Enzo
I ain’t ever been afraid of death, and facing it only made me angry. I’d been shot at plenty. So why was I so shaken up? I dropped my face into Atheist’s neck, inhaling his scent. Like grass and dirt. He whined as I leaned against him. There’d been so many times I sat exactly like this, pouring my weakness into my goddamn dog. My best friend. I knew why I was so shaken up, but I didn’t want to admit it. Everything inside me fought against it.
Don’t even think about it. Let it go. Let her go.
Fucking Gia.
I had worked so damn hard to put distance between us. I let her go. The space would have eventually dissolved the ache until it became a dull throb. I kept telling myself we couldn’t be together because she didn’t trust me, but I knew the real reason. How could I run the business with her on my dick? I couldn’t. Then I found out she was shacking up with fucking Rosario, and I was done thinking with my rational head. All I could think about was her riding his cock or taking all of him inside her perfect mouth. I imagined his pleasure, because she was the most incredible source of it. I longed for it. I fucking needed it. A guy could only take that plaguing thought for so long. I was going to take her away from him and put her somewhere safe, under my watchful eyes. The problem with my plan was that I couldn’t keep myself from watching her. Salivating over her. It was fucking pathetic.
I glanced at my phone—one of the ways I kept tabs on her. She had the nerve to touch herself, knowing all too well how much it’d fuck with me. I wanted to be the fingers stroking between her legs and slipping inside her. The soft moans that left her lips should have been from pleasure I created.
I felt a pang of guilt over what I did to her—the whipping. I remembered the sound my belt made as it cracked across her perfect ass. I didn’t like hurting her, but she had swung through every round of my patience. Even as tears fell and she actually listened for once in her fucking life, I didn’t enjoy her submission. I liked Gia’s fire, her drive, as annoying as it was. I didn’t like feeling her genuine fear. It was something I’d never faced, not as I threatened to take her sweet pussy, not when guns were drawn on her. I saw a glimpse of it when Lorenzo did what he almost did to her or when she found out about the hit on her father. I felt it smoldering around her, but it wasn’t the same.
It wasn’t fear of me.
But there was something else there. The fear, the punishment, her anger—those things warped into something that dripped down her thighs with every crack of the leather. An uncomfortable push and pull of desire and hatred that fragmented us that night. I was fighting it so damn hard. As hard as I could.
When the gunshots rang out, I could only hear the beat of my heart slamming against my eardrums. It was a roar, drowning out everything else. Despite the disorienting thumps of my heart, I needed to protect Gia. Not myself. Gia. It was at that moment, as I threw my body in front of her to shield her from bullets, that I realized Gia would have to be dead for me to stop needing her. She’d have to be buried to keep me from thinking about her. What she was doing. Who she was doing. If she was fucking safe.
Atheist panted, his sides expanding against mine as he grew restless. I looked up, following where his dark eyes had fallen on something that made him wag his little nub of a tail.
Gia.
She stood in the doorway, and I don’t know how long she’d been there or how much she’d seen. I wasn’t allowed to be weak around others, only Atheist, who couldn’t speak about it. That damn dog knew too much. He knew all my secrets.
He whined again, and I smirked as I rubbed his massive head and let him leap off the couch. He rushed for Gia, slamming all his weight into her as she squatted down to greet him.
I sat back on the couch and gathered my composure. I had to. My first instinct was to push her away. My second was to draw her into me and kiss her like it would be our final embrace. I decided against speaking because I wasn’t sure I could control what came out, in either direction.
“Sorry to barge in,” she said as she gripped Atheist’s ear and stood up, letting the velvet fur fall out of her grasp. Her eyes met mine. I couldn’t read her. She was probably fighting her instincts, too.
“Come here,” I said, letting my second instinct take the lead.
She hesitated. Her muscles twitched as if she was going to come toward me, but they relaxed in place.
“Don’t make me ask twice, Gia.” My voice was stern, with growing agitation as my first instinct closed in. She was going to determine which one would win. I was giving in, extending the whole damn olive tree. Your move, I thought to myself. One of us had to give in order to take.
Just as my first instinct was about to rip through the ribbon at the finish line, Gia stepped forward and sat beside me, burying herself into my chest, much like I did to Atheist. I didn’t move my arms from the back of the couch as she wrapped her arms around me and clung to me. The moment I felt the heat of her against my body, my second instinct cut the legs off my first. It had no chance of making it to the end now.
My muscles twitched, wanting to wrap her up in my arms, but I kept still, forcing them to stay where they were. I shed my hesitation as I lowered my arms and wrapped them around her. She melted into me. I didn’t know what all this was. Was it all because of the shooting?
* * *
Gia
I listened to the rhythmic beat of his heart. His soft t-shirt rubbed against my cheek. I didn’t want to let myself be weak or fall into his lap like that, but I found myself needing him and growing tired of fighting it, of fighting him. I just wanted to forget about it all for a little while—the O’Rileys, Bullseye, and his goddamn brother.
And the shooting.
I wanted to pretend it was just us again, at that nice little house upstate. I imagined we had the hardwoods beneath our feet instead of the carpet, the open yard outside the door instead of gates and guards. I longed for something we’d never have again. Even if we could somehow get past the tug-of-war between us, it wouldn’t work. I was a Silvani. Enemy number one and a threat to his empire. What could we ever be?
Despite knowing how futile it was, I melted into him as each breath made his chest rise against me. Putting distance between us was easier said than done. There was a relentless, toxic tug toward each other.
Fingers brushed through my hair, pushing strands away from my face. They left my head and grasped my chin, raising it up to face him.
“We’re making a goddamn mistake,” he whispered.
