Page 25 of A Very Rossi Christmas
Okay, that was new.
"Then why are you here?" I asked, starting to panic a bit at the squeeze of his fingers around my throat. I could still breathe, but I'd always had a touch of claustrophobia, and right now it was roaring up inside me, threatening full-blown panic at the pressure. "How about you tell me what you want, and we'll see what we can work out."
He grinned, then, and to my complete disgust, leaned forward and licked me, from my ear lobe down my neck toward my collarbone. Then he pushed up against me, his cock hard against my stomach and his hips rocking.
"I bet you know exactly why I'm here, little girl. But that can wait, too. What I really want is to talk about your father."
I controlled my face—and the need to get away from him as quickly as possible—and asked, "What the hell does my father have to do with any of this?"
"Your father," he whispered. "Is going to give me a job. He's going to make me one of his key guys, actually. And you're going to tell him he should. Or he's never going to get to see his darling little girl alive again."
Suddenly his gun was in his hand, the nose brushing down my cheek, the steel hot from having been wherever he'd been keeping it, and I couldn't stop the shudder that ran through my body. I'd never liked guns. Yeah, I knew how to use one and I was pretty good with it and everything, but I'd seen how much damage they could do.
I'd seen how quickly they could snuff out a life.
Having one this close to my face was...
"If you knew Irish Brennan, asshole, you'd know that he'd never have someone like you in his operation," another voice snapped from behind Caleb. "He only takes the best of the best. And you're not even close to that."
I knew that voice. But before I could so much as turn my eyes to figure out where he'd come from, Joseph was there, all fangs and anger and hot, burning fury, and Caleb was ripped away from me and thrown to the side. Joseph spun on the spot and dove on him, fists flashing and rings glinting in the light of my lamp, and for several seconds all I could hear was the thud of fists on flesh and Caleb's grunts as he took the blows.
When Joseph got up again, Caleb was still on the floor, though Joseph aimed one sharp kick at his midsection, just to be sure.
"Lay hands on her again and I'll kill you, mother fucker," he growled. He yanked a piece of rope out of his pocket—what did he do, just travel with that at the ready?—and made short work of tying Caleb's hands to his feet, and then disarming him.
The gun ended up on my bedside table.
And when Joseph turned to me, done with his work, I abruptly realized that I was still standing there in nothing but a set of black lace underwear and a matching bra, and that I'd stood with my mouth hanging open, watching him save me from the guy I'd never thought would be anything more than a nuisance.
Staring at the guy who'd come out of nowhere to save me, despite the fact that I'd told him to leave me the hell alone and get out of my life.
He'd stayed. He'd stayed and showed up exactly when I needed him.
I also realized that my knees were a whole lot weaker than I'd have liked for them to be, and that they weren't going to support my weight much longer. I was starting to slide down the wall, thinking that I'd really better sit down, when Joseph moved again, catching me and pinning me there.
He brought a very gentle hand up to my face and cupped my cheek, his eyes flitting back and forth between mine and a deep groove between his eyebrows. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you? Did he touch you, because I'll kill him if he did anything—"
I stopped him with a kiss, my body deciding in the moment to throw itself at him—at this beautiful man who I'd loved for most of my life, and who had stayed to protect me even when I'd told him to go—without bothering to consult my brain.
15
SLOANE
ROMEO
When I finally pulled back for breath, I looked up to see his face looking hazy and stunned.
"What the hell are you doing?" he breathed.
I gave him the sultriest grin I could manage on short notice. "Something I would have done a long time ago, if I'd had the guts."
And either he agreed with that wholeheartedly or it was just a good enough reason for him to go with it—maybe both—because his hands slid through my hair to cup the back of my head, holding me still for him, and then he was kissing me again.
These weren't gentle caresses, either. He slanted my head and tipped his own, giving himself full access to me, and his tongue swept into my mouth, dancing with my own tongue in something that became half battle and half ballet, all passion and heat and burning, driving need. I groaned at the contact and arched up against him, giving in to my body's need to have more of him. Be closer. Feel everything.
No, I shouldn’t have given in to it, but I’d known and loved this man since I was seven years old. Watched him grow from a boy to a teenager to what he was now—or at least what he'd been at eighteen—and though I'd never said anything to him and never even admitted it to myself, my heart had always belonged to him. From the first day he saved me to that first awkward kiss to the last night we spent together, hidden in the shadows of a café and giggling at the fact that we'd just graduated and had to go out into the real world now.
This was the man I'd thought I was going to marry. Until I realized that marrying him would have meant both our deaths.
