Page 85 of Sinful Honor

I hadn’t planned on it, but something happened when our lips met. As if a powerful animal was awoken deep within me.

An animal that recognized its mate.

My mate.

Mine.

I invaded her with my tongue, couldn’t get enough of her. At first, she was shy, but then she thawed. And boy, if I didn’t unleash her inner beast, as well.

It was a mating of our tongues, hot, intense.

We drank each other in as if we’d been dying of thirst in the middle of a drought.

Her satiny tongue stroked against mine; her hands roamed all over the skin on my back and sides.

She spread her legs, and I settled between them and ground against her core, the feeling of urgency burning me up like a fever.

“Ahem.”

I froze.

She froze.

She opened her eyes again, stared into mine.

I lifted my head slightly, turned to the side, and slowly looked up from the tapping foot right next to our heads, to folded arms, then to the stormy expression on my mother’s face.

Watching me with the same fury in her eyes as she did when I was twelve years old and decided to jump off of the roof of the barn to prove to Alessio and Cristo and Vincenzo that I was, in fact, an indestructible superhero.

“Gabriele Falcone. Have you lost your mind? What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

Well, as it turned out, I wasn’t indestructible then, and I was no superhero now.

Not when my mother gave me that look.

Or that tone.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

“I’m listening.” Gabe’s mother looked entirely different than I thought she would. For someone who had such a breathtakingly good-looking son, I’d expected a typical Italian beauty, like Sophia Loren—a voluptuous beauty with high cheekbones, flawless skin, and effortless international flair.

Instead, I looked at a no-nonsense woman in cargo pants, with cornrow braids that kept her hair back and accentuated her stunning face—at least I was right about the cheekbones.

But she looked at Gabe and me like a drill instructor, ready to make us drop into doing push-ups—which she could do herself, with her fit physique and bulging biceps, and probably outdo even Gabe.

I looked sideways at his naked arms—maybe she couldn’t outdo Gabe.

But she was scary. Capital S.

Gabe got up and helped me stand, as well, then led me to the patio furniture and offered me a seat before taking the chair next to me. “It doesn’t concern you, Mamma,” he said, not backing down—not even from his mother.

His mother took a seat opposite us and smiled a dangerous fake smile that would make every Bond villain shiver. “Well, you’ve been away for a while, dear son of mine, so let me refresh your memory.” Her saccharine sweet tone gave me the heebie-jeebies. “I’m your mother. Everything concerns me. Now, explain yourself.”

At that moment, the sliding door opened, and Cristo—the brother who’d carried me from the trunk to the room that first night and then entered a staring contest with me—stepped out.

Gabe groaned next to me.

Cristo’s step faltered, then a grin—nothing short of devilish—filled his face. “Introducing your captive to your mother? Bold move, brother. Bold move.”

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