“We aren’t doing anything,” I corrected.
“I’ve already begun to fuck you in my head.” His words were so low and laced with hunger that it made me throb between my legs. Every syllable went straight there.
He pushed me onto my back and climbed over me. His mouth dropped to mine and spread roughly over my lips. His hand rode up my side and grazed the crook of my neck before lacing behind it. His other hand worked down his sweatpants. As he pulled himself out, I slipped my shorts off without breaking the kiss. I worried he would stop us, and I thought about stopping it myself, but I needed it as much as my next breath.
He spit in his hand, rubbing it on my pussy before palming himself and pushing inside me. He growled against my mouth as he pressed his hips into mine so I could take all of him. I gasped as he sank as deep as he could inside me.
“Big fucking mistake,” he said with a groan. “Worth every goddamn second.” He spoke the words into my mouth as he kissed me harder, and my back arched beneath him. His strong arms flexed beside my head. My chest rose to meet his as my moans poured out from between our lips. “I love those noises, Giovanna. I—”
He stopped himself as he drew his hips back before pushing deeper into me. His skin clashed against mine. I whimpered as he leaned down and bit into my shoulder. His cock twitched inside me at the sound. I was hung up on what he stopped himself from saying.
“Say what you were going to say.” I moved my face from his, and he stopped his thrusts and stared at me. His fingers grazed his chin, leaving a smirk on his face that made me melt into the couch. The look on his face said he wouldn’t tell me. Instead, he jerked his hips forward and made me scream out. I forgot all about the lost words as he pushed into me.
His hand reached down and rubbed my clit, and electricity jolted through my body. I had craved his touch so much more than I realized. I moaned into the air and when I looked at his familiar, sadistic smirk, I knew what was coming, and it wasn’t me.
“You know I’m going to bring you real close, baby girl. That’s it. Bring you right to the edge and hold you over it.”
I pouted. I almost pushed him off me and told him to go fuck himself. But as his fingers swirled around my clit again, I let him take me for the ride up, knowing he wouldn’t let me down. I clenched around him as I got closer and closer. He stopped every time, so in tune with my body, which was fucking annoying.
“Please,” I finally begged. I couldn’t take the buildup and letdown any longer.
“I told you, no. If I have to, I’ll pull out of you and come all over your pussy,” he growled as he brushed his thumb along my clit. I jolted.
Every time, I thought he’d miss the mark, that he’d push me just a little too far, that he’d accidentally let me fall, but he always stopped just as my body was about to reach my apex of pleasure. He’d hold still, draw his hand away, and push his fingers into my mouth. Sweat beaded and dripped down my temples. It was so damn frustrating.
“Every time I edge you . . . I edge myself. I’m so close. I just want to spread your legs wider and fuck you mercilessly until I come.” His eyes roved over me, stopping at the swells of my breasts. “But I know that would make you come. I can feel it.”
I went to reach my hand between my legs, but he pinned my wrists above my head. The way he leaned over me put pressure on my clit, and I moved my hips subtly beneath him, just a minor tilt in my pelvis, back and forth. As he fought for my hands, with his cock buried deep inside me, the friction was enough to throw me off the edge. I shuddered beneath him as I finally got a release.
Enzo’s eyes narrowed and his hand dropped to my throat. He squeezed, lifting me up so that I had to reach back to keep from choking. “I didn’t say you could come,” he snarled. His words were breathy, as if he were riding the waves of my orgasm around his dick.
“You can only tease someone so much,” I choked out, my cheeks flushing with heat.
He drew a frustrated breath, sat up, pulled out of me, and flipped me onto my belly. His hands raced down my sides before gripping my ass. “Perfect fucking ass,” he groaned. He rubbed his cock against the excitement nearly dripping from between my legs. Once he coated himself in my slick wetness, he pinned me beneath him and edged his dick into my ass. I reached back to stop him, but his tip was already inside me, stretching me. I gasped. The pain was too much to let me choke out the word “stop.” But part of me didn’t want him to stop, and that held the word in my chest.
A slow and purposeful groan left his lips as he pushed into me, and I shivered. Heat crawled along my skin, and I fought back tears that tried to fall out of pure instinct.
Enzo brushed my hair off my face. “That right there,” he whispered, “is why I fucking love you, Giovanna.” I tensed at his tone, which just made him groan as I tightened around him. “You always get what you want. Somehow, someway, you get the upper hand. You don’t have the upper hand right now, babygirl, and you have no way to get it.” He pinned my arms above my head. He was right. As electrified as my pussy still felt against the fabric as he thrust slow and deep inside me, I was still beneath him. “But that’s why we won’t work.”
Now he’d made me fucking angry. I let him inside me, in a way I never had, and he felt the need to tell me why we couldn’t be together. I fought the pain with the pleasure from how big he was, all for him to tell me he didn’t want to be with me.
“Fuck you.”
Enzo gripped my hip and squeezed. “You didn’t let me finish,” he said before kissing the back of my shoulder—a tender touch that countered the rough one. He drove his hips into me, slow and shallow, as he chased his pleasure. “I said it’s why we won’t work. But there’s no other option but to try to make it. I will step down from my position if I have to. I can’t focus, whether I’m with you or without you . . . and I’d rather be with you. We’re either going to break down our family rivalry or cause a goddamn war.”
Enzo fisted my hair and craned my neck. He was so deep I thought he would rip me open. He pulled back enough to quicken his thrusts before they grew ragged. He came inside me, with a gravelly moan that was so satiated with pleasure I felt it in my pelvis.
We were making a mistake, of course, but it’s what we did. I’d know in the morning if he meant what he’d said or if he’d push me as far away as he could. Maybe further than ever.