20. Last First Kiss
TWENTY
LAST FIRST KISS
N adia waved the boys goodbye as she made it to her apartment door, fumbling with the keys for a moment before finally able to put it in the slot when the door opened.
“Hey, Nadia.” Haley smiled mischievously.
That look caused Nadia to look past her to see Dante sitting on their couch behind her. What the—
“Bye, Nadia!”
“Where the hell are you going?” she asked as her friend passed her.
“Dante gave me a free room at his casino hotel for the night.” Haley dangled a key out in front of her then yelled loud enough so her voice would travel, “Thanks again, Dante. I’ll see you soon!”
Her mouth dropped open in disbelief and only dropped more when she watched her friend give her a thumbs-up of approval, along with a wink for good luck before she disappeared from view.
Unlike Nadia, Haley wasn’t above gambling, especially when it came to playing slots, as it was the perfect loner activity.
“What the fuck?” Nadia spoke the rest of her thought rather than thinking it.
“What?” Dante asked, confused from where he sat in the small living area.
“She doesn’t …” She had to replay what she had just witnessed in her mind before she could finish. “Haley doesn’t talk to people.”
“Sure she does. She just did.”
“Not if she can help it,” she explained while she came inside and closed the door behind her. “And she certainly doesn’t talk to strangers, let alone men who come to our apartment uninvited.”
“Hm …” Dante brushed it off, seeing it wasn’t a big deal.
But it is. “She likes you.”
“I take it that’s a big deal, too?”
“Yes, she’s not exactly a people person,” Nadia said, looking at him curiously now. It was like she was trying to figure out what the hell Haley saw in him to be able to talk to him like it was nothing.
“Neither am I.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s why.”
“And what about her?” she asked, crossing her arms. “Did you like Haley?”
It was clear he didn’t know how to respond based on her stance. “She’s … nice?”
Her eyes went into slits. “Just nice?”
“Yeah, she was nice, woman! I only got to talk to her for ten minutes before you walked in the door. What the fuck else do you want me to say? Other than I can certainly see why you two get along.”
Dante was rethinking this whole fucking thing.
The headache this was already causing was the exact reason he had never wanted another relationship in his life.
And hell, they weren’t even in a fucking relationship.
He was fucking here to try to see if they could start one, and it was already going bad from having to dodge around and answer the stupid-ass questions properly that women always asked.
The only reason he wasn’t walking out that door right now was because the woman had brought his children back into his life.
“How’s that?”
“For one, she’s the only one I’ve seen who’s been able to stop your roll.” Dante was fucking envious of Haley for that. Nadia had controlled the endings of all their conversations as of late, yet her friend, who was supposedly meek and mild, had controlled theirs.
“No, she places speed bumps, so I never get lost.” Quietly, Nadia took a seat beside him on the couch.
Dante watched her mouth open to say something else, but then she closed it, deciding not to. “What were you going to say?”
Nadia had to clear the sorrow out of her throat before she could begin. “My father killed my mother when I was child. If I hadn’t hidden in the laundry hamper, he would have killed me, too.”
His son had been right; she so freely started to give her story away, so there was no need to search for it anywhere else. The contents of that folder would have never been as rewarding to know as she continued.
“I was so petrified he was going to find me that I wouldn’t breathe.
Then I smelled smoke and heard another gunshot.
The smoke made it harder for me to stay quiet as I started to feel myself choking.
If I hadn’t been afraid he would hear me coughing, I wouldn’t have jumped out of the hamper and started running.
“I thought, if I could just make it to the door, I could get help for my mom. I remember it being so smoky that I couldn’t see where I was going.
The firefighter who rescued me found me a few inches away from the door.
My father must have heard the sirens and shot himself.
” She paused briefly, then her tone returned quieter. “You know the sickest part?”
“No.” The Mafioso didn’t want to, either. He wouldn’t be able to make the son of a bitch pay for whatever Nadia was about tell him. If the man were alive, Dante wouldn’t even order the hit. He would have done the job himself.
“Even when I found out my mother was dead, I hated him just as much for killing himself. I was left with no one. No one who would care how I was treated in foster care. No one who would care if I was lonely. No one who would answer a call in the middle of night if my car broke down.”
