Francesca
All the tables on the patio were pushed together to form a long line underneath the hanging white lights.
Silverware and linens were supplied for every chair, and I helped the girls get enough wine bottles from the warehouse to cover the tables for the men.
Dinner was cooking in the kitchen, and it was a furnace in there from all the bodies and the hot stoves and ovens.
I happened to look out the window at the right time and spotted Wolfe moving up the stairs to the patio, wearing black jeans and his heavy boots with a long-sleeved linen shirt, his sleeves rolled to his elbows.
The dark ink was visible over his taut skin, highlighting all the muscles underneath.
Even his forearm was ripped, like he worked out every day in addition to running around here and breaking skulls.
“Cristo…” He was so hot I couldn’t even look at him without getting turned on. Hopefully we didn’t sit near each other at dinner. Otherwise, that would just be torture. I’d never been with a man so unbelievably good-looking. If someone told me I’d dreamed all of this, I’d probably believe him.
The semolina bread was sliced into pieces and placed in the baskets, and I carried them to the patio upstairs and started to set them on the tables, along with the bottles of olive oil.
The second they touched the tiled surface, the men dove their hands inside and began to eat like it was their first meal of the day.
When I moved farther up the table, I noticed my father sitting at the head where he always sat, accompanied by my brother and his most trusted captain, Elio. But Wolfe was also there.
And there was an empty seat across from him.
Oh no…
When I reached their end of the table, I felt Wolfe stare me down like we were alone together, not in the presence of my family and a hundred men who worked for them.
I set the baskets of bread and the bottles of olive oil down in the center.
“Dinner will be ready shortly.” I looked at my father and no one else, too afraid to let my stare get anywhere near Wolfe.
I suspected that extra seat was for me, but I chose to pretend I didn’t notice.
I returned to the kitchen, and the girls started to serve the platters of food, different kinds of pasta and sauce, along with fish and chicken. I helped them get the food out to the hungry men, music from the outdoor speakers adding to the ambiance of celebration.
I discreetly moved to the other table at the end, where the women ate once dinner was served.
“Frankie!”
I cringed, my back to my brother at the other table.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted. “Get your ass over here.”
“Ugh, fucking Leonardo.” I cursed his name then rose to my feet and walked around the opposite side of the table.
I approached where they sat at the end, my heart racing a million miles a minute as I came closer to Wolfe.
I was alone with him all the time, but I wasn’t sure how I could act like myself when he was there in public.
In our meetings, no one paid attention to me, but this was a very different setting.
Leo pulled out the chair for me without standing. “What are you? Stupid?”
I scooted my chair in, my eyes down, aware that Wolfe was right across from me. “We are related, so…very well could be.”
Leo rolled his eyes then reached for the tongs to start filling his plate with pasta.
My father was engaged in conversation with Elio, so his stare was elsewhere. My brother was going to town on the food, so I really had nowhere to look except directly across from me.
My eyes lifted and looked at him, smirking like this was pure entertainment for him. “Wine, Signorina Mancini?” He grabbed the bottle and filled the glass for me without waiting for my answer, already knowing I preferred red over white.
“Thank you…”
He pushed the wine toward me then sat there, obnoxiously handsome under the white lights, a dark watch on his wrist, some of his ink creeping up from the neckline of his t-shirt.
I was certain I’d never been so uncomfortable in my life.
Leo started to devour his food just the way Wolfe did when I cooked for him at home.
Wolfe gestured to the plate, asking me to serve myself. “Ladies first.”
It was a cool evening, but I started to sweat like I was in a sauna. My father was smart, observant, and had the intuition of a woman, so he might pick up on something between us. But judging from the uncontrollable smirk on Wolfe’s lips, he didn’t give a damn about that.
He was having the time of his life.
I grabbed my fork and spun it in the pasta while Wolfe served himself before he pushed the dish farther down to the head of the table where my father could reach it.
“You still driving from Palermo every day?” Leo asked as he ate with his elbows on the table.
