Page 3 of Deadly Target
“I never was good at them.”
She kissed him then, letting her tongue outline his lips. “I don’t work for free, you know. I expect dinner in exchange.”
Holy hell, he’d give her anything she wanted. “Is that all?”
“Where’s the bedroom?” She grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. “Dinner is only the beginning,polpetto.”
“I love it when you speak Italian,” he said, following her up the steps to the bedroom loft. “What does that mean?”
“Meatball.”
Meatball? What the…? “Seriously?”
She laughed and yanked him inside where they collapsed onto the mattress lying on the floor. He hadn’t set up the headboard and rails yet. “Trust me,” she said, as she took off her flannel shirt and went to work on his belt. “It’s a term of endearment. There’s not much we Italians love more than a good meatball.”
God, this woman. He’d barely known her a few months, but there was no doubt in his mind, he was totally head over heels for her. Just gone.
Helping her remove her tank top before he pulled her down beside him, he once again realized perfection was a moving target.
And right now that target was a beautiful US deputy marshal who had her hand down his pants.
* * *
Olivia Fiorelli was notthis kind of girl.
She’d only known Victor a couple of months. The first time she’d slept with him she chalked it up to a wedding, which always made her sentimental, and too much booze, which never failed to lower her inhibitions.
But today? Right now? One beer wasn’t enough to use that excuse, so maybe she should use Cooper, Celina, and their baby. They had all survived a hostage situation before Christmas the previous year, reminding Olivia how precious life was and how quickly it could be taken away. Afterwards, she’d attended Cooper and Celina’s impromptu wedding at their house, and found herself totally infatuated with the man whose bed she was currently in. Seeing the happy family earlier had triggered her ovaries to do the hula. She longed for a man. A strong one who supported her and wanted kids as much as she did. A man who wouldn’t hold her crazy, criminal family against her.
Unfortunately, those men were few and far between.
With those pesky, demanding hormones coursing through her system, and the realization she was about to turn thirty with no marriage or family in sight, she’d done what any respecting kickass woman would do—picked up a bag of comfort food and some alcohol and drove straight for hell.
Because that’s where she was headed.
Good Catholic Italian girls did not sleep with a man before marriage. An old-fashioned idea but one that had been ingrained in her head by her mother and father. That past conditioning didn’t die easy.
As Victor unsnapped her bra and cupped her heavy breasts, she considered letting herself off the hook. It wasn’t like she slept around. She wished she could be casual about sex like some of her friends, but that had never been her style. Along with the fact that the first guy she ever fell in love with, Johnny Valducie, had gotten the crap beat out of him when her father caught them making out in the basement. Totally traumatized—poor Johnny—and she had been too. Johnny never spoke to her again and for good reason.
It was after that when she realized her father wasn’t the man she thought he was. That for all his talk about being an important person at his job, and all the nice, expensive things their family enjoyed, her father was nothing more than a mid-level gangster. Not just a gangster, ahitman.
Yes, he loved her, but that love—and subsequently hers—came at a price.
All these years later, she still sensed his shadow hanging over her every time she felt the pull toward a serious relationship. Two thousand miles away and her job in law enforcement standing between them, and her father’s presence was just as intimidating as it had been growing up.
Victor’s kisses stole her breath and took her mind off the weight of family guilt and past consequences. Maybe that was why she kept throwing herself at him. He offered absolution, wiped away the pain and embarrassment of who her father was, what he had done. What she was, and could never be again.
Daddy’s little girl.
As Liv sank into the heady oblivion of Victor’s touch, the heat he was building inside her took over. Mindless. She could submerge herself totally in her body, rather than her head where thoughts never stopped and over-analyzing was her constant companion. She could forget for a few minutes about all the crap and pretend she wasn’t keeping a secret that would ruin everything she had with Victor.
“So good,” she whispered in his ear. His fingers undid her zipper, slipping in to touch her panties. “I’m so glad I came.”
He chuckled deep in his chest. “Oh, you’re going to come all right.”
He slipped a finger inside her and she gasped as a vibration tickled her skin. Another vibration pulsed a second later, but she was too far gone to immediately recognize what it was. Her body insisted it was only Victor’s skilled fingers at her hot center and—Mother Mary full of grace!—he was hitting all the right places.
But the third time, she realized she heard music. A very specific series of notes, as in the ringtone of her latest informant, and future WITSEC client.