Dante finally understood what Nadia was explaining to him before she even did. “Haley would pick up the phone.”
She nodded, glad he understood. “Haley bought me my first cell phone. I’ve had people ask me why I’m friends with her. I say the same thing every time. I can’t understand why she’s friends with me.”
He reached out to take her hand with his tanned one. “How do they respond?”
She curled her fingers, holding his back. “I don’t know, because I leave after saying it and cut them out of my life.”
“That’s why you asked me what I thought of her.” Dante now smiled, expecting no less from her. “You were prepared to cut me out of your life if I said the wrong thing.”
“It would have been a deal breaker, yes.” Nadia smiled back, not making any apology for her feelings.
His breath hitched in his throat at the sight. “Well, in that case, I like her … almost as much as I like you.”
“Oh, really?” Nadia snuggled closer to him on the couch.
“Mmhmm …” Dante chuckled, letting his lips get closer to hers. “A lot.”
“Well, I like you, too,” she breathed.
He moved his lips closer. “How much?”
“A lot.”
He captured her lips; it was the first kiss he’d had in years, and this time, he hoped it would be the last first kiss he would ever have to give …
The kiss was more than she could have dreamed of.
She knew it wasn’t something he so freely gave.
He had given his body to her that night on the yacht, but never as an act of love, like the hand held in hers or a simple kiss.
That was something she knew he held tightly in his heart, only ever given to his wife.
Deepening the kiss, Nadia was too afraid he would change his mind and pull away, so she positioned herself on his lap, hoping it would hold him there with her forever.
However, it would be Nadia who had the sense knocked into her.
Pulling her lips away, she was able to think clearly. “Wait. I meant when I said we can’t ever even start whatever this is … I can’t find out what it’s like to have you in my life, only to lose you.”
He snuck another kiss on her lips. “Well, it’s a good thing I gave it up, then.”
“You what?” she asked, pulling her face back to look at him.
“I let Lucca have what he’s always wanted,” Dante said, as if the words weren’t a big deal.
She knew better to know that they were a big deal. It was obvious the family had been the only thing Dante truly cared about for years. “I-I can’t have you doing that for me.”
“I didn’t do it for you … I did it for me.”
Her heart melted into a puddle, much like she was becoming in his arms with each word he spoke.
Dante’s ice-blue eyes seemed to slowly defrost. “I can’t bury another woman in my life because of my choices. I will not allow it.”
“Oh. That changes things,” Nadia said breathlessly when he lifted her up and walked them to her room.
She felt his strength with the ease he carried her.
Dante Caruso was an indomitable man. He was used to wielding his power in Kansas City, and Nadia had seen people cower when his name was mentioned.
Had she been swayed with the attraction she was feeling to accept him so easily into her life just because he said he was letting his son take over for him?
“I don’t like that look on your face.”
Nadia didn’t try to hide her trepidation.
“You’re lucky Haley likes you, or I wouldn’t have let you in the door. I would have made you at least take me out to dinner a couple of times. I don’t want you to think I’m easy because I slept with you so quickly.”
Putting her down, Dante started rolling her pants and thong over her hips until they puddled at her feet.
Removing her top, he let it drop carelessly to the floor onto the growing pile.
Placing a hand on her waist, he then started pushing her backward.
“There is nothing easy about what you do to me,” he said, giving her another push so she toppled to the bed.
Languidly, Nadia watched as Dante divested himself of his clothes until there was nothing for them to hide behind.
Normally, the times she had sex, she had felt self-conscious with her nudity.
For some unexplainable reason, she didn’t with Dante.
The male appreciation in his gaze brought a warm heat to her groin without him having to lay so much as a finger on her.
“Mr. Caruso, surely you don’t think I’m na?ve enough to believe that you don’t have women trying to get your attention regularly.” She remembered the unanswered text message he had received and doubted it had been his first.
Dante grinned, running a finger from her collarbone to the valley between her breasts, riding the swell to the rosy patch of color. He used the pad of his thumb to trace the areola, bringing it to a pert tip.
“Striving and getting are two different horses. I prefer thoroughbreds, and I don’t come in contact with those frequently.”
Ah , so that was why he didn’t care if she gambled in his casino. He was a horse-betting guy.
