Page 111 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

She tastes like coffee and sugar and sleep.

Like my bed.

Like this morning should have started with her under my hands instead of crêpe batter on my shirt.

I catch her waist and pull her against me. She comes willingly, immediately, rising onto her toes, her body fitting to mine with soft, reckless trust.

That is the thing that nearly ruins me. Her choosing to lean into me in daylight.

I back her carefully against the counter, and she laughs against my mouth when something metallic hits the floor.

“Was that important?” she whispers.

“No.”

“You don’t know what it was.”

“I know it wasn’t you.”

Her laugh breaks again, breathless this time, and I kiss the sound out of her. Her fingers find the hem of my T-shirt. She hesitates there, barely, and I go still despite the blood pounding hard enough to make reason difficult.

“Tell me,” I say against her mouth. “What do you want?”

Her eyes open. Dark gray now. Unsteady.

“I want to touch you.”

The words are quiet. They still move through me like a match struck in dry tinder. I step back just enough to pull the shirt over my head and toss it aside.

She doesn’t ask again. Her hands are on me. Fingertips tracing my ribs, my chest, the hard line of my stomach. When she reaches my forearm, her touch slows over the old faded marks there, and my muscles coil.

“I’m not pitying you,” she says, caressing the scars, then looking up at me. Gentle, but not fragile. “I’m touching you.”

The distinction lands so cleanly that I have no defense against it.

“Tamara.” My voice is warning and request and surrender all at once.

Her answer is to press her mouth to the scarred skin. A kiss. One small, deliberate kiss over a place most people pretend not to see.

I catch her face in both hands and kiss her again. This time, it’s slower. Worse for that. More intimate. Her body softens against mine, and I feel the exact moment she stops bracing for the morning to become something she has to survive.

I lift her onto the counter.

Her legs wrap around me automatically, and the contact nearly knocks the breath out of my lungs.

The pan smokes behind her. Something sizzles angrily.

Tamara pulls back, eyes dazed. “The crêpes.”

“They were already in trouble.”

“The apartment may be next.”

That, unfortunately, is harder to argue. I reach around her and turn off the burner. The pan gives a final resentful hiss. Tamara looks at it, then at me, then at the laptop where Ina Garten remains paused.

“Ina can judge me later,” she says, smiling now, warm and wicked and still a little unsure. She flips the laptop closed and turns back to me. “Bedroom?”

I know I’m not going to make it that far without at least a taste. I slide my hands under her thighs and pull her to the edge of the counter. Her hands tighten on the counter when I tug her panties down her legs and let them fall on the floor.