“Sometimes,” Wolfe answered honestly. “Gonna look at a few places tomorrow. Just a couple miles down the road.”
“Nice,” Leo said.
“Are you in the village?” Wolfe asked, knowing full well my brother lived on the property.
“No, I’m farther out,” he said as he looked over the edge of the patio. “Way the fuck out there.”
“Must be a nice commute.”
“I used to live in the village. Preferred living above a café and down the street from a bar, but I got tired of all the driving—and the parking situation. It’s quiet out here, and the girls love it.”
“The girls, huh?” Wolfe teased.
“A lot of girls.”
Wolfe gave a quiet chuckle and continued to eat.
“You got a girl?” Leo asked with a mouthful of food.
Cristo. “Leo.”
“What?” my brother asked. “Just making conversation.”
Wolfe took a bite and chewed, and then he looked right at me, head on, with a hint of that possessiveness he constantly showed. “I’m working on it.”
It was as if he wanted to get caught.
My father loaded this plate with the shrimp scampi pasta and then grabbed a few pieces of bread. “Everything looks great, Frankie.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
Elio served himself next.
My father took a couple bites then looked at Wolfe. “What do you think about handling Luigi’s operations, Wolfe?”
Wolfe ripped his slice of bread in half and dragged it through the sauce on his plate.
“Whatever you want, boss.” Now that my father was paying attention to him, he looked at him instead of me.
He put the bread in his mouth and chewed, all the strong muscles of his jaw working, his jawline even sharper when it was momentarily flexed.
I could finally breathe.
“But we might want to consider our other options,” Wolfe said.
“What do you mean?” Dad asked.
I could tell by the type of question and his tone that my father had already had a drastic change in attitude about Wolfe. He spoke to him like Elio, allowed a dialogue to take place, when he normally just issued orders.
“With the Skull King trying to monopolize the drug empire, all the players in the game are changing their cards. It might be smart to expand our arms operations with their facilities and drop the coke business altogether.” Wolfe said all of it casually as he ate, like this wasn’t heavy talk over dinner.
“I think there’s a major shakeup on the horizon.
Doubling down on our corner of the market might be the smart way to go.
Make sure we have an exclusive partnership with the Americans.
And if they don’t want to be exclusive, we make them be exclusive.
” He sliced off a shrimp tail with his fork and popped it into his mouth before he spun his fork in another pool of pasta.
“It’s always smart to diversify,” Elio said.
“And it’s smart to stay out of the Skull King’s way. The guy is crazy.” He took another bite of his bread. “I mean, crazier than me—and that’s saying something.”
I focused on my food as I listened to their conversation, relieved everyone was absorbed in a topic instead of watching Wolfe eye-fuck me across the table right in front of my father.
“You are diversified with your wine,” Wolfe said. “But do whatever you want. You’re the one in charge. I’m always ready to follow orders.”
One of the oddest things about Wolfe was the fact that he worked for someone else.
He had the energy and the authority of someone in charge, and based on the way he’d handled Lombardi the other night, he seemed more like a leader than a follower.
And he was the most arrogant man I’d ever met, completely egotistical, but he had no problem being told what to do. It didn’t make any sense.
When my father turned quiet, I knew he was really thinking about what Wolfe said.
Then my father turned his attention on me. “Frankie, I’m going to have you absorb the books for the Lombardis in the meantime. You’re better at making sense of other men’s nonsense than I am.”
“Sure,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t be alone with Wolfe at that location. It was nice that we had some space from each other during the workday. Because if we were alone and there was a solid piece of furniture in the room…that would be bad.
Wolfe continued to eat, unafraid to look at me all he wanted right in front of my father, like he dared him to say something.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand it, feel the heat from Wolfe’s stare giving me third-degree burns on my cheeks and neck. Before Wolfe set foot on our property, my life had been predictable and mediocre, and while it had been boring at the time, I kinda missed it.
Because I hadn’t taken a single breath since.
