Chapter 3
Leo
I can’t help it—my gaze follows Bianca throughout the afternoon and evening, the wedding reception in full swing around us.
She’s smiling, yet it also looks strained. Has anyone noticed how the corners of her lips are aligned, meaning it’s not the crooked smile, the bright, carefree, true one she radiates with when she’s happy? Not like the bubbly, joyful woman who a few hours ago threw herself into my arms to greet me and then redid my bow tie as if that was her duty and not a favor she was doing a childhood friend. The sparkle in her eyes? It’s gone. Replaced by a dimness that’s thrown a cloud on her whole demeanor.
She’s attentive to Hana throughout, attending to her maid of honor duties with consideration and dedication. However, it feels to me like she’s checked out, just going through the motions. Some version of her is present, but not the whole of her.
My mind goes back to that night on the pier, the girl sitting next to me. The dejection today feels similar, and it’s breaking something inside me.
Seven years ago, I was too stunned to do anything to make Bianca’s life happier. Even if just in that moment, I could’ve done something to make her smile, laugh, rekindle the joy in her eyes again.
I approach and gently grab her arm. Now’s not the time to let my senses go haywire thanks to the feel of her smooth, warm skin under my palm. It feels like silk, but I can’t think this way. She’s off-limits to me. All I want is to make her smile fully again, to bring the joyful girl I remember to the fore. To make amends for not noticing her plight earlier.
Though what would that have changed? She’d still be a daughter from a Borgata , and we all have our duties in the big scheme of the Italian-American Mafia.
But today, I can try to brighten her world. What harm can that do?
“I need your help with something,” I say in her ear.
A whiff of her perfume assails my nostrils. It’s heady, sweet, and intoxicating. Like the woman herself.
Someone should be protecting her. Cherishing her. Ravishing her when he’s not showering her in romantic gestures and gifts and—
Bianca turns big brown eyes onto me, and it’s like a sucker punch lands in my gut, obliterating all my thoughts, blanking my mind. So much swirls in their depths, I get lost in her gaze, everything else forgotten, the world melting away.
Is this how it feels to lose yourself in a person? I’d heard my friends say this about the woman who won their hearts. Angelo said it about Prema, despite her being a psycho. She completed his world, and that was that for him. Checkmate.
“Yes, Leo?”
Her throaty murmur makes me want to close my eyes and savor the sound. Is this how she sounds in a bedroom, asking her lover to take her, to fuck her harder, faster? I’m getting hard so fast, it’s physically painful.
But this is Bianca. A woman who brings up so much more than lust inside me, as I’m finding out today. Has it been just a couple hours since she walked into my life again, since the very version of perfection I never could pinpoint materialized in front of me in this sinful blue dress?
Can’t. Have. Her.
I need to look from afar and never touch. The sooner I remind myself of this, the better.
So I take a deep breath and recenter my focus, on duties of a best man I’m letting slide.
“Let’s play a prank on Mattia.”
Bianca looks slightly confused. “Aren’t you cutting his tie later?”
I nod. “Yes, but he’s expecting that. Everyone knows that’s part of an Italian wedding celebration. The auction proceeds will go to this animal shelter Hana’s discovered in town.”
“That’s true,” she replies. “What do you have in mind?”
Did her voice sound more enthusiastic suddenly? Good. Because I want nothing else than to bring the sunshine back into her life. That’s what she has been all along—the sun in our worlds.
“Come with me,” I say as I grab her hand.
Her fingers entwine with mine, so naturally, and it strikes me how right this feels. Like they’ve found their place.
Bad line of thought.
Bianca trusts me, as is evident in the way she so easily took my hand. I can’t ever betray it. Anything I do has to resonate like the actions of a platonic friend. She’s promised to another, and her father is a man to be feared. Her brother is my best friend, and even he won’t hesitate to kill me if I make any untoward move concerning her.
I pull her gently in my wake. No one’s paying us much attention. Everyone’s already on the dance floor, and we’ve been almost joined at the hip since we got here, our duties as best man and maid of honor overlapping throughout the hours.
“Where are we going?” Bianca asks when we step outside the dramatic Georgian manor.
I beeline for my car which I left in front when we got back from Brighton Beach during the night. A press of the fob opens the trunk, and I’m pulling a bag from it.
“Careful,” I tell her. “It’s fragile.”
“What is it?”
