Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
NORA
His arms around me feel like salvation and damnation. I should pull away. Should remember that hours ago, he held a gun to my head. Should care that my entire world has just shattered into pieces too small to ever reassemble.
Instead, I press closer, breathing him in.
"I can't stop shaking," I whisper against his chest, hating how weak I sound, how thoroughly destroyed.
Pietro's hand moves to cup my face, tilting it up until I have no choice but to meet those dark eyes that see too much. "You're in shock, tesoro. It's normal."
Normal. Nothing about this is normal. Not learning my entire life was a lie, not being Connor O'Sullivan's daughter but not really, not finding comfort in the arms of a man who should be my enemy.
"Make it stop." The words escape before I can catch them, raw and desperate. "Please, Pietro. Make me feel something else. Anything else."
He goes still. "Nora—"
"Don't." I press my fingers to his lips, feeling the warmth of his breath against my skin. "Don't tell me this is wrong. Don't tell me I'm not thinking clearly. I know all of that."
Something shifts in his expression, the careful control cracking to reveal hunger that makes my breath catch. His hand moves from my face to my throat, not squeezing, just resting there like a promise.
"You don't know what you're asking for."
"Yes, I do." I turn my face into his palm, pressing a kiss to the rough skin. "I'm asking you to make me feel something other than this crushing emptiness. To prove I'm still alive, still real, still—"
His mouth crashes down on mine, swallowing whatever desperate plea I was about to make.
This isn't the careful kiss of a man offering comfort. This is possession, claim, a brand that marks me as his even as it sets me free from everything else.
I melt into him, my hands fisting in his shirt as he deepens the kiss. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, and I taste whiskey and danger and promises he'll probably break.
When he nips at my bottom lip, I gasp, and he swallows that sound too, like he wants to consume every piece of me.
"You want to forget?" he growls against my mouth, his hands moving to my waist, lifting me like I weigh nothing. "I'll make you forget everything except my name."
My back hits the mattress, and he follows me down, his weight pressing me into the soft surface. For a moment, we just stare at each other, both breathing hard, both recognizing we're crossing a line we can't uncross.
"Last chance," he says, his voice rough with restraint that's costing him. "Tell me to leave."
Instead, I pull him down for another kiss, pouring all my confusion and pain and desperate need into the contact. He groans against my mouth, his control finally snapping.
His hands are everywhere. Tangling in my hair, skimming down my sides, pushing up the hem of my shirt to find heated skin underneath. Every touch sets fires I didn't know my body could produce, every caress driving out thoughts of betrayal and lies and twenty-three years of deception.
"Pietro," I gasp as his mouth moves to my throat, as his teeth scrape against my pulse point in a way that should frighten me but only makes me arch closer.
"Say it again," he commands, his hands working at the buttons of my shirt with fingers that tremble slightly. "Say my name."
"Pietro." It comes out as a moan when he finds sensitive skin, when his mouth follows the path his hands have blazed. "Please."
"Please what, bella?" He pulls back to look at me, and what I see in his eyes steals my breath. Not just hunger, but something deeper, more dangerous. Recognition. Like he sees past Kelly the secretary, past O'Sullivan, to something essential and true. "Tell me what you need."
"You." The admission breaks from me, raw and honest. "I need you and your dick."
He kisses me again, softer this time but no less intense. His hands cradle my face like I'm something precious, even as his body presses me into the mattress with delicious weight.
"You have me," he murmurs against my lips, and for a moment, I believe him. "Tonight, you have all of me."
When he pulls my shirt off completely, I feel powerful at the way his breath catches.
"Bellissima," he breathes, his hands skimming up my sides with reverent touches that make me shiver. "So fucking perfect."
I reach for his shirt, needing to feel skin against skin, to ground myself in something real and present. He helps me, yanking it over his head in one fluid motion, and oh God, he's beautiful. All hard planes and angles. With tattoos that show me a piece of him.
