Page 26 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

Unless she’s reneged on our arrangement.

Really, why would she risk everything to come meet me?

A worse thought slithers into my mind, and I curse aloud, my fists closing as jealousy burns its destructive path in me.

Did that bastard take her to his place?

Is he having his way with her as we speak?

I’m imagining his hands on her, mapping the curve of her hips to her small waist, thumbs grazing the underside of her heavy breasts…his mouth on her nipples… When I think of him taking her, a roar tears itself out of me, and I crunch my right fist into a wood beam of the loft I’m waiting in.

“Leo!” Bianca gasps.

A second later, she’s by my side. A gentle hand settles on my right forearm, and with the other, she cradles the side of my head.

“What are you doing?” she murmurs. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Her hand slips a little, resting on the naked skin of my forearm where I’ve rolled the cuffs to my elbows. Her heat diffuses into me, warming my skin, my blood. When she starts to run her fingers in my hair, short nails softly raking my scalp, a shudder wracks through me. I find myself angling my head to her palm, like a cat seeking pets. Her touch is so soothing, I want nothing else but to stay here, with her holding me like this.

“Leo.”

The sound of my name pours from her lips like a caress. It’s never sounded like this to me before. Like a prayer, a wish, a marvel all in one.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, cupping the side of my head, my ear, in her palm.

I open my eyes—didn’t realize I’d closed them. My gaze lands into hers. They’re dark, sultry, searching. And she’s worried, too. I can see it in the small frown creasing the spot between her eyebrows, in the tension at the outer corners of her wide eyes.

How do I begin to tell her what’s wrong?

“I can’t do this,” I mumble.

“Do what?”

She’s so close, her breath fans my chin. She must not have high heels on today, then. Feeling her so small before me, all I want to do is reach out and pull her to me, crush her to and with my body as I turn her against the wall, pull her legs up around my hips, and sink my cock into her.

It hurts. So much.

“I can’t bear the thought of you…”

“Shh. It’s alright.”

Her left hand is slowly traveling over my arm, coming to settle on my shoulder. Her warmth threads into me from here, too, warming me where I’d thought I’d gone to ice before. Warming, thawing, in my chest, the area around my heart…

“It’s not alright,” I say. “You with him, I can’t bear it, Bianca.”

“Oh, Leo,” she sighs.

“Leave him,” I hear myself saying. “Come with me.”

I think I hear a sob. It hitches in her throat, doesn’t tumble from her lips.

When Bianca lifts up on tiptoe and presses her forehead to my cheekbone, my own breath snags in my airways. I can’t breathe suddenly, can’t do anything but inhale in the sweet smell of her perfume that runs like a balm that soothes as much as it burns inside me.

This. Her. This woman. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I’ll ever need.

She’s mine.

“Marry me,” I say.

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