Page 26 of Her Dark Mafia Protector
I reach for his pants, dipping my hand down the front of them and wrapping my fingers around the stiff cock that presses into my palm.
Nico groans and pushes himself harder against me as we both race to remove the fabric between us. The urgency is there, but so is somethingmore—a feeling that I don’t want to name yet until I’m certain.
This time, we don't stand a chance of making it into a bedroom. By the time our feverish hands have peeled away the last of our clothing, we're tangled on the worn leather couch, the material cool against my heated skin. Nico's weight shifts above me as he carefully guides my back down against the soft cushions, his olive skin gleaming in the half-light. I bite my lower lip, fighting to keep my hips from bucking upward as his hardness slides against the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, leaving a trail of warmth. For a moment, he hovers there, his dark eyes locked on mine, pupils dilated with desire, the muscles in his forearms tense as he holds himself just barely at my entrance, the promise of what's to come making my breath catch. His thumb traces the outline of my collarbone, then slides lower, circling my nipple until it hardens beneath his touch. I wonder what he's waiting for, but not for long before his lips part to speak.
“The last time we did this, I knew that something had irrevocably changed, not just between us but inside me,” he says, straining to keep himself physically contained until he finishes telling me what he needs to say. “I felt all the walls that I’d carefully built around my heart come down, and I questioned whether this was just our mutual trauma driving us together or something more. Now I know. Through this dance that you and I have been doing throughout the years, we’veseenthrough each other. I don’t know how, but trust has built gradually between us, and it’s opened up a place for emotional honesty and acceptance to bloom. I don’t feel like the man I was before you came back into my life.”
“You mean before I got serious about hunting you,” I tease playfully.
“That too,” Nico smirks. “Elle, we’ve overcome shared darkness and embraced the cracks within each other. Even as we’ve kept the rest of the world away from us, we’ve let each otherin. I don’t know if I can ever help you truly find closure or heal the emotional scars that you carry with you, but I find myselftrying todo that for you.”
The way Nico speaks is so raw and laid bare. It’s enough to make me think that maybethisis all the closure that I need. Maybe having him—the Ghost—is my way to heal from that night and move on from my past. This whole time, I’ve been trying to “solve” it so that I can put it behind me. But maybe I’m not supposed to put it behind me at all. Maybe Nico and I are supposed to move forwardtogether.
I open my mouth and say something that I never thought in a million years I would say.
“I think I might be falling in love with you,” I gasp as I hear my own words aloud. “Is that crazy?”
Nico’s blue eyes light up as if he’s looking directly at the sun, reflecting off his pupils and emanating a pure bluish light in the night.
“It might be,” he says with a sultry smile as he slowly pushes himself into my waiting body. “But if it is, then I might be crazy too.”
I moan with pleasure as I feel him enter me, and Nico puts his mouth over mine to catch the sound as if he wants to share it.
Tonight, I found out that my father killed my mother. I discovered the answer to the question that I have been asking for what feels like forever. And tonight, instead of continuing my relentless pursuit of the Ghost who crouched in the alley andwatched, I embrace him as if he’s the only thing in the world that can make things right for me again. And in the middle of the night, after we’ve had each other not once buttwice, Nico wraps me in his arms and holds me as I close my eyes and fall asleep. It’s the first night in averylong time that I don’t dream about theGhost, but instead I dream about Nico Vitale, the man whosavedme from death that night and who now watches over me like my own, personal protective shadow.
CHAPTER 19
NICO
When I wake up in the morning with Elle in my arms, it feels surprisingly natural. Having her there with her cheek against my chest and the crown of her head nestled in the crook of my shoulder feels like something that I could very quickly get used to and could quicklymissif she were absent from my bed—or in this case, the couch.
I wake before she does and watch her sleep for a few minutes before deciding to get up. There’s something that I need to do, something that I don’t want her to hear. So, even though I could stay lying here with her forever, I slide out from beneath her and get up, stretching out my stiff shoulders and reaching for my pants on the floor to put on. Then, I walk toward my office, close the door quietly behind me, and make a call.
“It’s awfully early for you to be up, isn’t it?” Zara’s voice chides me through the phone. “I thought you were primarily nocturnal.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it wasyouat the nightclub last night, hovering over your laptop, who turnedthe ire of the Bratva’s attention onto Elle,” I say with as much audible severity as I can muster for this early in the morning.
“What was I supposed to do? I was trying to remain low profile, and she kept staring at me,” Zara protests as if that’s any excuse to nearly have had Elle mauled by a rival mafia family. “It was me or her, Nico, and I was on a mission. I had work to do. Besides, you swooped in and got her out of there with only a few of her feathers ruffled, so no harm done.”
If she could see my face through the phone, she would be able to see the stiff frown and scolding brow I can feel on my face right now.
“You nearly got herkilled,” I scold. “Just because you’re a hacker prodigy doesn’t mean that you can go around doing whatever the hell you want to.”
I have rarely, if ever, argued with Zara Vega before. She and I have not just a friendship but aloyaltybetween us that has spanned more years than I have kept anyone as a friend.
“She’s no good for you anyway,” she argues instead of backing down. “Elle Monroe is a cop’s daughter—adirtycop’s daughter. You should stay away from her and find someone else to get horny with.”
Her crassness isn’t surprising. Zara likes to hide her true emotions under several layers of sarcasm and bravado, but her warning is. She doesn’t usually share her opinion on the personal matters of others.
“I can look after myself,” I say, still angry. “But the next time you think about throwing Elle to the dogs—don’t.”
I give her a second to squeeze in an apology, but when she doesn’t, I hang up the call.
Then, I hear some movement in the other room and go out to see Elle tinkering with the coffee pot.
“Here, let me help with that,” I say as I see her wearing my shirt and nothing else as she stands barefoot in my kitchen. “Like practically everything in my life, it’sflawed.”
She laughs, and the sight of her smile in the morning lights up my whole apartment.