I press my lips to the ink, feeling him tense above me.
"Nora." My name comes out strangled, wounded.
"I see you too," I whisper against his skin. "The real you. The broken parts."
He pulls me up for a kiss that's different from the others—desperate and raw and full of something neither of us can name. When he lays me back down, when his hands and mouth map every inch of available skin, it feels like worship and destruction all at once.
"Need to taste you," he growls, moving lower. "Need to make you come apart."
When his mouth finds me, I cry out, my hands tangling in his hair. He's relentless, devoted, playing my body like he's studied it for years instead of days.
Every stroke of his tongue, every careful touch, drives me higher until I'm babbling his name, begging for something I can't articulate.
"That's it, baby," he murmurs against sensitive flesh.
PIETRO
I pull back from her pussy, my mouth swollen from her taste. She arches off the bed, a whimper escaping those perfect lips.
Her hands grip my hair, trying to shove my face back between her thighs. “Don’t stop.”
“Look at me,” I command, my voice rougher than sandpaper.
Her eyes, those deep green pools filled with shattered trust, snap open. They’re wild, desperate.
I lick a path up her trembling stomach, over the swell of her breast. Her heart hammers against my tongue. I find her nipple, suckling hard until she cries out. My name. Always my name.
She thrashes beneath me. “Pietro… please.”
“What do you need, bella?” I bite down gently on the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, tasting salt and Nora. “Say it.”
“You. All of you. Now.” Her fingers scramble down my back, nails digging into the muscle.
Possessive. Hungry. Gone is the careful secretary, the woman building walls. This is the fire I knew lived inside her. The real Nora.
I kiss her then, deep, forcing her mouth open. She meets me with equal hunger, her tongue tangling with mine.
She moans into my mouth, her hips lifting, grinding against the hard ridge of my cock. The friction is exquisite torture. I break the kiss, panting. “Lick me,” I rasp, pushing myself up onto my knees, looming over her.
She doesn’t hesitate. Her tongue flicks out, tracing the thick vein pulsing along the underside of my cock.
A shudder rips through me. “Fuck.”
Her mouth closes over the head, suckling. Tight. Wet silk.
I groan, my head falling back, fingers threading through her hair. She takes me deeper, her tongue swirling.
Every nerve ending is on fire. I watch her, mouth stretched around me, those emerald eyes watching me back. Challenging. Worshiping. Destroying me. My control frays, snapping thread by thread.
“Enough.” I drag her off, my cock glistening from her mouth. Her lips are swollen, wet.
I flip her onto her stomach, dragging her hips up. Her ass is perfect, round and pale in the moonlight. I spread her cheeks. “Open.”
She shudders but obeys, pressing her face into the pillow. I lean down, my tongue finding her entrance, tasting her.
She jerks, a choked sob escaping.
Divine. Perfect. Mine. I feast, lapping at her, thrusting my tongue inside until her legs shake. She’s panting, pushing back against my mouth. Begging without words.
I push two fingers into her slick pussy, crooking them hard against that sweet spot inside. Her back bows, a sharp cry tearing from her throat. “Pietro!”
“Come on my fingers,” I growl, watching her body tense, her inner muscles clenching around me. “Let go.”
She shatters, her cry muffled by the pillow, her whole body trembling like a leaf in a storm. I feel the rhythmic pulses around my fingers, hot and wet.
I withdraw my fingers, slicking my cock with her arousal. I roll on a condom and I position myself at her entrance, rubbing the thick head against her swollen folds. “Look at me, Nora.” She turns her head, cheek pressed to the pillow.
Her eyes are glazed, wrecked. Beautiful. “Who do you belong to?” I demand, pushing just the tip inside. Tight. Hot. Heaven.
“You,” she gasps, arching back. “Only you. Always.”
I slam home in one brutal thrust. She screams.
The sound is pure ecstasy. Her inner walls clamp down, a velvet fist squeezing my cock.