“A glitter bomb.” I smile at her as we turn back toward the manor. “Stephano tried to explode it onto Mattia last night.”
She laughs. “Good best man. You protected your charge.”
“I always protect my own.”
Our steps stall, and we’re staring at each other, these words hanging in the air between us.
Then Bianca seems to blink out of the spell or whatever it was and is moving away.
“Where are we stashing this?” she asks over her shoulder.
“His luggage, I suppose?”
I follow her, and we go upstairs to the bridal suite in silence.
Once in, she closes the door, then turns to me.
“I’m not letting you play this trick on Hana. Glitter’s a bitch to get out of hair.”
I smile at her. “Oh, I had no intention of pranking her.”
Bianca smiles, and this time, it’s really like the sun has come out.
“Mattia will hate this.”
“He will.”
She giggles and starts looking for the luggage they packed for their honeymoon.
“Use this.” She hands me his toiletry case.
“He might use this on the plane,” I tell her.
“Exactly,” she says with a devilish grin. “Imagine the tiny bathroom, glitter exploding all over him.”
I laugh, picturing it. “No way he’ll get it all off him before they land.”
“Yes! And under the Caribbean sun, he’ll be sparkling like a Twilight vampire.”
We get to work fitting the glitter bomb into the small bag. From time to time, we look up, and as our eyes meet, we start laughing again. The sparkle is back in her eyes, and with the glitter in her eye makeup, it makes her look like an impish fairy wielding magic dust.
Seeing this makes me smile harder, and the more I smile, the more she seems to loosen up, chattering away. The scent of her wraps around me, sweet and flowery and light, and I let this cloud of scent work its magic over me, soothing, warming, peaceful.
It takes us quite a long time to secure the fragile outer cover of the bomb, snagging it into the zipper so when Mattia pulls the zip open, the glitter will blow all over him.
We collapse into a heap of laughter when we’re done, backs pressed to the foot of the bed.
“Thank you, Leo,” she says, breaking the silence when the giggles die.
“What for?”
She sighs heavily. “This.”
I nod solemnly. “I wanted to see you happy again.”
“Why?” she asks.
Because you are precious, a gift any man will be lucky to have.
And I’m not that lucky bastard.
Rage powers through me, shredding its lance of fire all over my chest, my guts, my loins.
Nobody else should have her but me. Bianca should be mine.
I can’t think this way—it’s a ticket to the underworld of damnation. Though everything inside me right now wants to channel reckless Pluto, come what may, to grab his Proserpina and take her down with him, damn the consequences, damn the Earth burning from her disappearance.
I risk a glance at her, but she’s looking at her lap.
All I want is to drown in her eyes again. Maybe in their depths, I can find salvation, I can find reason…
It’s insane, what I’m about to do, yet I can’t stop myself. Looking into her eyes feels as vital as needing air inside my lungs.
So I reach out and lift her chin with my fingers.
Her dark gaze collides with mine, and I have to swallow, hard, because I can feel myself falling again. She’s drawing me in, and I don’t want to resist. I can’t.
I refuse to…
This woman…
“You deserve to be happy,” I say, softly.
“Do I?”
The sound is like a small puff of air from her full lips. I want to drink it so bad, my entire body is hurting with need. Her world should be put right, by any means. Bianca is everything good on this planet, the epitome of what any man should expect from life—softness, gentleness, beguiling beauty both inside and out, a body to be worshipped, to be made love to everyday so she can find completion in his arms, from his touch and mouth and cock, so he can thump his chest like a proud, victorious primate that he’s the one getting to pleasure her so well, to make her world perfect.
“Of course you do.”
You of all people.
Silence settles between us. One beat. Two. My fingers are still on her chin, my thumb slowly caressing the small cleft there. She feels so dainty, so fragile. Her skin is like satin, and I’m growing hypnotized by the movement of my thumb as her eyes pull me in further, deeper, and I willingly fall. If this is all I can get, I’ll take it.
I don’t see the split-second when she rears toward me—I can only feel the press of her lips against mine. So like the first time she kissed me on that pier, yet so different, too. Her mouth is lush, pillowy, a woman’s and not a girl’s.
Is this God’s answer to my plea? Can she be mine, even if just for one kiss? One glorious moment when I get to drink from her lips, to breathe her into me so life can sustain me for the rest of my days I’ll spend without her?
