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Again, her body wanted her to scream, I have, too. If he had been wondering if her hair felt the same in his dreams, she wanted to beg him to smile… wanted to see if that slight indent in his cheeks would turn into dimples when he did. She hated herself for not paying enough attention when he had smiled at her; she’d been only able to picture him smiling from her dreams. Close to asking, she thought better of it, knowing if she saw those dimples, she wouldn’t be happy until her lips touched them, until her tongue filled the perfect holes that Lucifer created.
Dominic leaned down over her even farther, letting his nose whisper over the supple skin of her neck. He took his time inhaling deeply, drinking in her sweet, vanilla scent that held a drop of bourbon. “For weeks, I have dreamed of you ….”
She closed her eyes when he finally trailed his lips to hers. She wouldn’t have waited if his hand wasn’t holding her face firmly in place, waiting, torturing her to death—she was sure—when he whispered his lips over hers so lightly that she had almost not felt them.
“And you didn’t even give me a chance to show you what we could be.” He brought his lips close to hers once more. “Now …” Little did she know that would be the last time, as he pulled away and took a step back. “You will never know.”
Staring up at a deadly serious Dominic, who was a step farther back than her body wanted him to be, she was sure this was how Todd and every other man under her father’s thumb who had wanted her felt.
There was only one thing for sure in this life.
Payback
Was
A
Mother
Fucking
Bitch.
Falling on the edge of her bed after watching Dominic’s back leave, Leo entered. Her brain, body, and heart were all in a jumbled mess.
“Maria, are you all right?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her the same way Lucca always did.
“Yes.” Clearing her throat, she finally looked from her door to Leo. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“I missed my alarm this morning, and figured I could get out of a couple of classes and have Jerry drop me off on the way to taking you to school.”
“Okay.” Maria had to fake a smile. “We better go, then.”
Leo looked at the door and empty hallway. “Why was he—”
“Don’t ask.”
“All right.” Leo laughed, shaking his head that sent his blond hair falling around his face. Even he knew Maria was becoming more confusing every day.
This time when she got up from her bed, she didn’t have to fake a smile. “Thanks.”
Grabbing her purse off the bed, they headed out the door and down the hall; she’d hoped she had given Dominic enough time to have left by now. Her bubble burst, however, when she made it to the top of the steps and saw Dominic talking to Lucca. As much as she told herself not to look at him, she couldn’t help it.
Their heated whispering ended the second they saw her coming down the steps.
Reaching the landing into the foyer, she flipped her blonde hair that he had held in his fingers just moments ago behind her shoulder. “Please don’t stop on my account.”
“I’ll be in the car, waiting with Jerry,” Leo politely and quickly excused himself, opening the front door to leave
Dominic turned from Lucca. “I was just leaving.”
She gave her brother her own heated look, secretly promising him that she would have words of her own with him later. Then, flipping her hair again, now that she knew Dominic liked it, she practically whipped him in the face when she turned to leave. “Me, too.”
Grumbling something unintelligible under his breath, Dominic followed behind her.
Lucca watched the two as he went to close the front door.
If Leo hadn’t been only a few steps in front of her and Lucca only a few steps back, her next thought would have been said out loud to the Luciano ….
How about you go—
The engine in Jerry’s car clicked off.
--fuck yourself.
BOOM!
Twenty
By the Grace of God
It was true when people said time stood still during a near-death experience. Before that fucking boom, time and space crept like every clock on this Earth had paused and every planet in the solar system had stopped orbiting.
As soon as her thought finished, telling Dominic to go fuck himself, the joke had been on her when he had wrapped his arms around her from behind.
Maria got a bare second to look at Leo before the bomb went off, sure that last image of her perfect baby brother was her last. It was a sick snapshot that her brain had taken, like it was a fucking precious Kodak moment that she would have wanted to hang on the wall.
Only seconds after the bomb went off, she was already replaying it a hundred times in her head. Hearing that dead sound of the engine cutting off over and over, she would never, not in a million years, understand it, but somehow, someway, the men’s instincts knew what it meant. Even now knowing what the lack of sound indicated, to her it sounded like any other time a car gave out—that didn’t have a fucking explosive attached to it.
