Page 24 of A Bride for the Mafia King

“You like that, don’t you?” His voice is husky and low. “I’ve wanted to touch you, to taste you all fucking night. I’ve been imagining my face between your thighs, eating that soaked pussy of yours. Dipping my fingers in you one by one as I go, driving you to the edge of sanity.”

“Yes…” I sputter, his words invoking a primal response.

Even as apprehension fills every fiber of my body. Excitement clouds my mind as his hand snakes further up my leg.

When his fingers find the lace line of my panties he pushes them aside with skill. My knees part instinctively, a silent beg for more. His touch is confident and deliberate, teasing and testing me until I’m trembling.

“I’ve wanted to touch you all night,” his voice is a husky growl in my ear as he continues, “I’d like nothing more than to take you home and bend you over my desk. That pretty dress of yours hiked up, panties around your knees, and my cock stretching you out as I fuck you from behind.”

I let out a soft moan as his finger moves inside me and I picture the scene he lays out for me in my head. When he adds a second finger my hips buck against him involuntarily. The pressure feels amazing and I want more. More kisses, more teasing, more of every part of this … and what he is offering me.

He stops, withdrawing his hand from beneath my dress, licking his fingers greedily. Even as the pleasure clouds my thoughts I watch his eyes, those ice-blue globes no longer reflect anger, just desire. His gaze is lustful, yet soft. Something shifts within him.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I whisper.

Pressing his forehead against mine, his breathing as uneven as my own. Closing his eyes.

“I want you so damn bad, and that scares the hell out of me.”

When he opens his eyes again, I see it, those eyes tell me everything. He’s slipping. Losing the distance he’s been carefully maintaining. He wants me. Not just to possess me, but all of me.

And that’s dangerous. For him. For me. For whatever chance we may have.

Chapter Nine

Tolya

Tolya’s Office, Two Days after the Dinner Party

The moment Yaro steps into my office without knocking, I instantly know something is off. He only comes in unannounced when the news is bad – or bloody.

“The hit failed,” he says, voice clipped and sharp. “Target never showed. Switched locations at the last minute, the men didn’t have enough time to compensate and execute. No warning, no pattern changes, just an abrupt switch. He had to have been tipped off.”

I don’t answer right away. I continue to stare out the glass window as I listen. It’s raining out, a fitting ambience to the news of failure.

I ordered the hit on Giovanni the morning after the dinner party. It’s easy enough to recognize that if this treaty is going to move forward, the man needs to be removed from the picture altogether.

“Tipped by whom exactly?” I ask, watching his reflection in the window. “Any idea?”

“Felt professional, higher up. Quiet, clean. But too precise to be pure luck,” Yaro answers with a shrug. His tone tells me he has a suspect despite his words.

My mind turns over the little information that I’ve been given. Working fast. Possibilities. Motives. Access. And then the wrong type of silence hits me.

Nico. That bastard.

I haven’t heard from him since the dinner party. Not a call. Not a message. No follow-up meeting as I had instructed. Nico’s too loyal – too smart – to forget something that important.

My jaw clenches. He knows me well enough by now to guess that removing Giovanni would be my next move after his obvious objections to our plans that night.

“You think it was one of their men? Who?” I ask, already knowing what Yaro’s going to say.

“I think someone did. Who, I can’t say for certain,” he answers. “And the only ones who’d want that hit to fail are those within the Italians’ circle. Those who still stand to profit from the trade.”

The flesh trade. The one his family has built their fortune on. The one Nico promised to help shut down. Those promises are the entire reason I marry Eva in the first place.

And he’s gone radio silent since dinner. That’s not forgetfulness, that’s an admission of guilt.

Turning slowly away from the window, I walk back to my desk, sitting down in my leather chair.