Authors: Bethany-Kris
“You’ll know why when it’s you running the family,” Gio replied. “It’s about the respect. Nunz’s Cosa Nostra is small-time in a big sector. Pisses Nunz off like nothing else that, as he sees it, Antony overlooks him. Hence, every time they meet, the disrespect comes out. It flies from Nunz like cow shit. I’m surprised the asshole’s eyes aren’t brown he’s so goddamn full of it.”
“Dad shouldn’t have invited him,” Dante muttered.
“He couldn’t not invite him. It would look bad to invite the families around Nunz, but not him. Hell, even the leader of the Chicago Outfit and his wife were invited after that fallout two years ago. That’s never really been resolved. What would it say about Antony to invite those he still considers enemies, but not someone he counts as a friend of ours, even if that
friend
is a cocksucker?”
Dante tilted his head in agreement. “True. Fuck, too bad Dad wasn’t here right now. He’d be surprised to hear you talking like you actually pay attention to the things he says.”
“I pay attention,” Gio growled under his breath, offended. “I do my fucking job. I’m the Skip. I get it done.”
“Relax, I was kidding. I was just trying to say it’d be nice if Dad didn’t have to worry about you being so fucked up all the time.”
Gio’s eyes rolled. He was so over the worry-about-poor-little-Gio-and-his-habits thing his family had going on. Then, he smirked over at his older brother. The usual cockiness he sported was back, along with the remnants of the buzz from his earlier encounter with Kim. That, however, was starting to fade.
He wanted that high again.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t fucked up. I said I get it done.”
Dante didn’t seem to know how to reply to that. Gio was always good for shutting someone up when he wanted. Even his brothers.
“You might as well interrupt them,” Dante said, nodding at the dancing couple. “Everyone else has been doing it all night. Money, kisses, and congrats. You know the deal.”
For the first time all day, Gio detected a hint of disgust in his older brother’s tone. Dante had been pretty relaxed about the whole wedding shebang. Probably because attention left him for a while.
“How long before this is you, huh?” Gio asked.
Dante didn’t want to find a wife and settle down. It was a shitty situation for his older brother to be in, considering he was next in line to run their mafia family. To do so, by the Commission’s rules, Dante needed a wife.
Dante frowned. “That’s my question, too. I’m trying not to worry. See you tomorrow, yeah?”
“Yeah. Later.”
Dante moved back through the crowd with a two finger wave goodbye as Gio made his way toward his oldest brother. Lucian noticed his approach, slowing his dance with Jordyn to a stop. He also seemed to recognize the expression Gio sported.
“You’re skipping out, huh?” Lucian asked.
Gio wasn’t hard to figure out, apparently. “Before it gets too loud, yeah.”
“The only loudness they’re going to hear are my tires squealing on the pavement as I leave,” Lucian replied with a short laugh. “I’m about done with it myself.”
Playfully, Jordyn smacked his arm. “Stop. It’s been a good night, Lucian.”
“Yes, but it’s been an even longer day,
bella
.”
“You’re not pissed at me for going early?” Gio asked.
“No. Where are you headed to for the night?”
Gio lifted a brow suggestively, grinning. “Somewhere beautiful with long legs, blue eyes, and blonde hair.”
“Nice.” Jordyn snickered. “He even manages to take a guest home from our wedding. That’s wonderful.”
Lucian made a warning sound under his breath. “Man, be careful about who you pick up in this crowd tonight. There are a lot of faces we don’t know, but Dad does. Don’t go messing where business could be involved. It wouldn’t be good for you or the family.”
Gio waved the warning off. He wasn’t concerned about problems arising from whatever encounter he had with Kim after he left the plaza.
“Worry about getting your wife out of here, Lucian, and not who I’ll be fucking tonight.”
“And with that,” Jordyn drawled, shaking her head, “… you have a good night, Gio.”
Gio hugged his brother, holding on a second longer than what he normally would. “
Ti voglio bene
, man. Congratulations.”
Lucian smiled. “
Ti voglio bene
.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Gio was sure he saw a flash of blonde and blue near the entrance to the plaza. That was his cue to get going before someone tried to stop him to talk.
Twenty minutes later, Gio stood in front of the door to the hotel room number that matched the one on the back of the key card.
Briefly, he wondered if he should knock or use the card. The thought didn’t last long. Kim left the card behind, and as far as he was concerned, the intent in that action was as clear. She wanted him to use it. So he did.
Gio didn’t let the door stay open for long. Jasmine floated through the dimly lit space. Kim sat across the room on the bench window seat where the curtains were drawn shut. The crimson camber of her smirk peeked out from the veil of her hair. She leaned down to pull off her pumps.
“I thought for sure you weren’t coming,” Kim said, straightening up.
“And why’s that?”
