue against her flesh now causing a flush along his cheekbones and a glitter in his eyes.
How long they would have remained like that if the hissing sound of the water in the saucepan boiling over hadn’t caused Kieran to release her and hurry back to the stove to rescue the spaghetti, Janina had no idea.
She did know that Kieran’s absence, the removal of that physical intimacy, now caused her to feel empty. As if all the warmth had turned to a black hole of nothingness the moment Kieran released her and moved to the other side of the kitchen.
Kieran had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
None.
God, how his brothers and cousin would laugh at him if they could see him now, sitting down to eat dinner with the woman he not only desired but who drove him crazy just thinking about her, as he did every minute of the day and night it seemed.
Janina had washed and dried her hands, and Kieran had given her a band-aid to put on the cut so that she could complete chopping the vegetables, as she insisted on doing, once he had dealt with the boiling saucepan. He had no idea how he had completed cooking the food after the “sucking on Janina’s finger” incident, as he was now calling it in his mind.
He gave a mental snort at the name.
Because it hadn’t felt as if that was what he was doing at all. Oh no, he had licked and sucked every inch of that slender finger as if it were some other, more intimate, part of her body. And he had done it slowly, sensuously, and with so much fucking enjoyment, he had only just stopped himself from groaning that pleasure out loud. The metallic taste of her blood, along with her close proximity and breathing in her floral musk, had seemed to act as an aphrodisiac.
God knows what would have happened if the water in the saucepan hadn’t boiled over.
Whatever happened, Kieran knew he would have grasped it and Janina with both hands and worried about the consequences later.
And they had only just started to cohabit. He avoided calling it living together, even in his own mind, to try to keep some semblance of distance between them.
Good fucking luck with that, he mentally mocked himself.
“This is good,” Janina complimented after eating her first bite of the spaghetti with the meat-and-tomato sauce.
There was a little of the sauce remaining at the corner of her mouth—whatever had possessed him to think that something like spaghetti was a good thing for them to eat their first evening together!—and it took every ounce of Kieran’s willpower not to reach out and slide his finger across her bottom lip.
He resisted, mainly because not only would it possibly embarrass Janina if he did that, but also because he knew that finger would then go straight into his own mouth so that he could lick up the sauce that had briefly touched her lips.
This was insane!
He was going insane.
Janina was beautiful, yes. Desirable, yes. Her life in Russia made her intriguing to listen to, also yes. He loved seeing her smile and hearing her laugh, yes.
But…
Kieran had met other woman as or more beautiful. Woman who oozed sex appeal merely by existing. Women who also had interesting lives and careers. Who loved to smile and laugh too, some of them even at his corny jokes.
So, what was it about Janina’s beauty, her desirability, and listening to her talk and laugh, that had him so tied up in knots he found it difficult to think of anything or anyone else the moment he was with her?
Kieran shied away from finding the answer to that question.
“Why aren’t you eating?”
Kieran dragged his thoughts back to the here and now, grateful to see that while he’d been off mentally questioning himself, Janina had used her napkin to remove the distraction of that tomato sauce from the corner of her mouth.
“I am.” He picked up his spoon and fork and began to wind some of the spaghetti onto the latter before scooping up some of the meat and sauce and putting it all in his mouth. He prepared another forkful while eating the first.
“Can you teach me how to do that?”
Kieran swallowed, his movements ceasing as he stared at Janina over the top of his laden fork. “Do what?”
“Twirl the spaghetti.” She placed the spoon and fork on her plate before leaning back. “I’ve tried to do it that way in the past, but it just keeps falling off my fork.”
What fresh hell is this, flashed momentarily through Kieran’s brain before all thought fled and he was left with the possibility of standing close to Janina, of possibly even touching her as he leaned over her to help her to twirl the spaghetti before scooping up some of the meat.
He’d managed to avoid the intimacy of sucking Janina’s finger into his mouth, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to resist her a second time.