Chapter 26 Kitty
TWENTY-SIX
KITTY
Playlist recommendation:
Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
I climbed into a distressingly empty bed.
After Stan’s declaration, I’d hoped for a bed partner-cum-distraction.
Instead, he’d guided me to the door that led to my suite, chastely kissed my knuckles like a hero from a Regency romance, and only left once he’d heard the click of the lock.
The explosions, the aftermath of which blared loud and clear in the distance, should have subsumed the bulk of my thoughts.
Key word being should.
If anything, my mind fixated on him.
His kiss.
His sorrow.
His words.
1. That kiss was epic.
Ten out of ten. I didn’t believe in that bullshit about scoring eleven out of ten. That diminished the entire grading system.
Ten. Out. Of. Ten.
That was how fiiiine his mouth was—and his tongue.
Wow.
I knew that the second he went down on me—because yes, that now took pride of place at the top of my agenda—I’d go off like a rocket.
He knew how to move that bad boy, and I had no issue with letting him make that move on me because a girl deserved to be savored. There’d been zero savoring in my life for too long, and Stan was one big fat promise wrapped up with a Brioni bow.
2. His sorrow, on the other hand, worried me. Not because I thought the woman who’d died would turn me into a placeholder—unlike with most men I’d dated recently.
Truly, I’d never known a man to exude grief as he did.
That he could feel such devotion touched my soul.
That kind of dedication was beyond rare. Throw in his compassion and empathy…
He took my breath away.
His sorrow appeared to manifest in shame. Fear. Self-disgust.
It made me want to hug him then fuck him until he forgot everything but my name.
God, I was such a terrible person.
3. His words tripped every single one of my anxiety triggers, but his grief overwhelmed them, enabling me to look past his sins.
My brothers weren’t cherubs.
Neither was I.
I’d committed some terrible sins in my time to protect my family.
So, while I lay in a luxurious bed and my vacation destination burned, I vacillated between hunting Stan down to climb him like a tree and the urge to text Lara, Millie, and George.
The latter was something I had to fight.
Not only did they have zero clue I was mob adjacent, but if my actions got them in trouble, I’d never forgive myself.
Plus, George would talk me out of my attraction to Stan with a pesky PowerPoint presentation loaded with specifics he’d wheedle out of me and an argument founded in common sense. If Lara and Millie backed him up, then I might well listen.
I had no desire to listen.
I descended the staircase to this supermassive black hole with my eyes wide open. The blame would land squarely on me when this went wrong.
Because it would.
It always did when you climbed between the sheets with the mob.
So, I did nothing. I stayed in bed like the good girl I wasn’t and, eventually, I fell asleep with my thoughts rolling on top of one another, smashing and crashing like a trawler surviving a stormy North Sea.
My subconscious told me to back off, while my body craved something that was undoubtedly bad for me but that I wanted and needed nonetheless.
Some mistakes had to be lived.
It led to the polar opposite of a restful sleep.
Upon waking, I felt more exhausted than when I’d climbed into bed. But as my eyelashes lazily fluttered on the precipice of returning to my rowdy dreams, I immediately stilled. Tension replacing drowsiness as instincts kicked into gear.
The whirring of the overhead fan was a new type of background noise.
The only problem?
I hadn’t switched it on before I’d gone to sleep.
I hadn’t needed it, not with the AC.
Then, I heard the crinkling of a wrapper…
Swallowing my fear, I made slits out of my eyes and scanned the room. There was enough light that I knew dawn had passed but—
When I saw him sitting in the corner of the bedroom in an armchair, gun loosely tucked in one hand, what looked like a freakin’ Little Debbie’s cupcake in the other, feet crossed at the ankle, gaze locked on me, I jumped so hard that I was sure I could have fallen off the mattress.
“What are you doing in here?” I shrieked.
“Guarding you.” Steel lined his words.
“Why? We’re on allied territory!” What words had I just spoken? Allied territory—what was this? WW2? The fucking mob, I swore. Ruined. Everything. Even my vocab!