“Too risky, maybe.”
Gio dropped his tux jacket on a corner chair as Kim unzipped the side of her silk dress. When she twisted to be sure the zipper was all the way down, the creamy expanse of her waist and the side of her breast were bare inside the slit of the fabric.
“Stand up,” Gio demanded.
Kim did without question, her hands falling to rest on her hips while he crossed the room. The closer Gio got, the more he realized his reaction to the girl was still real and true. She made him feel odd—in a good way.
Drunk on nothing. High on air.
He had chased down those feelings ever since he was fourteen. Constant. Harsh. Dangerous. This was not the same. It was instant but slow moving. Tapping straight into his veins, lungs and brain all at the same time.
Gio wasn’t a goddamned idiot. He recognized attraction when he felt it. Acted on lust when it was a shared desire. But this … What in all the unholy fuck was
this
, though?
“You knew my name,” Gio said, stopping in front of her. “How?”
“I know your family,” Kim replied. “That’s all.”
Lucian’s words about being careful poked at Gio. “Not that it much matters now but is this going to get me in some kind of trouble come tomorrow?”
Kim hesitated but only for a second. “It shouldn’t. It’s just for fun, right?”
He’d accept that. For now.
“Sure. Who taught you to count cards?” Gio asked.
He pulled her dress down over her shoulders. Kim didn’t stop him, so he took that as a sign she wanted him to continue. Silken, smooth skin met his lips before his teeth bit into her supple, sweet tasting flesh.
Kim sighed as her dress fell further down, pooling on the floor. Fuck, her breasts were perfect as far as Gio was concerned. They fit right into the palms of his hands, and her nipples pebbled at his touch instantly.
“So responsive,” he murmured at her collarbone. “Who taught you to card count? Tell me.”
“No one. I’m minoring in English and majoring in mathematics, actually. Counting cards is a pretty basic trick. And that wasn’t so much counting as betting on odd ratios.”
He released her breasts long enough to slide his hands down the flat contour of her stomach. A curved barbell in her bellybutton flicked under his thumb before he drew a straight line straight down under her black lace panties to the sweet spot between her thighs.
“Be gone by the morning,” Kim said softly.
Gio froze, looking at her straight on. Honesty was the best policy, and he assumed this encounter wouldn’t be any different than the ones he had before. It didn’t matter if he wanted to know this girl, Gio wasn’t in the right place in his life to do that kind of thing.
“I usually am, Kim.”
Kim frowned, her bottom lip finding its way between her teeth. “It’s not you. I can’t be just Kim come morning. So you need to not be here then.”
Gio understood that, despite the crazy way it sounded. “Be whoever you want to be tonight,
Tesoro
. I do have a question, though.”
“
Hmm
, what’s that?” she asked, a shake starting in her thighs as his thumb circled over her clit in slow, lazy circles.
“Why me?”
A sly smile lit up her pretty features. “You looked so bored standing up there at the church. At the dinner, it was the same thing. It didn’t seem like your kind of party. I wanted to see if I could get you to smile.”
Gio chuckled darkly, enjoying her mewled sounds as his fingers slipped between her folds. “Well, you certainly managed to do that.”
Kim discovered Giovanni’s body was a canvas of art underneath his well-fitted tux. Long sleeves and a shirt collar hid the colored ink. A raven on his side. The Madonna on his chest. His family crest across the back of his shoulders. His surname down his left arm.
Mea Culpa
below his right ear was the only tattoo visible when he wore clothing.
“Do you really believe this?” Kim asked, tracing the sharp, bold script tattooed down the inside of Giovanni’s arm.
N
on Fidarsi Di Nessuno
, it read. “One must trust no one.”
“Sure,” Giovanni answered faintly, his eyes closed. “It’s what I was taught.”
Old-style script littered his right ribcage. Italian words.
La Famiglia.
La Cosa Nostra.
Debito D’onore.
The Family. Our Thing. The Debt of Honor.
The tip of her manicured nail drew over every curve of each word. If she needed any more indication that he was integrated with his mafia family, those tattooed words were it.
Not that Kim cared if he was or not. It wasn’t Mafioso that scared her. She lived her whole life surrounded by those kinds of men though never in this way. This was playing with fire. One likely to get her burned a dozen times over.
Giovanni didn’t seem to mind her exploration of his tattoos as he rested back to the headboard with a lazy grin. Underneath dark lashes, green eyes watched her.
Again, her index finger ghosted along the words
Debito D’onore
.
“Do you feel like you’ve given up a lot for your family?” Kim asked softly.
Giovanni tensed for the first time since he entered her room. “Most people overlook my tattoos because they don’t understand the language and are too afraid to ask me what they mean.”
“I’m well-versed in Italian.”
