Page 54 of Mafia Boss

“Why would I stay?” he snapped, yanking open the bedroom door but not leaving yet.

“Because I …” I swallowed hard, vulnerability eating me alive. “Because I want you to.”

Cristian tensed, the muscles in his back flexing. He paused for a long moment as I stood behind him, worried if I’d said the right thing or not. I didn’t want him to think that I was desperate for him. But I … I … I wanted him to be mine.

God, I hated even the thought of it.

But … I couldn’t deny it. I couldn’t keep lying to him and telling him that I hated him.

In the most fucked up way possible, he had grown on me.

“You can drop the act,” Cristian growled, storming down the hallway toward the stairs. “I already let you out of your restraints.”

Hurrying after him, I grabbed his hand, forced him to turn around, and pressed my lips to his. Under my touch, he relaxed, his shoulders slumping forward and his hands sliding around my waist. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him closer to me, pressing my breasts against his chest and slipping my tongue into his mouth.

After a few moments, I pulled away from him and rested my head against his, staring down between us. I placed my hands on his chest and trailed my fingers down to his hands, wanting to grasp them, but not having enough courage to do so. Instead, I let them drop down by my sides and pulled away from him.

I gave him a half-smile, the best I could muster at least, and turned back around, feeling rejected. I didn’t know what it was, if it was me, or why I was even feeling this way. He had kissed me back, but … God, I didn’t know. I needed to go to a therapist or something to figure out what had been wrong with me lately.

I had been nothing but an emotional wreck after meeting Cristian.

Before I could make it a mere step, Cristian grabbed my hand and pulled me back. “You’re not lying?” he asked, searching my face for any sort of signal that would set him off. Then, he shook his head, as if he had the answer himself. “You’re not lying.”

“No,” I whispered.

“I don’t want to believe it,” he said quietly, swallowing. He glanced down at his fingers against my wrist and trailed his index finger down the back of my hand and ring finger. “Nobody has ever cared about me. About my money, yeah … but never about me. Never.”

“You’re not the only one,” I said, unsure of what else to say.

I hated feelings. I hated having them, feeling them, thinking about them,talkingabout them. I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at my feet. My parents had basically let my grandfather do whatever the fuck he wanted with me. Ben had used me for years and lied to me over and over again.

Ever since Cristian had started fawning over me … I didn’t know how to react or what to even do with him. I hid everything behind a wall, made sure that he didn’t know how I truly felt about him. I didn’t want to be abandoned or lied to again.

But instead of pushing him away and distancing myself from these feelings, I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “Please, don’t go …” I whispered, leaving myself vulnerable. “Don’t leave me now. You spent half the night torturing me.” I parted my lips to say more, then pressed them closed. This was hard—so damn hard—to say what I wanted to say and not what would make me comfortable. “I want to spend time with you.”

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“Please, don’t go,”Roxie whispered again, her cheeks a rosy red and her brown eyes wide in what looked like fear and … vulnerability. She clutched my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers, and held on tight. “I want you.”

Unable to hold myself back, I pulled my hand out of hers and grasped her face, kissing her on those plump pink lips and pushing her against the bedroom door. When she inhaled sharply in surprise, I slipped my tongue into her mouth, needing to taste even more of her. I wanted her sweet flavor burned into my memory forever.

I had waited fucking years for this.

Years.

She wrapped her arms around my shoulders, tugged at the ends of my black hair, then sucked my bottom lip into her mouth. After she pulled back, she stared up at me with wide, excited eyes and a cute, lopsided grin, wiping her mouth with her fingers.

Wrapping my hand around her chin, I pushed her back into the bedroom and kicked the door closed with my foot. “Don’t fucking wipe my kiss off those lips,” I mumbled against her, pressing another sloppy kiss right on her mouth. I brushed my thumb across her bottom lip roughly. “They’re mine now.”

Roxie giggled. She actually fucking giggled in front of me.Because of me. It was a sound I hadn’t really heard for years now, and it brought me back to when we had still been young kids, not knowing what the hell was going on but living our lives carefree anyway.

I scooped her up into my arms and dropped her on the bed, lying down beside her and trailing my fingers down her bare abdomen, touching her body, which was really mine for the first time. I had said it over and over again that Roxie would be mine—and not by force either—and now, she was.

It was surreal, and that was saying something because I wasn’t an emotional mess, like some of these men out here. Dad had taught me to be coldhearted, to detach emotions from business. But with Roxie, I couldn’t. I had never been able to.

“I’m hosting a yacht party tonight,” I said, staring into those brown eyes. “I want to show you off, make sure everyone knows you’re mine.”

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