CHAPTER TWO
FALCON
I took a second glance at myself. Charcoal pants, white shirt, half unbuttoned, hair a mess from rubbing my hands through it a second ago. And I hadn’t shaved in days. Hell, I probably looked like any random college aged kid out for a joyride.
“Sorry, that was?—”
“Rude,” she reprimanded me gently. “It’s okay. We all have those nights. I think my father is having one right now.” My mystery girl, who had be college-age, like me, tilted her head toward the stairs I came up a few minutes before.
Raised voices emanated from behind the door I’d shut.
“Ah.” My father mentioned a late meeting. No wonder he finished up with the slut so fast. “Did you just arrive?” A single nod. Not once did her eyes turn wary. “Mmm.” I rubbed a hand over my chin, the not so short bristles biting into my palm. “And you have no one else with you here? Just your father?” I winced as something banged below. Not a gunshot, but her father wasn’t the only one having a shit night.
“Just me,” she said softly, standing there in that thin blue cotton sundress long after the evening set in.
And the night breeze which wasn’t so gentle in spring. The long hem drifted around her slim calves, her hands twitching like she might wrap her arms around herself, but she didn’t shift under my gaze.
It took me less than half a second to make the decision.
“Where are you staying?”
“We have a house behind the town. It’s not far, just enough away from…everything.” she shrugged.
I nodded; I got it, not wanting to be in the middle of the tourist destination of Love Beach. “Within walking distance?”
“If you’re used to walking.”
“Campus is fairly huge. I’m on spring break. Wait here for a minute?” I asked.
Hell, that was new. I didn’t ask anyone for anything.
The girl nodded again, and didn’t move. The single movement gave me the impression that she was used to waiting on other people to get their business done before anyone thought of her.
I rolled my lips inward on that thought, still watching her face as I backed up a few steps and mimicked her nod. “I’ll be back in a second.”
I turned on my heel and jogged forward, toward the bow of the boat, not willing to head lower toward my room. I’d left a zip up hoodie on the bridge earlier in the day where the captain resumed an old lesson in teaching me how to read nautical charts. For whatever reason, I loved studying the damn things, and he was more than willing to share an old passion with an eager student.
“You didn’t move.” I found the girl standing exactly where I left her.
She looked up at me curiously. “You did say not to.”
I frowned down at her, realizing she stood just half a foot shorter than my six foot one inches. “Do you always do what strange men tell you to do?”
“This would be the first time.” One lean shoulder lifted in a shrug and fell.
I watched the motion and swallowed, the swell of anger blooming fresh. “And if I’d been coming back with the intent to hurt you?” I said, managing to keep my voice soft, squeezing the hoodie in my hands.
“Were you?” She frowned up at me, and suddenly I hated how that looked on her.
“No.” I held out the hoodie. “Let me walk you home. Away from this. You shouldn’t be here anyway. And it’ll get colder later. More than this, from what I’ve seen of the nights so far.”
She contemplated me for a long moment, and just as I thought she would refuse my offer, she slipped one arm into the hoodie that was miles too freaking big for her. Letting me wind the soft, grey material around her slim frame that seemed too delicate to be here, near me, near anything of my family’s before something—or one of us—broke her, she turned in a semi-circle until I completed the job.
Suddenly I stood in front of her, unsure how we got here as I fiddled with the zip and secured her into my jacket, rolling the sleeves up her wrists a few turns.
“Better?”
“Thank you.” She bit her lip and finally wrapped her arms around herself like I’d guessed she had wanted to do before. “It’s much warmer.”
“Yeah.” Fuck her father for letting her walk out of the damn house and into a meeting with her dressed like that. She looked like bait, for fuck’s sake. “Come on. Show me how you get home. We just arrived yesterday, and I don’t know this place yet.”
“I’ll be your tour guide.” She still didn’t move.
I waited, my palms itching and then I broke every damn rule I had for myself and held out my hand. “Show me…I don’t know your name,” I murmured.
“Bella.”
