Page 25 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

“What?” I finally snap. “Am I not organizing them to your liking?”

He doesn’t answer, so I take his silence like another splinter under my skin and finish moving my things into his space. I turn to leave, but Ren stands solidly in my way.

“Get on the bed.”

The order shreds my expectations like tissue paper, tearing my thoughts in half. “What?” I breathe in answer, as if I haven’t understood him right—because there’s no way I have.

“Lie down,” he repeats, firmly.

“…I’m not tired yet. I’m not even changed, I still need to—”

“Nadia,” he repeats, firmly, as if he’s scolding a child. He backs me up with his sheer presence, striding forward with a confident step that crowds me back. I stumble backward to his bed and throw myself onto its edge, the mattress bouncing under the force of my indignation. Ren gestures his hand, a silent command to lie back. I do, stiffly. He stares down at me like that and says nothing. No orders, no ugly comment like he made in the dress shop. He just stares at me in his bed. My heart pounds, drumming in my own ears as I look up at him and play the awful guessing game ofWhat Will Ren Caruso Do Next?

My skin grows flush and warm at the vulnerable position I’m in. The longer I hold the pose, the worse it gets. I punch down on that feeling in my chest and my belly, trying to smother it like a flame.

“You know, your girlfriend might have a thing or two to say about our little arrangement, Ren. Or have you not told her that you’re going to be sharing your bed with someone else out of sheer spite?”

“…girlfriend?”

“Olivia.”

“Miss Basham is my assistant,” he says.

“Oh, I’m sure she assists you with a lot of things—”

Ren steps closer, looming over me, leaning over with his hand curled around the headboard as he gazes down at me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Nadia,” he says. Slowly, he straddles me around the waist. My heart pounds as he lifts my wrists and pins them above my head, getting me just how he wants me underneath him.

I feel the juxtaposition of his hands—one all cold leather, the other warm skin.

And under him, with his weight on top of me, his steely grip and his cold face, I know he’s right. I don’t know a damn thing about the man on top of me, except what he wants. I can read that in his face.

“See, I’m not like you,” he continues lowly, “I don’t get the luxury of forgetting about you and moving on with my life until I don’t have a better option. I was remindedevery daythat I hunted you—”

“You think I wasn’t?” I snap, sitting up only to be forced back down by a strong hand on my collarbone. My chest heaves, belly fluttering and ovaries roaring at being pinned under the man I have wanted for years.

“—I know damn well you weren’t. Not the way I was.”

His hand trembles as he runs it down my body. He skips my breasts. His fingers slide against the thin fabric of my shirt, his warm touch carving down my belly and blunt nails dragging against the fabric. His lips are slightly parted, eyes lidded as he almost gasps. “Six goddamn years I’ve waited to see you like this again.” He lifts his hand before he can reach the V of my hips, fingers curling into a tense fist. His shoulders draw taut, his expression pinched, like he’s holding himself back from reallydoingsomething.

I swallow my anger and look past it, trying to read him. He looks hurt, somehow. He’s in some pain that I can’t see. That old tenderness for him flares up again, much as I try to ignore it, but the atmosphere sizzles like a live wire. I feel it all around us, the air charged, the emotion between us magnetic.

“Well, now you have me right where you want me.”

I reach out to him, but he knocks my hand aside and pins them down again.

“Don’t,” he threatens darkly, “Don’t act like you want this, Nadia.”

“I’m not the one acting like they don’t want this,” I challenge right back. “You made me lie down in your bed.”

“So that I could see you in your proper place.”

The word draws a dark shiver through my belly. My proper place, apparently, is notjustin Ren’s bed. I am under him, sprawled beneath him. I stare up at his broad chest and his hollowed face, the way his expression smolders with such haunted intensity.

That humming electricity in the air feels like it’s going to blow—and it will either burn bright and blinding or plunge us both into darkness.

With no warning, Ren starts to get up. I don’t let him. I can’t let him. I reach up on sheer instinct and pull him back down, begging him to come back to me.

“Wait, Ren,” I say, still trying to understand, desperate to know why he wants to see me like this.

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