“The looting spread wider than Martinez originally realized. He got the situation under control, but I refused to take any chances.”
“My sisters!” I cried, surging up again.
“They have guards too. Not inside their rooms,” he conceded.
“So, I get the personal touch?” I patted my heart. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“You’re safe. That’s what matters.”
Snagging the sheets around me, I dragged them high as I hauled myself against the headboard, then for good measure, I threw one of my pillows at him.
Of course, it landed wide.
With a growl, I hurled every single one off the bed while he watched on, amused.
Only one damn pillow got even close.
Grr.
“You could have warned me,” I said, huffing after that unexpected bout of exertion.
“How? Should I have whispered into your ear while you were sleeping and scared you then instead of now? At least you got some rest.”
I glowered at him.
His lips curved, that strange flatness fading from his expression. A flatness that told me the Capo had guarded me.
The biochemist had told me that I was as serious as HPAI.
How many other sides were there to his nature?
A brother, definitely. The brother to a sister as well. I knew from my own family that they were two types.
What else?
Lover.
I swallowed.
Husband.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” I squeaked.
Then I found myself utterly annoyed.
Kitty Frasier did not fucking squeak.
That was when I should have realized how screwed I was…
Because in front of this man, I kept on squeaking.
And speaking in third person!
Fuck my life.
“Hmm, didn’t look like nothing to me.” Then, he signed my death certificate.
He took a bite of his cupcake.
And he moaned.
Holy shit.
“How would you know?” I retorted, only managing to stop myself from squirming as he carried on eating.
God, if I’d needed confirmation his oral skills were optimal, I had it.
“You thought me waking up to you sitting in the corner of my room, having watched me fucking sleep with a gun in your hand and a cupcake in the other, was a nice wake-up call!”
“You were safe.”
I knew he meant from dumb, drunken tourists who’d decided to take advantage of a terrible situation to loot, but I also read between the lines.
I was safe with him.
And fuck if, deep in my bones, I didn’t know that already.
Refusing to relent, I folded my arms across my chest. “Saying the same thing over and over again doesn’t make it true.” When he rolled his eyes, I scolded, “Did you get any sleep?”
“Of course not.”
I jerked upright again. “You’re supposed to rest after a myocardial—”
“I’ll rest when I’m dead.”
I gasped. “Don’t joke about that!”
“I’m not joking,” he dismissed before releasing a yawn. He checked his cell phone then informed me, “We’re leaving in two hours.”
“We are?”
“Yes.” He got to his feet and cracked his neck. “We’re heading to a private airfield so we don’t need to worry about your passport situation.”
“Huh? It’s too early for cryptic clues, Stan. What’s going on?”
“We’re flying out.” He rubbed his nape, growling as he stretched. That growl did not take my mind to other places. “You wanted a girls’ weekend away. We’re heading to Vegas in our jet.”
I blinked.
Our jet.
Nah, he didn’t mean ours.
Did he?
“Kitty?”
“Why Las Vegas?” I croaked.
“My brother-in-law’s territory. Party central. No turf war that I don’t know about or how to prevent you from walking straight into.”
Absently noticing how his mouth pinched, I shook my head. “We should go home.”
“You’re not due back until Sunday, are you?”
“How do you know that?”
He rolled his eyes. “I just do.”
“How, Stan?”
But he ignored me. “If you don’t want your brothers to find out that you weren’t where you said you were…”
Agitated, I slapped my hands against the sheets. “That’s a very good point, goddammit.”
His smirk made an appearance. “Wait until I introduce you to my sister. I trained with the best.”
I squinted at him in annoyance and, trying not to get too freaked out about the ‘until,’ grumbled, “I need to shower.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said wryly, but he didn’t shuffle away. Nope, he returned to the damn armchair and his earlier position. “Eva left clothes for you in the closet.”
“I’m not sure I appreciate being this well-managed.”
“Get used to it, duci.”