Page 2 of The Mafia's Surprise Gift

Fuck. I was so nervous that I couldn’t control my thoughts or my words, and my body temperature was rising by the second. Maybe this was a bad idea. This was clearly a friendly conversation and nothing more, no matter how good I looked in my dress.

“You think I’m a trouble maker?” Rocco’s eyes glinted with mischief, and then he leaned forward slowly. He was so close that I could smell the spice of his aftershave, along with the lingering malt from his beer. The slight dusting of stubble along his jaw grazed my cheek, and he placed his lips right against the shell of my ear. “Is that why you came over here? Do you want me to take trouble for you and ask you out?”

My heart skipped a painful beat as if his words had slid right into my body and slapped it right out of my chest. Despite looking past him into the crowd of people surging and dancing around the kitchen, my attention was fully on the soft press of his lips to the outer shell of my ear.

“Is that why you came over here wearing a dress like that? Maybe I should ask you to dance, see how you handle that?”

Did I drink too much and pass out? There was no way Rocco Adami was asking me to dance, or talking like he knew of the crush stoking the furnace beneath my heart.

Rocco leaned away, and I saw the truth in the soft look in his eyes. He did know. And the way he offered me his hand told me that he either didn’t mind or didn’t care.

Fuck it, this was my last chance to do something entirely out of character and I was doing it.

“I’d love to dance,” I replied, and my voice shook, betraying the speed of my heart. I took his hand, and my heart lurched into my throat when he pulled me out onto the dance floor and wound his other strong arm around my narrow waist.

I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t focus on anything but Rocco. His hand was warm and his grip was firm. The arm around my waist was solid, and he pulled me firmly against his broad chest, where there was nothing but hard muscle to greet me under the thin green T-shirt he wore.

He slid his fingers between mine and tightened his grip. Then we began to dance, and everything else around us melted away. Rocco held my gaze, and our dancing mostly consisted of swaying together since the crowd was so jam-packed we were like sardines. I couldn’t meet his gaze at first, but his attention never swayed. Eventually, after several nervous glances around the room, I looked up into his eyes.

And never looked away.

“I waited all year for you to tell me you were interested,” Rocco said softly.

“What?” My eyes widened. “You’re not serious.”

“Deadly.” There wasn’t a single note of his usual humor in his tone. “I always thought you were too good for me. Beautiful and smart, always one step ahead of that asshole teacher.”

“Wait.” I was definitely dreaming. Rocco had a crush on me? This entire time? For a year? “How… but you’re so…” I couldn’t find the words to explain how so utterly out of my league Rocco was, or how it was a blessing that we’d even managed to become friends.

“I’m so what?” His pink tongue darted out and slowly swiped over his lower lip.

“Popular? I mean, you always have people around you. So many hot girls and guys, and I…” I trailed off, trying to control my drunken thoughts and their lack of tact.

“There’s always people around me, but you never noticed the people I chose to be around me?” He laughed softly. “Like Dino and you?”

“I thought you just needed study help,” I admitted, losing myself in the caramel depths of his shining eyes. “Is this real? Did I have too much to drink and I’m hallucinating this entire thing? Because you’re like fucking Adonis, and I’m just some mouse?—”

Rocco’s plush, soft lips landed gently over my own, silencing my nervous rambling. His entire mouth fit just slightly over mine, and despite his soft lips, the kiss was firm. He kissed me fully, then moved up and kissed my upper lip and then my lower. His arm around my waist tightened so much that my heart exploded into off-rhythm, excited patters that thrummed through my entire body.

If he weren’t holding me, I would have lost my balance.

“Does that feel real?” Rocco asked in a low voice, writing the words against my mouth with his lips.

We crashed through the door into one of the bedrooms, unable to take our hands off one another. That one kiss had broken down all walls, dissolved all nervous thoughts, and unlocked the pure, desperate desire in me that had burned for this man all year. I barely had time to understand that he felt the same, and we had simply been dancing around one another, like two ships passing silently in the night.

The door slammed closed behind Rocco, and he guided me toward the bed in the corner. We didn’t stop kissing, couldn’t stop kissing. I didn’t want to stop tasting him, even for a moment, and he appeared to have the same desire. We stumbled toward the bed, and I managed to kick off my shoes. Rocco’s large, warm hands gripped the hem of my dress and pulled it upward in one smooth movement.

We broke apart long enough for him to sweep the fabric over my head, then he discarded his T-shirt, and we clashed back together in a series of frantic, desperate kisses. I raked my nails over his muscular, golden torso, and he hissed into my mouth.

“Do that again,” Rocco groaned, biting sharply at my lower lip as we toppled down onto the bed with mixed laughter and giggles.

I did just that, grazing my nails over his strong, broad shoulders while he slotted in between my parted thighs like he belonged there. Both his hands caressed my sides and abdomen, trailing a path up to my ribs, and then he cupped my breasts and squeezed.

“I want to fuck you, Mary,” Rocco panted, pressing eager kisses along my jaw and down to the hollow of my neck. “I want to fuck you and never stop.”

“Do it, please,” I gasped, pressing my head back into the pillow and arching upward into his body. “Please!”

“I like it when you beg.” He leaned back up, kissed me deeply on the lips, and then vanished from view.

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