Chapter 18
Feeding River was quickly becoming Nico’s favorite thing in the world.
She wasn’t someone who ate solely to fuel her body.
River savored each morsel, tried new foods with gusto, took almost childlike glee in each bite as the flavors exploded across her tongue.
To her, food was to be experienced, not merely ingested.
It was a joy to offer her food, and an even bigger joy to watch her eat it.
Then there were the sounds she made.
The moans she let out when she ate something she enjoyed…hell. They’d finished their meal over an hour ago, and he was still half hard.
If she made those faces, those noises when she ate a buttery filet, how would she look and sound when she was spread out beneath him with his tongue buried between her gorgeous thighs?
The only thing that managed to dampen his desire in the slightest was her question about love and romance.
He’d wanted to lie to her. He truly had. Everything would be so much simpler if he could tell her what she wanted to hear. That he could love her like she deserved to be loved. But he respected the truth—and her—far too much for that.
And the truth—the simple truth he hated to even admit to himself—was that he was broken.
Everything he’d experienced in his life had shattered the good person he could’ve been.
Life had shattered him, and he’d had no choice but to put himself back together again and again.
Each time, his edges got rougher. The pieces never fit quite right.
Sometimes, pieces were lost altogether. That’s what he was.
A collection of jagged, broken pieces that might not ever fit with another person.
Especially not one as beautiful and pure and whole as River.
But while he might not be able to give her the love she deserved, he’d make damn good and sure she’d never want for anything else. Clothes, jewelry, an entire flock of foul-mouthed friends for her parrot, cars, as many orgasms as she could handle…he’d give her all of it.
All he could do was hope it’d be enough to ensure she didn’t end up a cold, miserable, asshole like him if he was never able to love her.
With his mood for the evening at an all-time low, he asked, “What about children, fiorellino?”
She blinked at him. “What about them?”
“Do you want children?”
He’d personally never wanted to be a father. Bringing children into his world seemed irresponsible. But if she did, he’d give her as many as she wanted. And at the same time, he wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to carry on his polluted gene pool.
River surprised him by letting out a laugh that ended in a delicate snort. “God, no. My key takeaway from my years of teaching is that children are not for me. I’m getting a little too old for that anyway. Does that create a problem for you? Do you need an heir?”
Now it was his turn to snort. “No. Definitely not. Whatever happens to the Italian mafia when I’m dead is none of my concern. I’ll make sure those loyal to me are taken care of, but that’s the extent of what I’m willing to do.”
She cocked her head to one side as she studied him. “Why do you do it if you don’t care?”
He shrugged. “Power. They had it; I wanted it. It was as simple as that.”
“But you don’t…enjoy it?”
“No.”
“So…what do you enjoy?”
You. Everything about you. “I can’t say that I know.”
“Maybe I can help you figure it out,” she said in such an earnest tone that his heart—the one he would’ve sworn was cold and dead in his chest—hurt just contemplating it.
“Perhaps you already have, fiorellino,” he murmured. “Perhaps you already have.”