AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Miss Tomassini gives me another hug, shorter and less emotional before she heads over to cradle into her daughter’s side hovering over Bruno’s body. I continue down the stairs and into the crowd, avoiding as many people as I can while hunting down my woman. Too long have I been without her, and every second of it has been endless torture.
I stumble through the sea of faces ignoring anyone who tries to catch my attention. Anything they have to say can wait until tomorrow or the next day or whenever I have Alyssa at my side. She’s my top priority, not bantering about how we’ll show Rocco Barberetti what happens when you fuck with us. She’s opened my eyes to what life can offer and all I have to do is reach out and take it.
But where is she? Blood rushes through my veins with nervous panic heating to my cheeks. Is she gone? Did she leave me with a sweet memory and disappear into the great unknown? I’ve hardly had time to process her introduction into my life and now I’ve got the bittersweet memory of her.
Sweat pours from my brow when I burst through the crowd. Voices from behind call my name, my title, and everything in between. Still your tongues and be gone, filthy vultures. I’m on a mission.
I raise a balled fist into the air silencing those who hunt me down. I turn over my shoulder to see them disappear into the mix of Bruno Tomassini’s family.
That’s when I see her. Alyssa stands alone watching Tony playing on a playground I had installed for his arrival yesterday. He’s swinging on his own, back and forth, in his black suit while she rests with a shoulder against the side of a mighty oak tree. Her arms are folded firmly over her breasts.
My heart sinks into my guts and I release a heavy sigh.
I approach her with the confidence any man of my stature should.
“So, you stuck around?” She hasn’t noticed my approach and my sudden interruption makes her jump.
The hand hovering over her chest clutches at her breasts. As she pulls it away, a finger hooks against the fabric and the top of her dress lowers enough to give me a glimpse of her cleavage.
My rod stiffens against the zipper of my trousers. Good God, I’d hand her the keys to my empire for another glimpse of the silky-smooth skin hidden beneath this black dress.
Get a hold of yourself, Cain. I jam my fists into my pockets, shuffling inside to pull my manhood against my leg. How embarrassing would it be for her to see me sporting an erection moments after I caught up to her again?
“You startled me,” Alyssa giggles. “But of course, I stuck around. I couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to.”
“Am I that entertaining?” I tease.
“As wonderful as your companionship is, Cain—” There it is again. The way she says my name in her slow, sultry voice strikes every pleasure receptor in my brain. “I’m Tony’s nanny. I’m here to take care of him until his foster family is available to meet.”
She’s Tony’s nanny? How could I be so ignorant? Why else would she have had him straddled to her hip?
“Well, it seems our story has just begun then,” I say.
It piques her interest, and she turns her full-figured frame to face me dead-on. I want to pin her against this tree and claim her as mine right here, right now.
“What do you mean?” she asks, tugging at a long strand of golden hair running down the side of her face.
“I’m adopting Tony.” Admitting those words to her hits me with a strange sense of grief.
How long will it take her to piece together my dubious nature? That I’m not a man who wears fancy suits and goes to an office but the Don of the Boston mafia? What will she think of me? A woman from a different world might not be as judgmental as the woman taking care of my fallen enforcer’s child.
“You’re adopting Tony?” Alyssa repeats and sinks her teeth into her lower lip. It’s getting harder to control my throbbing manhood with every action she makes.
“I sure am. Which means we’re going to have a lot of time to get to know one another.”
What’s the old saying? Every raincloud has a silver lining? Or a rainbow. Fuck, who cares what an old idiom is. Alyssa Dresden is every one of those good things wrapped in one, and she’s been bundled and brought to me on a golden platter.
“Three weeks by my count,” she says.
By monetary standards, three weeks will work fine, but the moment she moves into my house, I won’t let her out of my sight again.
“It was a beautiful ceremony,” Alyssa says. The way she says it so abruptly feels like it was an obligation more than a continuation of our chat. But small talk and customary conversations aren’t my style. I don’t want to hear that my speech was good when we could talk about how comfortable my bed is.
“The family deserved it. But my business here is done, and I’d prefer to leave the family of the bereaved to grief on their own terms. Perhaps you and Tony would like to join me for ice cream?”
Finding happiness in the darkest of times has never come so easy, and the bright smile trickling over Alyssa’s face lets me know she feels the same. Maybe she isn’t the sensitive kitten I thought from first glance, or maybe none of this means anything to her because death is a part of life.
“I’d love to,” she says. “But the four men coming towards us make me think that’s not going to happen.”