Before I can return her kiss, she’s pulled away. I’m reeling, confused, denied. It feels like a man dying from thirst in a desert having the oasis disappear just as he was about to dip his hands into the cool, life-sustaining water.
“I…I’m sorry,” she mumbles.
“What for?”
One beat of silence. Two. I can feel the regret growing inside her. It’s obvious in the way she lowers her gaze, tries to look away.
My hand is still on her face. When she came at me, my fingers unfurled to clasp her jaw.
Please don’t say it was a mistake.
“I didn’t ask for your consent,” she says. “Again.”
Oh, sweet Bianca. Don’t you know I’m yours?
A burst of warmth in my chest unfurls through my whole body, and I’m smiling, a small laugh pouring out of me. My hand hardens ever so slightly on her jaw as I make her tip her head up to look at me.
“You had it then. You have it now, too.”
Her hand comes up, warm and soft when it cradles my cheek, mirroring mine on her.
It’s such a light touch, it’s almost ephemeral, but nothing has ever held so much weight in my life. Nothing has ever anchored me like her palm unfurled along my jaw.
Her eyes have gone soft, liquid pools of brown that remind me of molten chocolate. Sweet, decadent, sinful under certain conditions. Just like her. She reminds me of the virgin and the Jezebel, the saint and the sinner.
Protect and plunder.
Cherish and ravish.
“You never judge me,” she says softly.
“And I never will.”
Who am I to judge her? She has always been her own person, flown her freak flag freely when she was younger. Bianca had never bothered with rules of propriety and subservience. When her peers were turning into simpering sluts ready to please the first fucker who threw them a compliment, she remained true to herself—take her or leave her, exactly as she was.
She blinks at me, slowly, so languidly.
“If only you could see me, Leo…”
I frown. “I see you.”
“Really?” she asks, the word barely a whisper. “Do you?”
There’s despair as much as there’s a challenge in that question, and I so want to tell her how much I do see her. The woman she’s become, beautiful and alluring. The young girl at the heart of her, carefree and uncompromising on her own values. The person who dances to her own tune, the beat of her own drum. The human with compassion and gentleness running in her blood.
Yet, there’s also the Mafia daughter and sister, the pawn of a Borgata , a commodity of the organization.
My other hand comes up, cradling her face in my palms.
“If only you could see yourself as I see you, Bianca.”
Her breath hitches as her lips part, nostrils flaring slightly. The tip of her tongue darts out, running over her top lip.
An image of her doing the same thing to the head of my cock flashes inside my mind, and I curse.
“How do you see me, Leo?” she asks, tone low and sultry, a siren song wrapping its powerful mist of oblivion over me.
“Bianca…”
“Tell me,” she adds. “Show me.”
I close my eyes and try to reason with myself. I have to resist. This here, this is as close as I can get to her, ever.
When I open them and my gaze lands on her face, I realize it was a mistake to do so. Because one look at her and I’m a goner. Her eyes are hooded, gaze languid, her features already bathed in the soft slackness of arousal. Her skin is hot under my palms, the heat traveling straight to my cock to fan the flames bursting from the burning coals of my desire.
When she smiles next, it’s ever so slightly crooked.
So it’s real. She’s really smiling. Mission accomplished.
“Double-dare you,” she whispers, then winks.
And she had to go and do this! Everyone knows I have a competitive streak a mile wide. My body reacts in the only way it knows how, by proving its point. In my world, this usually takes the form of fists.
With this woman, it takes the shape of a kiss. One I seek, claim, and seize.
My mouth crashes on hers as my hands hold her face, pulling her to me to plunder the depths with my tongue. Bianca offers no resistance, lips parting as soon as my tongue sought entry, returning the kiss as gleefully as I take.
She tastes like ambrosia, warm and sweet and delicious, a potent drug going straight to my head as it lights liquid fire in my blood.
There’s only her. Just Bianca. Nothing but her.
Her hands are now in my hair, and I need to feel her long locks running through my fingers. I push a hand into her hair, undoing pins roughly so I can tangle in that soft mass, close my fist onto it. Silk has nothing on her tresses. God, how would it feel brushing my naked skin? She’ll be the death of me, this woman.
A moan escapes her as I tug her hair and tilt her head back, exposing the long column of her throat to my lips, my tongue. As much as I want to linger, savor her taste, find where a nip elicits a moan, I have a destination in mind, and I heave a sigh when my face lands between the bountiful globes of her breasts.
