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I don’t know what I’m doing.
That just keeps coming back at me. Over and over.
On the counter are bottles of booze and I’m thinking maybe I need one. Just to settle things. But I half reach for the bourbon but snatch back my hand.
I don’t want alcohol.
I want something far more addictive. Far more dangerous. Far more wonderful.
Nicolo.
Turning, I just fill a glass with water and find a cutting board on the polished wood of the counter between the stove and the sink, and then I grab a knife from the selection in the knife block and start to slice the bread.
“Domestic suits you,” he says.
I almost drop the knife.
“Of course, it might be easier if you use this.” He crosses to me, hand whispering over my ass in the dress I’m wearing, and he hands me another knife. “Bread knife. Serrated edge.” He crowds me in, and my breath catches. “It’ll do a better job than your boner.”
I narrow my eyes as he takes the slender-bladed knife from me.
“And no,Tesoro, that’s not a euphemism for my state. That’s what this fucking knife you’re using is. A boning knife.”
Nicolo rinses it, selects another couple of knives and plates. He pulls the cheese and a paper-wrapped package from the fridge and then tomatoes from the box on the counter and starts to slice.
I just stare at him. I’m more than a little turned on. “I think domestic suits you more.”
He grins, and it lifts something in me as we make sandwiches together. It’s sweet, it’s normal, and it’s something I want to keep to myself.
I know this isn’t real, that deep down I’m hurt, angry, and all the rest, but Nicolo soothes something in me.
He didn’t send someone after me. It’s just . . . the rest.
We eat the sandwiches on the sofa, and he pulls me to him after. “Babe, I know you’re mad, but this is something we need to do to keep you safe.”
“Eat?”
The tiger eyes don’t let me go as he sprawls me over his thighs, his hand slipping between my legs. “Do all the shit you don’t want to do.”
“Yeah, well. You’re not sending me weird stuff.” He’d opened the things sent to the office, and photos of me, with him and alone were there. More creepy lingerie that I don’t even want to think about.
“No, but I’m making you hold guns and all the rest and—”
“Tell me about this place.”
His mouth thins, and I place my hand on his lean cheek. The close cropped beard almost soft beneath my skin. “Are you asking about my past, as in parents or what?”
“I don’t know.” I take a breath and lean in to bite his bottom lip as his hand slides farther up, brushing against my panties. I run my tongue along his lip as his meets mine, and we fall down into a slow, melting kiss.
When I raise my head, I sigh. And Nicolo . . . he keeps touching me, a lazy, almost not there touch.
“I was young when they died, and I ended up growing up in foster homes and getting more and more off track, and it came down to me doing something stupid. Real stupid. Andrea De Luca made me an offer. I took it.”
“And now you’re tied to them.”
His fingers stop the feathery strokes between my thighs. “Fuck no. I could have walked when I wanted to do so, especially when Leo’s father stepped down. I didn’t because they’re good people. And I get the feeling you understand the difference between good and law-abiding.”
A muscle works in his jaw beneath my fingers. “Yes.”