I rocked back on my heels, a smile forming on my face. “Just like the boat,” I muttered. Her expression morphed into confusion. I waved the comment away. “It’s nothing.” It wasn’t. “My boat is also called Bella. The Bella Vita, a beautiful life.”
I tugged on the hand she gave me, pulling her closer to me. My chest closed. With any other woman I’d already know exactly what I wanted to do with her—hell, that was an outright lie. Any other woman I’d already have in my bed. Over the railing, on the nearest furniture…
Another lie.
I was getting good at those tonight.
I knew exactly what I wanted to do with Bella tonight. I wanted to walk her home, make sure she stayed warm and see her safe inside her home. And then get my ass back here and find out what business her father had with mine.
But her sapphire blue eyes that mirrored the dark water that lapped at the boat drew me out of my head, in a way that no one else I knew could achieve.
“You know my name,” she whispered, seeming to lose her nerve.
I smiled faintly. “Falcon Gianio. Walk with me, Bella?”
She let me draw her off my boat, away from my father and hers, and onto unmoving land. My hand was still wrapped around hers. Bella’s steps were much shorter than mine and even though this was a girl I had just met, a girl who I knew nothing about, I didn’t want to let her go.
Me, the mafia prince who hated contact with another person unless I was about to end up balls deep in their soft, warm flesh.
But that wasn’t on tonight’s menu. Not in the least. Whatever the hell this was, I had no intention of fucking my woes out into Bella’s soft, pale body. Her hand trembled in my grip and I loosened my hold instantly.
“Am I hurting you?” Am I scaring you? Too much for you? Fuck, I was freaking myself out as much as I probably terrified her.
“No,” she whispered, pulling her hand away. I missed the contact as she pushed her hair back from her face and made a messy but cute as all fuck knot with its dirty blonde strands at her nape. “I just…I worry about my father.”
I let out a short laugh, softening my tone belatedly when she glanced sideways at me. “He’s with my father and while mine’s in a mood, he isn’t in that sort of a mood.” I took the elastic from her hand when she paused, biting her lip again. “I’ve scared you.”
“No.” She shook her head as I picked out the curls she knotted up and unwound the mess at her nape, winding her hair into a twist, and looping the elastic around it twice. “Oh, alright, yes. You did. A bit. I don’t understand any of this,” she confessed, wrapping her arms so tight around herself that she seemed to shrink. “Thank you.” One hand pressed to her hair. “How did you learn to do that?”
“I used to do it for my mother. She had long, dark hair, and it used to knot on the boat—not mine, my father’s, then, he sold it, afterward.” I stopped talking and took a breath. “She taught me to put it up for her.”
“Is she around tonight?” Bella glanced backward along the jetty.
My throat tightened. “No. She’s…not with us anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Falcon.” Her hand brushed the back of mine, and I automatically sought her out again, securing her in a firm grip. She didn’t pull away. “I lost my mother to cancer three years ago. That was when my father…he also struggles,” she whispered.
I nodded, tugging her close to my side as we walked along the jetty and the boardwalk that skirted around the edge of the town, following the beach that was almost deserted at close to midnight.
“He shouldn’t have brought you with him tonight,” I said tightly. “That boat is no place for someone like you.”
“Too plain,” she murmured, looking down at the ground and I realized for the first time she was barefoot.
Somehow, that made her all the more sexier, but now I was worried about her damn well hurting her feet.
“Too innocent,” I said abruptly as she turned and led me up a hill away from the town onto a rocky path. I stopped and bent at my knees. “Climb on, Bella. You’re not walking barefoot all the way up there.”
“I made it down.” Her palm pressed lightly to my back as she considered my offer.
I groaned, playing it up, though my thighs did actually ache in that position. “Come on, I’m an old man here. Do me a favor, yeah?”
She slapped at me even as she giggled, and let me hoist her onto my back. Slim legs—almost too slim—linked around my waist as she looped her arms around my neck. Hell, the girl weighed almost nothing at all.
“Fuck it, I’m feeding you tomorrow,” I muttered under my breath.
“Hmm?” She rested her chin on my shoulder.
