Page 32 of Desperate Vows

He looked around, panted a few times, and then took off. I stood up and walked to the table just as a loud pop sounded outside.

“This isn’t good, Lucas. They know it’s us.”

“They know it’s us, and something’s going on between Benoit and Moretti.” I crossed my arms over my chest and lowered my eyes to the concrete. “The only thing I can put together is Franklin promised Marco Claire’s trust fund and then didn’t trust Marco to sign over what they agreed to. Then he came to me.”

“Think he was trying to get Marco to come after you?”

“Or me to go after him.”

Dimitris grabbed another cigarette and lit it, taking a long draw. “We gotta do something. Meet with one of the other families. We can’t keep going like this, or they’re going to wipe us out. Then who’s going to keep Momma’s promises?”

What my brother didn’t know was that I’d been considering that for a while now. I’d kept it to myself because it put us at risk, but if the families knew—we were already at risk.

When I got home, it was late, and I was strung out and exhausted. Dimitris, Ari, Alexander, and Thea had decided we were going to reach out to the Georgiou family. I wasn’t keen on aligning with anyone, but if we were going to seek that route, Jason Georgiou was the least offensive choice.

I wasn’t thrilled they had strip clubs, but that was better than selling women. We had been in that world for longer than we had been out, and I knew for a fact that his clubs were safe. His family took care of the women, and they didn’t involve underage girls.

The way Ari and Thea put it, we were doing what we had to do, not what we wanted to do. My brother also thought Jason was leaning more toward our way of doing things. That made the decision a little less repulsive.

I dragged myself to my bedroom and stopped at the foot of my bed. What a sight for my tired eyes.

Claire curled up in my bed, hugging one of my shirts, was about the sexiest thing I had ever seen. She had showered, and I knew she had because she had used my soap. I wasn’t a fan of her smelling like me, but it almost felt like she had wrapped me around her with what she had on hand. The blood drained from my brain and pooled in the lower areas of my body.

The little silky shorts weren’t helping my situation at all. Then her shirt… it’d ridden up giving a peek at the smooth planes of her stomach. For such a small woman, she had a lot of skin that I wanted to devour.

What I found most alluring was her hair. I needed to get cleaned up. I shouldn’t have sat on the edge of the bed and run my fingers from my undamaged hand through her hair, but I couldn’t stop myself from doing it. It was long enough to touch her waist and silky smooth.

Man, she was beautiful, and she was mine. Moretti wanted to take her from me. For that, I wanted to burn his empire to the ground. I wanted to grind the Moretti name from existence. He would have hurt her. My sweet little Rapunzel would have been a broken, battered princess if he had gotten his hands on her, and the thought of that sent me into a blind rage.

Claire gave a soft sigh and turned, facing me. I was still furious, but that little pouty smile was replacing all that anger with need. I bent, placed a light kiss on her temple, and stood. I wanted to lie next to her, but I couldn’t do that while I had another man’s blood caked on the knuckles of my right hand and smelled like a sewer.

I went to the bathroom to shower, and the bench looked too inviting. I took a seat and leaned my back against the wall with my eyes shut. I heard bare feet, rolled my head, opened my eyes, and found Claire standing at the door.

“Hi,” she said. “I hope it’s okay that I fell asleep in your bed. I didn’t mean to. I was… missing you and wanted to be close.”

Why did that soothe me so much? “You missed me, huh?”

Her lips curved up, and I was ready for whatever smart comeback she had. “Yes, I did.” Her eyes skated over my face as she walked to me. I took a breath. Now that I was sitting, I didn’t want to move.

Her fingers slid through my hair, over my ear, and came to rest on the side of my face. “You’re tired.” That same hand trailed down my face, over my chest, and down to my damaged hand. “And you’re hurt.”

“I’ve had worse.” I smiled. “A good shower will take care of most of it.”

Claire held my hand, studying it for beat after beat. Her eyes found mine again, and I could swear there were tears. “Are you hungry?”

This woman was doing things to me that could be classified as torture. I kept my cool, though, but barely. “I could eat.”

“Hot or cold?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I’m so tired I don’t care.”

“Okay. I’ll see what you have and go from there.”

She turned, and I grabbed her hand, spinning her back to me and pulling her into my lap. Her lips met mine, and man, I could get used to coming home to this. No tongue, just soft kisses. I didn’t know what it was about her, but this intimacy, this kind of connection, had never appealed to me before. I had had sex a multitude of times with a multitude of women, but I had never had this. This precious thing that we shared was only ours. With her, it was all I wanted.

I reeked. I knew I did, and it was completely unfair to her to subject her to it, but I just wanted to hold her, kiss her, and keep her as close as possible. I shouldn’t have wanted her. I didn’t even know where her loyalties lay, but she was under my skin, in my head, and I couldn’t seem to stay away.

As we continued those soft kisses, she said, “May I ask you a question?”

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