Page 28 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

Nico doesn’t answer me.

“Christ, you look gorgeous,” he breathes instead, as if he keeps seeing me for the first time.

I swear to God my voice must be at a pitch that men just don’t hear.

“Actually, I look like a whore,” I inform him, stomping away again.

“You haven’t met a lot of whores.”

I sigh through my nose. “How far are you going to follow me, Nico?”

“Farther than you can walk in those heels.” I round on him again, angry, but he smoothly backs me into a little alcove carved into the exterior of the closest building. My back meets brick as we’re steeped in the twilight shadows. “The ends of the earth,” he continues, “as far as you can run, walk, crawl. We start walking now, maybe we can catch a California summer.”

“I’m engaged, Nico.Mafia rules,” I whisper, throwing his little phrase right back at him from last night.

“Yeah?” he mutters. “You a lovestruck, blushing bride already? Butterflies in your stomach?”

“I’m not that kind of girl anymore,” I tell him icily, sliding my hand into my bag.

“You could be,” he says, like it’s an offer. “It just takes the right man.”

I get my fingers around the pocketknife in my purse, and when Nico gets too close, I flip it open with one hand and leverage the tiny blade between us. He freezes. We are only the knife’s distance apart, too close for anyone else to notice the weapon pointed at Nico’s sternum and holding him at bay.

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” I whisper hotly.

Nico glances down at the knife, his smile curved and dangerous, showing a glint of those white teeth.

“Neither do you.”

Pressure hits the end of the blade. Nico pushes forward, fearlessly burying the point a couple centimeters into his chest.

I gasp as he keeps coming, willing to take a blade if it means getting to me.

“Nico!”

I yank the knife away before he can actually stab himself, and he claims the distance like a victory, takes my face between his huge hands, and draws me into a deep, searing kiss that swallows my stunned breaths. He ravishes my mouth, hungry and single-minded, ignoring the tiny red stain seeping into the front of his button-up.

“It’s worth it,” he mutters against my lips. “God, it’s worth it.”

My grip on the knife grows feeble, my head spinning at such a mindless, desperate act. I’m flattered and horrified at onceby Nico’s devotion. I see something familiar in him, a perfect mirror of my own suicidal recklessness—driven toward the things that can cut me the deepest. Likehim. He is my siren song in the same way that I am his. That gravity from the night before still pulls us together, as if we were made for each other.

Nico pries the knife from my limp hand. We stagger against the brick face of the building. My heart hammers my ribs and my head spins like a carousel, up and down and around. Nico is the only fixed point, where my hands anchor themselves.

“Stop,” I gasp, no steel in the word.

“No.”

Good.

My knees betray me and go weak for him, my lips parting softly as he kisses me again.

“Nico, Ican’t—”

“You said you want it to hurt?” he interrupts in that low, gravelly voice that makes me listen. “Let me hurt you.”

I almost moan at the thought as he sweet-talks the broken side of me, flirts with the suicidal little monster in my head.

“You can’t hurt me,” I lie, even when we both know it isn’t true.

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