I groan, deep and guttural, burying myself to the hilt. She’s so tight, so perfect, taking all of me.
Her body trembles beneath mine. I pull out almost completely, then drive back in harder, deeper. Setting a punishing rhythm.
“Deeper,” she begs, voice shattered. “Harder.” I oblige, slamming into her, my fingers digging into her hips hard enough to bruise.
I want more marks. Proof she’s mine.
Her body is slick with sweat, her moans escalating with every plunge. She’s close again. I feel it in the desperate flutter of her walls, the way her cries turn into wordless pleas.
I reach around, finding her clit swollen and throbbing. I rub tight circles. She shrieks, her body convulsing violently around my cock. Her climax tears through her, dragging a guttural roar from my own chest as I feel her milk me, her inner muscles rippling in wave after wave.
I hold deep, grinding against her as she shudders through it, my own release building like a tidal wave, unstoppable, consuming. My vision whites out.
NORA
We lie tangled together in silence, his heartbeat steady beneath my palm. The room feels suspended in time, a pocket universe where nothing exists beyond these walls. My body aches pleasantly, marked by his touch.
After several minutes, Pietro shifts, his fingers trailing along my spine. "You should sleep," he murmurs against my hair. "You need rest."
I shake my head, pressing closer to his warmth. "I can't. Every time I close my eyes, everything comes rushing back."
The betrayals. The lies. My entire identity unraveling like a poorly knitted sweater.
Pietro's hand stills on my back. "Tell me about Declan." he says quietly.
The name makes me freeze. I take a deep breath, steeling myself.
"I thought he loved me," I begin, my voice barely above a whisper. "Three years together. He worked for my father as his second-in-command. I trusted him completely."
Pietro's arm tightens around me, but he remains silent, letting me continue.
"I found documents in his desk drawer. Shipping manifests, schedules, names—all information about our operations that he had no business having separate copies of. And a recorder."
My throat tightens at the memory. "I played it and heard him talking to Cian Murphy, planning their next move against us."
Cian Murphy is the Don. Declan was talking directly to him.
''Motherfucker.'' Pietro says.
I shift to look at Pietro's face, needing him to understand. "He was using me the entire time. Every kiss, every promise, every moment we shared—it was all to get close to Connor's operation, to learn our weaknesses."
"What happened when he caught you?" Pietro asks, his voice dangerously soft.
"He came home early. Saw me with the evidence spread out on the floor." I close my eyes, feeling the phantom pressure of hands around my throat. "He didn't even deny it."
Pietro's body tenses beneath mine, but I continue, needing to get it all out.
"He tried to strangle me. Said he'd tell everyone I was in on it, that I'd betrayed my family willingly." My hand unconsciously rises to my throat. "I managed to grab a crystal lamp base and hit him with it. When he reached for his gun, I ran."
I take a shuddering breath. "I called Connor. I was lucky to have my phone in my pocket. I felt lucky until I called him. Told him everything—about Declan's betrayal, about him trying to kill me. And do you know what he said?"
Pietro's eyes are fixed on mine, dark with rage.
"He said I should have known better. That I'd brought Declan into their lives, into their business. That it was my mess to clean up." The words still cut like glass. "My own father abandoned me when I needed him most."
Pietro's hand cups my face, his thumb brushing away a tear I didn't realize had fallen.
"After that, I called Finn. He told me to destroy my phone and meet him. He created the Nora Kelly identity, sent a man who helped me get to Chicago." I laugh bitterly. "I had no idea I was going to walk into a war between my family and yours. I just needed somewhere to hide."
"And you had no contact with Connor after that?" Pietro asks.
I shake my head. "None. I wanted nothing to do with him. With any of it." I meet his gaze directly. "I never betrayed you, Pietro. I never gave anyone information about your shipments or your business. I swear it."
Pietro studies my face for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he pulls me closer, pressing his lips to my forehead.
"I believe you," he says simply, and those three words lift a weight I didn't know I was carrying.