The scent of berries assaulted me from behind. I closed my eyes and suppressed a groan at the freshness of her right mother fucking there pressed against me. Squeezing one calf muscle and resisting the urge to run my hands up and down her legs, I took the hill at a run, needing to burn some of my excess energy off before I did something we’d both regret.
“Turn,” she said a little breathlessly when we hit a street corner. “That one.” Bella pointed across the road a white and gray painted three story beach vacationer house complete with a stilted lower level and all the windows and verandas a house could ever need.
I stopped outside its stairs, looking up and up as I let her down gently. “It’s just you and your dad in here?”
“He owns it.” I heard the shrug in her voice before I turned back to her, sliding my hands automatically to encircle her waist.
Her eyes flared wide in the reflected street light, an awareness passing between us. I swallowed and dropped my hands, but the damage was already done.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have?—”
She rose gracefully onto her bare toes and grazed her lips across my cheek. “Thank you for walking me home,” she whispered, her lips still near mine.
It didn’t take a half second’s thought to catch her chin gently between my fingers and turn my head to brush my mouth across hers.
Bella’s stuttered breath matched my heartbeat that slammed once into my chest at full tilt, then stilled.
And I stepped back.
“I’d do it again,” I murmured, unsure which part I meant, the walk or the kiss. Or both. Space gave me clarity, and my heartbeat resumed its normal path.
“Let me give this back to you.” She struggled with the zip on my jacket and though it was in me to watch her fight it, I closed my hand over hers and squeezed instead.
“Keep it. Besides, I want to take you out tomorrow.”
The hell did that come from?
Her eyes widened like they had a second before when I kissed her.
A kiss I wasn’t going to think about because with anyone else I would have pushed her back against the house, forced her mouth open with my tongue, and left her wet and mewling there on the front doormat.
With this girl—I ached to beg her permission to kiss her again, fucking earn it . If she’d let me.
Bella nodded. “Alright,” she whispered. “What did you have in mind?”
“I have a smaller boat. If you don’t get seasick?”
She shook her head. “I’m good.”
I grinned. “Easy, then. Come by the jetty tomorrow morning. Early as you like. I’ll be up.”
“And here I thought you sounded like a party boy.” The sort of smile I wanted to kiss from her soft lips turned up at the corners.
I tried not to stare, but I knew I’d fall asleep to that memory tonight. Maybe another night if not tonight.
“I can be,” I said carefully, not wanting to lie outright. “But to be honest, I don’t enjoy it. Not always. With the boys back on campus, yeah, we can get loud,” I admitted.
“Sounds like fun.” She smiled, and I actually rocked back a step.
“Yeah. But you, Bella, I will see tomorrow. If you want?” There I went, asking questions again.
“I want,” she murmured.
“Good. Now go inside so I can see that I didn't run all the way up that hill for no reason,” I growled, swatting at her in play.
Alright, half in play because if I’d caught her when she giggled and managed to evade me, that jacket zipped between us wouldn’t have meant shit.
But giggle she did, and she ran up those two flights of stairs without me accosting her. I waited at the bottom until I heard her keys in the lock, and the light flicked on three stories above ground level.
“I’m safe. You can go to sleep now, Falcon,” she called down softly.
Not that there would be a neighbor awake to hear our little tête-à-tête.
I grinned and waved, shoving my hands into my pockets and headed back down the hill to plan tomorrow out. No part of me wanted to leave her alone tonight, and every inch of me craved to break her window open, crawl through and do terrible things with her in the dark.
Ruin the innocence that exuded from her pores. But that wasn’t who Bella was and…
Who I could be with her.
The chance to be someone more than the Don of the Gianio Familia’s son. Someone who didn’t have to worry about the underhand deals my father made tonight or what might come back to bite him tomorrow. Or spill his blood come daybreak.
Tomorrow, I could steal a single day with her, let everything go and pretend—for twelve fucking hours—not to think about who I might have to be come sunset.
Just for one damn day.
I shoved my hands into my pockets as I headed away from the house, back to the boat where my father waited, along with hers. Screw them both. I had a date to plan.
Plus, it was damn cute that she thought I’d sleep between now and seeing her again.