Page 95 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

We shouldn’t see each other anymore. We shouldn’t have seen each other to begin with.

This is me finally telling you what I should have all along: no.

I tried to argue, tried to call, but the messages wouldn’t send and the call bounced. She blocked my number. My tracking app no longer finds a connection, searching and searching, never getting a return ping. And I still check it, like muscle memory, just needing to know where she is, how to get ahold of her, but I can’t. She wiped her phone. A clean slate.

I can’t even kick down her door anymore. She’s living her life with her new husband.

The thought makes me wild.

Every night, I lie awake and wonder if he’s fucking her. If she’s lying under him, staring up at the ceiling, trying to feel something for him. I dream up half-cocked plans of taking her at gunpoint in the middle of the night, stealing away on some redeye flight with all the cash we can carry, and running somewhere out of the country. Anywhere.

But I know she’d miss her brother and her family, and I try not to do anything stupid. Friday night, I go to the fighting ring, and I can’t even pay attention to the fight. All night, I’m looking for her, thinking maybe she’ll sneak out and come see me, crashing into my arms.

She doesn’t show.

I’m going crazy. She’s in my every other thought. I need her, I need her. I spent the night in the company of addicts and alcoholics, and I was the worst of all of them. Everything theywanted was right there for the taking, but for me, there was no fix.

My head boils. It’s almost 2 A.M. when I roll up to the house, park my car in the garage, and prowl through the house just like I used to. I have no idea what’s been going on with her, what her life has been like now that Thaddeus is a permanent fixture in it. I ease up against her door, press my ear to the wood, and listen.

There’s nothing beyond it, and there’s still no lock between us. She never replaced it.

I nudge open her bedroom door. The hinges swing silently.

I stand in the dark and wait for my eyes to adjust to the familiar room. Ava lies on her back, her gorgeous face tilted to the side and illuminated by a stripe of moonlight as she sleeps. On the opposite side, I see another shape: Thaddeus, facing the opposite way. I don’t know how he can put his back to a woman like that. How he doesn’t wrap around her and hold her against him, making sure she never gets away. That’s how I always held her, how I want to hold her right now.

My heart hammers furiously as I watch her, the subtle swell of the covers rising with her every breath. Thaddeus doesn’t move, either. His breathing is heavy with sleep, utterly oblivious. Feeling bold and wild, I inch slowly into the room, letting the floorboards adjust to my weight. I kneel next to the bed, easing the sheets down her body. She doesn’t stir.

Her silky, thin nightgown hugs her hips, and slowly, so slowly, I part her legs. The mattress dips as I ease between her thighs. I drag the very tip of my tongue against her clit, the slightest pressure. Almost nothing. I move by feeling alone, the soft touchof my tongue like fingertips reading Braille, surface level and quick, over and over.

Ava starts to stir. Her thighs tighten, her breathing changing as she gets caught somewhere between here and hot dreams. I swipe my tongue faster now, more daring, her hips twitching involuntarily up. It wakes her up, but I’m ready for her, and I hold her down and clamp a hand over her open mouth, muffling the sound of her shock.

The tension cracks in the moment, silent and burning. I gaze up at her, the shape of her shadow and the strands of her hair caught in ghostly light. I feel her stare more than I see it, the rigid uncertainty in every muscle under my hands. I feel the shock drain from her, slowly. When I’m sure she won’t scream, I pull my hand off her mouth and kiss the inside of her thigh—a wordless apology for scaring her—and punctate the kiss with a sharp little bite.

Her fingers slide into my hair as I bury my face between her legs again.

Her head falls back, and she holds her silence and doesn’t give me away.

The clouds slip over the moon and leave us as just two silent shadows moving in the dark. She should count herselfluckythat I’m being quiet, that I’m not storming back in here to take her as mine by force, damn anyone who gets in my way.

She hardly dares to breathe. The slightest sound might betray me. I run my hands up and down her thighs, my mouth slowly working on her clit, teasing it just the way she likes. I drag her legs over my shoulders, pinning her back properly.

Ava’s tense, but those long, smooth legs still wrap around me from behind, welcoming me back to her. Her fingers tighten against my shoulder and she holds herself desperately still while I kiss a slow, sweet line up her pussy.

I taste her like a drug, the wild, hungry part of my brain finally silent and satiated as I have my mouth on her. I may not be able to speak to her, but I can tell her everything I need her to hear, just like this.

I miss you. I need you.

I will never, ever leave you alone, no matter how much you beg.

And, most important of all, with my tongue finally dancing wild against her clit:

You still belong to me.

I slide my hand up under her shirt and grope her tits, fondling her roughly in my grasp.

Her muscles ripple with tension, and I feel each motion, the way her thighs lock and legs twist as I frantically glide my tongue around her clit again and again. The softest, featherlight sensation as I lavish attention on her. By how she reacts, I’m sureheisn’t giving her any.

She’s neglected and needy, and she arches her hips up slightly, her fingers curled around the edge of the mattress while her other hand clings to me. She can’t direct me with her voice, can’t so much as utter a sound, so I feel my way along by instinct and the tension of her muscles and the soft hitch of her breath. Iknow she likes it in circles, and I torment her with it for a long, relentless minute until she’s shaking.

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