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That sounded so fucking tempting. If it wasn’t Angelo offering it, I would jump at the chance for an escape like that. But how could I possibly forget our past or who he was or why I was here with him?
“Turn over.” I did, rolling to face the wall and putting my back to him.
He snuggled close, wrapping himself around me. I sank into the mattress, intentionally letting my body grow heavy. This was unexpected as hell. The last thing I thought Angelo would do was cuddle me. The warmth of him, his strength, made me feel safe. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.
“See? Isn’t that better? I told you I’d take care of you.”
“But you… Why?”
“Because I take care of what’s mine.”
I didn’t want to be his. I wasn’t property, but I was stuck with him for now, and his embrace felt too good to resist.
“Tell me about the bakery,” he said. “What are your plans for it?”
Why did he want to know? Did his family hope to exploit me more later on? There was no fucking way that was happening. Once I paid my debt, I wanted them all out of my life.
“I hope to hell you hired Maria back,” he said before I figured out what to tell him.
“You know her?”
“Yes, she’s amazing. She makes the best fucking cannoli in the city.”
“You were a customer?”
He shifted against me, pulling me closer to him. “My mom used to get cannoli from Art’s all the time,” Angelo said. “Lola, our housekeeper, is amazing. She bakes some of the best shit in the world, but no one makes cannoli like Maria’s, and my mom—” His voice cracked. He’d lost his mom the year before he’d asked me to tutor him, but I could tell how much it still hurt.
“I’m sorry she’s gone. I should’ve said that when we were kids, but—”
“You had no reason to feel sorry for me back then, and you don’t need to now.” The defensiveness in his voice let me know just how much he needed empathy. But empathy had never been one of my strengths. I had no idea what to say to him now, and I sure as hell hadn’t known when I was a kid. I’d just wanted Angelo and his family to stay the fuck away from me so I wouldn’t screw up the path I was on.
“Are you… are you planning to spend the night?”
“Yes.”
I wasn’t sure I could handle him here, being soft and caring like this. “That’s not—”
“When you’re not working at the bakery, you’re mine.”
“I thought you meant—”
“Never make assumptions when you’re bargaining with my family.”
Bargaining. That was a joke. He told me what I had to do and expected me to do it.
“I agreed to your demands,” Angelo reminded me.
“Most of them.” Would he have agreed to more if I’d pushed for it? “But I can’t work if you keep me up all night.”
“I won’t keep you up all night.” He pulled me roughly against him, slid his lips up my neck, and sank his teeth into the edge of my ear. “But you’re mine. Any way and any time I want you. If I want to sleep with my dick inside you or if I want to tie you to the bed, you’ll let me. You’re here to satisfy me.”
My cock hardened as he spoke, and I fought the urge to push back and rub my ass against him.
“Now tell me what the fuck you’re going to do with the bakery.”
I’d completely forgotten what we were talking about. How had we gotten so far off track? His mom. He’d mentioned her, and I hadn’t known how to handle his sadness. Angelo’s family was nothing like mine. My mom and dad hated each other, and while my mom insisted I come with her when something—I never knew what—finally pushed her to leave my father, she seemed to see me as more of a burden than anything else.
My grandparents loved me, but I always wondered how they managed to go so wrong with their kids. My father was a fucking mess, and my uncle left the second he graduated high school and had only contacted my grandparents when he wanted money.
I’d been jealous of Angelo and the other Marchesis because they had adults in their lives who took care of them. I remembered seeing Angelo the first day he returned to school after his mother died. I was terrified to get near him after seeing him punch a boy for looking at him wrong. When he wasn’t yelling, he just looked devastated, like the life had been drained out of him. It was a long time before he started to look like himself again.
“I’m going to keep Maria on, fix things up, and reopen. Some things are falling apart and need to be replaced, but I like the vintage look, so we’ll mostly keep things the way they are. I’ve got some new ideas for the menu, though. Things I want to try. But Maria thinks we need to stick with what already sells.”