Leaning over her, Dante licked the tip he had awakened.
“Are you comparing me to a horse?” She laughed.
“Oh, darling … there are worse things to complain about than being compared to a thoroughbred. I should know. I can spot a winner a mile away.”
Goose bumps broke out on her skin when Dante blew a small puff of air on the wet tip.
“Uh, I wasn’t complaining … believe me.” She gave a small moan when he moved his mouth to her other nipple.
“You taste like sunlight.” He traveled back to the valley between her breasts to move upward to her chin, then hovered over her lips. Nadia caught conflicting emotions cross his face before he lowered his mouth over hers.
Shamelessly, she pulled him down over her. She had never wanted to become lost in a man the way she did with Dante.There was a darkness about him that made her believe the dangerous reputation he had earned had been based on fact and not overblown gossip.
His mouth clung to hers like a leaf floating down a river to see where it would go. There was something both vulnerable and earnest about the way he was kissing her that it sowed a seed of a possible future between them.
He wasn’t treating her like a one-night stand, like he had the first time. No, he was treating her with the care and attention of a man who wanted to protect something precious.
Their kiss went from exploring to passionate when Dante’s hips sank harder on hers. Every movement he made heightened her awareness of what he was doing to her body.
Reaching out a hand, he took hers to lift it over her head, stretching her body taut under him.
Nadia licked her bottom lip to taste him on the silky skin.
Moving with a natural sexiness that showed his raw masculinity, Dante plunged his cock inside her.
He didn’t have to check to see if she was wet for him. He knew.
As he seated himself to the hilt in one long, smooth motion, she cried out in ecstasy at the feelings he was creating.
There wasn’t anything magical or dreamlike about what Dante was doing to her.
His more dominate personality claiming her in a sensuous glide of flesh meeting flesh in the endeavor to achieve the fleeting moment of rapture, he wanted to give to her and take for himself.
Fervently, Nadia responded in the only way she could—by surrendering instead of fighting the rise of the tide that was threatening to overtake her.
His mouth returned to hers as his thrusts gained speed, like the leaf that was now traveling through rough waters.
She held on, going where Dante was leading her, clinging to his shoulders for dear life, determined to hang on for each precious moment.
Dante was unrelenting, like a never-ending rapid she didn’t think would ever end.
Then, in one single burst, she found herself going over a waterfall to fall safely back to Earth with Dante murmuring in her ear and stroking her body in soothing movements that showed it was safe to breathe once again.
Thank God she had been drunk when they’d had sex the first time, or when she had gone to his office, she would have latched on to him.
Not even Amo would have been able to pull her off him.
“Am I alive?” she gasped out.
Dante gave a growling laugh against her throat. “Yes.”
“I can see why everyone says you’re lethal. I thought I was about to go through Heaven’s gate there for a second.”
“Only a second? Damn.”
“Any longer, and you would have needed to bring me back to life.”
Dante reached a long arm down to the floor to pick up the blanket that had fallen, covering them as he settled down next to her. “You have any plans for tomorrow?”
Raising sleepy eyes to his, she saw he had risen up on one elbow. “Nothing in particular.”
“Feel like hanging out with me for a few days at the beach?”
“There’s a beach in Kansas City?” she asked, trying not to yawn.
“I was thinking more like Cancun.”
Contentedly, she placed her head in the curve of his arm, snuggling closer to him. “How long?”
“A couple of weeks, maybe three.”
Nadia instinctively knew why he wanted to go on a sudden trip after the one they just had. He wanted her far enough away from One-Shot until his son Lucca either unmasked the person or killed them.
“I’ll have to ask Haley.”
“I already did. She said she didn’t see any problems she couldn’t handle.”
“I don’t know if I’m liking this relationship you are developing with my best friend.” However, she could see how important it was to him that she was out of harm’s way. “But I’ll go as long as I don’t have to get on any boats.”
“We’ll fly there,” he said, finally able to relax since she said she would come. “Desmond has a private jet. I’ll ask if he’ll fly us there.”
Nadia made a comical face at him. “Good luck with that. I wouldn’t even place a one-dollar bet on that possibility.”
He disagreed. “He owes me a couple more favors.”
“Dante, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think any favors he owed you were blown to hell and back.”