Of course, she was. Her family was just as Italian as his, after all, but she knew he didn’t know that. Her father was a traditionalist in a lot of ways, proud of their Sicilian roots.
“So, do you?” she asked again.
Giovanni tilted his head down to stare at her, a stony expression replacing his blissful mask. “What do you understand about the family?”
“I understand that I’m not supposed to understand a thing.”
“Good point,” Giovanni said quietly, a chuckle following his words. “It’s not about what a man has already given to Cosa Nostra. It’s what the family is still willing to take.”
Like everything he had left
, Kim thought.
Once a man was in, he was in. It was lifelong.
Kim knew the rules of La Cosa Nostra. She heard them passed among the men who came and went in her household over the years. It was bred so deep into the culture, most men believed the rules shouldn’t even be spoken out loud, just known and heeded.
“Why all the questions about me?” Giovanni asked. “Based on past experience, I’m pretty sure this is not how one-night stands are supposed to go.”
Kim laughed. “Probably not. I suspect you’re one of those Alpha males who need to be in total control of everything.”
“Control?” Giovanni grunted an amused sound. “Try the complete opposite. Maybe you don’t know as much about me as you let on.”
“I never said I knew you. I said I knew of your family.”
Which was true. Kim only knew what she did about the Marcello Empire from her father’s slips of the tongue.
“Fair enough. But no, I don’t need control. I thrive on my chaos. I’m the youngest of three boys and I never wanted for a thing. I’ve always been looked at by people I didn’t even know as some kind of royalty. My life is crazy. What in the fuck is control? I’ve never even had it to begin with. I learned to be fine with it. You’ll find no fun or trouble in having complete control,
Tesoro
.”
“I think I might know what that’s like.”
Giovanni reached out to grasp her chin, tilting her face upwards for him to kiss a soft, sweet path along her jawbone. While she reveled in the heat of his lips to her skin, she could feel the puckered scar on his palm against her cheek. The one he would have been given when he swore the Omertà for his mafia family.
It seemed like her curiosity wouldn’t end. “Do you regret it?”
“How do you know what it even is?” he asked back.
“I’ve heard talk. It’s usually the palm they cut, right?”
“Some slice the inside of the bottom lip, too.”
Kim cringed. “Why?”
Giovanni’s right hand skimmed the curve in her waist down to her hip under the sheet. Without a word, he was grabbing tight and pulling her onto him. The gentle urging of his hands spread her thighs wide enough to straddle his middle. There was no warning before he was leaning up to capture her mouth with his own in a punishing kiss that took away what breath she had left. His cock, already hard and pressing against his abdomen and her core, rolled along the slit of her sex. The veins along his length pulsed to her clit, sending waves of want through her bloodstream.
The throbbing between her thighs started again. It was a scary reminder that her attraction to Giovanni was instant.
“You ask too many questions for a girl who wants me gone by morning,” he murmured to her lips. “I’ve already answered too many for a man who’s going to go. Just fun, you said. No more questions.”
Dazed, Kim nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
It didn’t take him long to find the second foil packet that had been shuffled around under the sheets. Kim shifted enough to let Giovanni roll the latex condom down the length of his erection for a second time that night.
Kim lost all rational thought when Giovanni entered her sex. He lifted her up and allowed her to sink down his cock. There was no resistance to his intrusion into her body. She sighed as he filled her, stretching sensitive tissues while her juices soaked his length.
And fill her he did. God, it was fucking bliss.
The gentle, leisurely rhythm was nothing like their first encounter earlier. That had been reckless and rough. His hands balled in her hair and her nails scoring over his broad shoulders. He’d taken her against the wall and had her begging and coming in only minutes. Then, Giovanni moved them to the bed, bent her over, and fucked her there, too.
Hell, Giovanni just simply fucking took her. Kim loved that. She had no great expectations about what he would be like as a lover, only that she wanted to find out. He was fantastic. Confident. Gorgeous. The body of a runner and strengthened like a boxer. Kim quickly learned that first time she didn’t have to direct him; Giovanni already knew. He took cues from her body and sounds and used them to his advantage. Like he was manipulating her nerves and senses.
This time he wasn’t taking her, though. Kim was taking him.
Giovanni groaned low against Kim’s cheek, his breath tickling against her skin. She heard his whispered curses disappear into the crook of her neck when he buried his face there. His teeth nipped at her pulse point, the bitter bite of pain contrasting against the sweet euphoria singing inside her blood. The slight stubble on his jaw left a scratchy sting behind. Even his fingertips dancing up her spine sent chills and sparks blooming.
“Jesus …” Giovanni breathed, lifting his head to rake his gaze down her form. “You’re beautiful, you know. Fucking perfect. Every damn day, Kim. You should be told that every single day.”