Most of the men cleared out for the night. The staff cleaned up the tables and returned them to where they were supposed to be on the patio, which could easily accommodate a hundred people like a restaurant.
My father turned in for the night, my brother ran off with some of the other guys, and everyone slowly filed out.
I helped the staff clean up because there was so much to do. I brought a bin to the table and started to place the dirty wineglasses inside when someone came up beside me. A man’s tattooed hand reached forward and grabbed a couple glasses before he set them in the bin.
Wolfe.
“You don’t have to help.”
“Neither do you.” He grabbed the bin and held it as he walked with me, so I could quickly grab the glasses off the table and place them gently on top, stacking them. “But where you go, I go. So here we are.”
I continued to collect the glasses and set them in the bin while he held it, the increasing weight not seeming to bother him.
“Besides, maybe we can hook up in the cellar afterward.”
“Ah, there it is.”
He chuckled as he moved behind me. “Can you blame me? With an ass like that…”
I turned back around. “Keep your voice down. Some of the windows are open—”
“With an ass like that,” he said loudly, grinning widely.
I smacked him on the arm. “You really are fucking crazy.”
“It’s what I’ve been saying,” he said, his dark eyes playful and so damn pretty. “Not my fault you didn’t believe me.”
After we finished collecting the wineglasses, Wolfe carried the tub into the house and set it on the kitchen island so the staff could wash them after they were done with the other dishes. When he came back, we collected the empty wine bottles so we could have them recycled tomorrow.
The last items left were the centerpieces and the olive oil bottles before the tables would be back to their normal, cleared state.
Wolfe came close to me, his arm brushing mine. “Meet me in the cellar.”
“Why don’t we just meet at the house?”
“You think I can wait that long after watching you bend over all night?” He walked off before I had the chance to say anything.
I carried all the bottles of olive oil to the pantry inside, and when I returned to the patio, the rest of the staff were pulling the tables and chairs apart to return them to their previous positions.
I headed downstairs and walked along the side of the house, sticking close so I wouldn’t be seen through the windows if anyone looked. I moved to the other side and approached the cellar doors before I headed down the uneven stone steps to the next level.
One of the overhead lamps secured to the ceiling was on, so it wasn’t completely dark, and he stood waiting for me, a man too tall for the low underground space.
The second I was within reach, he grabbed me hard and tugged me into him, pulling us into a heated embrace, every sound we made amplified against the stone around us.
It was cold down in that grave of stone, but he quickly warmed me with his muscular arms and chest. He kissed me harder than he ever had, broke our lips apart to kiss the side of my mouth and then my neck while he fisted my hair.
“You think it was easy to sit there and look at you in this fucking dress all night?” He yanked up my dress and grabbed both of my cheeks with his big hand before he kissed me again, lifting me up and putting me on the table where I’d stitched one of his cuts.
He grabbed my thong and yanked it down, lifting me slightly to get it off and tossed it on the floor.
Then he took hold of my hips and tugged me to the edge of the table before he unfastened his belt and jeans with a single hand and shoved himself inside me.
He released a loud, almost angry moan as he entered me.
He gripped the back of my hair while he fucked me on the table, hard and fast like he hadn’t already fucked me a dozen times.
Then he suddenly lifted me from the table and pinned me against a stone wall and continued to thrust, his jeans dropping around his ankles as he held me there like I weighed nothing.
His thrusts slowed as he looked at me, his big dick invading me over and over, conquering my body and making it his.
His bedroom eyes were the same as the intense stare he gave me in a room full of crowded people.
There was no privacy with him, because he seemed to want the world to know that I was the woman he was fucking every night.
His dark eyes were locked on mine as he thrust into me against the wall, moaning quietly as he enjoyed how slick I was. I’d never been this wet for any man before. My body was in a constant state of slickness, ready for him to walk through the door at any moment and take me.
“Baby, you’re so beautiful it drives me fucking crazy.” Then he started to thrust hard again, a piston in an engine, holding me up against the wall like he needed to fuck me before he lost his mind. “This pussy makes me fucking crazy.”