She can drive any man crazy with this pliant, heavy flesh.
I need more, so much more.
Clasping her waist, I make us stand up. Lips still worshipping her breasts, I undo the long zipper at her back, unsheathing her from the dress as I go.
No bra. Thank you, God. And her nipples are tight little buds begging to be kissed, to be sucked on.
She’s a tall woman, and in her heels, there’s only a few inches’ difference in our heights. While I’m worshipping her nipples, Bianca makes quick work of undoing my clothes and pushing them off me.
I press my body to hers, fire erupting everywhere we touch, and push her back. She lands on the red silk bedspread on the bridal bed, and I pull back to make sure she’s okay.
She is. And she’s a work of art. A pagan goddess sent to the land of the living to lure men to their destruction. To lure me.
Her waist nips in, her stomach flat. Lush hips flow from her taut belly. A small triangle of lace covers the apex of her thighs, and I have to swallow hard against the desire to taste her.
Fuck it, I can’t resist. She’s too beautiful—she deserves to be worshipped.
I slip my arms under her knees and drag her forward. With her ass on the edge of the bed, I drop to my knees and rip the tiny panties from her before burying my mouth into her pussy.
Bianca arches off the bed at the first flick of my tongue against her clit. I brace my arms under her knees, open her fully for my seeking.
Keening moans pour out of her as I devour her, licking her, sucking on the small, engorged nub begging for its release. I pull her clit between my lips and suck, hard, then bite it softly.
Her orgasm rips through her body then. I can feel the tremors shaking her thighs as she rides and rides that wave.
Letting her go, I climb onto the bed next to her, pulling her up on the soft surface.
“Bianca?” I ask, waiting for her to look at me. “You’re covered?”
I don’t have a condom with me. Too bad I left the box meant for Mattia in the other room.
She nods, biting her lip hard, cheeks flushed, body arching into me already.
It’s all the go-ahead I need to slip between her thighs and slowly start pushing my erect cock into her.
Fuck, she’s so tight. So hot, too. I’m hardly in, and I’m almost ready to come.
Bianca lifts her legs and wraps them around my hips. She arches into me, and when she presses the backs of her feet into my butt cheeks, I push forward, surging into her in one single stroke.
She gasps, then she’s kissing me in the hottest open-mouthed kiss I’ve ever experienced in my life. Her hips rock once, and it’s all the cue I need to pull back and then slam into her again, and again, and again.
I lose myself in her, and then stars are erupting behind my closed eyes as tension tightens my entire body and fire is coursing through me, out of me, into her. Bianca moans against my lips, and our sighs of completion mingle, merge, become one like we just did.
As our heightened senses come back to earth, the reality of the moment also returns.
I just slept with Bianca.
Bianca Bonucci, who is totally off-limits to any of us.
Fuck!
I just reacted like a teenager getting the offer of his first lay. Stupid cazzo didn’t think with his head, just with his cock, his desire, his need. At least I didn’t spill prematurely, but as if that’s any comfort today.
I pull back, staring at her lying there on the silk bedspread.
“Don’t,” she says.
“What?”
“Don’t spoil this.”
“I’m not. I—”
A cheer comes from downstairs. Next, the MC can be heard announcing the cutting of the cake.
Bianca’s already up and reaching for her dress.
“We should go down,” she says.
What we should do is talk about this. Though what good will that do? What’s done is done. And no one can find out. We’ll both be utterly fucked then. And I’ll be dead. Mattia or his father, or even her fiancé, will come for me.
Fuck!
All we can work now is damage control. This stays between us.
I nod. “But not together.”
She freezes, the scrap of her thong in one hand.
“Of course not.”
She then gives me the fakest, coldest smile imaginable, and I can feel the blow like brass knuckles on a beefy hand slamming into the side of my ribcage.
So that’s how it’s going to be. Just as well, really.
She quickly gets dressed, already on her way to the door when I recover enough to say something.
“Bianca—”
“Don’t, Leo.”
Then, she’s gone, the door closing behind her.
She must’ve imagined I would tell her this was a mistake. It was. Or not. I don’t know anymore. All I know right now is that I need to get downstairs asap, and I also need to get rid of this soiled bedspread.
As I pull the red silk off the bed, I can’t help but wonder if I can pull the very thought of Bianca Bonucci out of my mind.
But bottom line? I need to. Bianca Bonucci belongs nowhere near me, not even in my mind. Period.