A shudder rippled up her spine at his words. They were spoken too easily for him not to mean them. She almost wished he wouldn’t say things like that. Something dirtier, maybe. Something to remind her the goal was still them fucking and parting ways. It would make it easier to forget that her interest in him was only growing.
His hands found their way into her hair, fingers weaving through the golden waves to tug her closer. Close enough that she could watch his pupils dilate so large only a small ring of green remained as she rode him. Heat flooded Kim’s pussy, traveling up over her stomach to her breasts that were pressed tight to Giovanni’s chest. With every stroke of his cock inside her sex, her muscles flexed and clenched, holding him tighter.
Kim didn’t want to think anymore. She wanted to feel.
Giovanni did that to her.
From experience and watching those around her, Kim learned men could be many things for a woman. Good for them. Bad for them. A man could drive a woman crazy in terrible ways, or light her up like a lightning bolt. It could be forever or a passing moment. Passionately fevered or restlessly dull. He could compliment her, suit her, or diminish her.
Her mother once told her that a woman knew within the first few minutes of meeting a man what he would be and what he could do. To her. For her. With her. Kim always believed that because she knew it was true and now she felt guilty.
Guilty because at first she only saw Giovanni as a challenge. What would he look like if it were a smile on his face and not that bored, disinterested stare he regarded the room with? Guilty because when he did smile, everything about him screamed trouble and fun and she couldn’t leave it at that.
Guilty because he made it clear he was unobtainable, but so was she.
He just didn’t know it.
God.
She should have left Giovanni Marcello alone.
• • •
I’ve regretted nothing
.
Giovanni’s final words still lingered in the back of Kim’s mind twenty-four hours after they parted ways. She felt far too dazed to think about much else. Going home to Vegas was the last thing she wanted to do.
Decisions awaited her there.
“It’ll be good to get back home, don’t you think?”
Ugh
.
Where was the flight attendant with her wine?
Kim hoped the iPod earbuds in her ears and her turned head facing the porthole window would signal to her father she was not open for chitchat. When was she ever when it came to him? They barely tolerated each other. Five and a half hours on a plane with her father was liable to get one of them killed. Kim hoped the wine the flight attendant brought to her came in a plastic glass or the death might very well be her father’s.
Nunz Abella might have helped his first wife create two children, but that’s as far as his fatherhood abilities went. Well, for Kim. Nunz adored her older brother Cody. Having the correct genitals at birth certainly made a difference.
Kim sighed when her father nudged her arm with his elbow a little too roughly. “Kimberlynn?”
Ugh. Again.
She hated her full name. It was far too pretentious and proper.
Kim tugged the earbuds out when he elbowed her again. “Mom would have enjoyed the ceremony. The church was beautiful.”
Nunz smiled. The most genuine emotion Kim saw him display all week. It seemed her father’s personalities changed more frequently when Mafiosi were around … or rather, a certain Mafioso.
“I think she probably would have loved the plaza they chose for the reception and party,” Kim added to appease her father’s need to talk. “It was more than big enough to hold the guests, anyway.”
“I know. That art exhibit was too good to pass up, though.”
Kim scowled at her father, disgusted. “I meant my
mother
, not your wife. Crystal wouldn’t know how to appreciate anything unless it was bought for her.”
“Kimberlynn, have a little respect. She’s my wife.”
Oh,
no
.
She couldn’t say no enough on that topic.
Her step-mother Crystal was vile. She was a special mix of gold-digger and too-stupid-to-know-better. And to make it worse? Kim’s father hadn’t waited eight months after her mother died of stage four breast cancer before he married the bitch.
Respect?
Mistresses didn’t get respect.
Her father dropped the topic and moved on to a worse one. “Have you talked to Fr—”
“No,” Kim interrupted sharply. “Why would I? This was the one time I could be as far away from him as possible for God knows how long.”
“I was just asking to make conversation. Jesus. Didn’t your brother give you something to keep you pleasant on the flights? Take one, Kimberlynn. Or a couple even.”
Sure. Anti-anxiety medication was exactly what she needed right now.
Kim turned back to the window, ignoring her father.
“At the plaza during the reception, I couldn’t find you,” Nunz said quietly, suddenly interested in his fingernails. “I wanted to introduce you to some friends of ours. It’s rare a daughter gets to be put into a room with so many all at once. But you disappeared.”
Mafiosi, he meant. Kim could read between the lines.
“To where, Kimberlynn?” Nunz asked.
Kim cringed, but at least her father couldn’t see it. “There were too many people. I felt suffocated.”
“Your brother said you were at the Blackjack table talking to someone.”
Fucking Cody.
The bastard was lucky she didn’t turn around and chuck something at him. Kim loved her brother, but he was far too attached to their father to see how manipulative the man could be. At twenty-three, Cody still believed his father was the master of the goddamn universe.