16. — the thing about Chicago. #3
Her back found the top of his desk with enough force to rattle the items on top.
As her silk robe opened, falling away to expose the smooth expanse of perfect breasts and silken skin, bare all the way down to between her legs, he remembered.
His fingers flexed into her thigh he’d shoved open; she already shook, and he could smell how much she wanted it.
Hell, he could see it.
He hadn’t forgotten, he just—
“Don’t you dare,” Carina breathed out heavily on the desk below him. “Not now.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Her fingernails bit into both his wrists, urging pain as much as she begged for it. It wouldn’t be the first time he fucked her on his desk, but he usually didn’t do it with the door unlocked and wide open. Even if it was nearly three in the morning.
The desk became a victim to the two finding what they needed in one another, yet again.
Carina just wanted to sleep, and Salvatore needed the distraction.
He never once looked at the clock while he had his wife spread apart and trembling through her first orgasm of three.
He’d given her that one with two fingers in her cunt and a thumb rolling circles into her clit.
It gave him time to shove down the lounge pants he’d changed into shortly after the party ended.
He’d forgone a shirt entirely.
That meant his chest took the brunt of her fingernails when he fucked her so hard that the side of the desk left bruises along his thighs. Words became an unnecessary thing between them when he found everything he wanted to say reflecting in her teary, blissed gaze.
I hate you sometimes. I want you always. I love you forever.
He held her down against the desk, making her take it how he knew she wanted it. She came that last time gagging on those same fingers he’d fucked her with earlier, those tears in her eyes finally spilling when he came, too.
His hand splayed out across her stomach. The gentlest he’d been, somehow.
“Jesus Christ,” Carina panted the first moment she could.
His fingers left a trail of her saliva down her jaw. His forehead found a place to rest against her heaving chest while he tried to breathe.
“It’s past three,” Carina informed as her legs untangled from around his middle. He didn’t straighten, or step back from her and the desk, simply checked the clock. “You can sleep.”
···
Salvatore woke sometime around noon. He only knew the time because the windows in Carina’s bedroom allowed light to spill across her fluffy, white duvet at that point in the day. It shocked him that he’d slept so long, but he also struggled to take in his surroundings.
He never slept in her bed. That was hers.
“Hey,” came Carina’s soft voice.
Salvatore blinked through the sunlight and pillows.
Carina’s figure, contrasting through the rays, blocked his vision momentarily.
She leaned down, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
He tried to remember what happened after their moment together in the study, but flashes of the same thing, only in her bed, confirmed his reason for waking up where he did.
“There’s food downstairs when you want it.”
“Okay,” he mumbled.
Her arms wrapped her waist. “And your phone has been going off for a while.”
At that news, Salvatore pushed himself up to sit. He outstretched his arm and flexed his hand open and closed repeatedly while his wife grumbled under her breath. Eventually, the phone met his palm.
Salvatore had to blink several times to read the notifications on the screen. He chose to pull up the one right on top.
Larkin.
Got these, boss man.
Attached were two images. Phone records from the phone Nico had been given by Big Mike to do business. It took more than a few hours to gain access to some information.
The other attachment?
Flight confirmations for two people. Nico and Frankie, according to the information.
Paid for through a credit card Salvatore didn’t recognize.
Although, he figured Nico might also have moved his money into a new account, and opened others in the process, just to keep fingers and noses out of his business.
“What is it?” Carina asked.
Salvatore had switched back to the first attachment—the phone records. He recognized the area code, but he couldn’t answer his wife when a name lit up the screen with an incoming call.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Carina muttered at the caller ID.
Salvatore inhaled deeply before answering the call. “Afternoon, boss.”
“I want to see Nico today.”
“Today’s not great, Giorgio. Maybe—”
“Salvatore, I intend to sit down and speak with my son. I won’t lie and say you haven’t given him opportunities and put him on a better path than he’s been, but he is still my son. When should I expect him?”
He scrambled to come up with something. A lie. Anything.
“Or should I come find him?” Giorgio asked the longer Salvatore remained quiet.
“Can we at least give him the weekend to calm down?” Sal requested, hoping the man would find sense in doing so.
“Marco is never far from your side, and as we saw, those two can’t be within breathing distance of one another without shit popping off.
Do you think it’s a good idea to shove them right back together after last night? ”
“I’ll deal with Marco.”
Yes, like you always have. Salvatore forced himself to say instead, “Then, take a couple of days to do that. I will do the same with Nico.”
“Fine.”
“How about Tuesday for lunch at—”
“Monday, dinner. My home. I only want to see my son.”
“All right, Monday it is,” Salvatore replied.
“The situation,” Giorgio said before the call could end.
“What situation?”
“Between our children. Apparently, there’s a situation. Correct?”
“Right, that one,” Sal muttered. “What about it?”
“Did Nico cross a line for you?”
Yes. Yes, he did. In a way.
Sal couldn’t do that to Nico. He would handle him. “He’s doing what any nineteen-year-old does when a beautiful girl shows him attention, isn’t he?”
“Except that beautiful girl is your daughter.”
“Lucky him,” Salvatore said dryly.
Shortly after, the boss hung up.
Carina waited, tapping her foot to the floor, as Salvatore stared at his phone. “Well?”
“They’re in Chicago.”
“What—how did Giorgio know that?”
“He doesn’t. The information Larkin got overnight tells me so. Giorgio just gave me a timeline to get them back, is all.”
Carina didn’t look surprised. “Nico spent summers in Chicago, didn’t he?”
“He has cousins there, and it’s always been Giorgio’s version of Vegas, I suppose. Anything goes, and everything stays.”
“Mmhmm.”
He could see the way she stared at him from the side, waiting.
“Sometimes, not everything,” she said softly.
His gut twisted, and he slammed the phone and his hand against the bed. “Fuck.”
“Are you going to make some calls?”
“Well, I fucking have to now, don’t I?”
“I’m sorry.”
He tried so hard not to glare at her. They’d gone over this, though.
“It doesn’t matter. None of that matters anymore, right?”
She nodded. “That’s what you said.”
“No, that’s what I promised. I promised you it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t.”
Mostly.
“I could call—”
“No,” he snapped harshly.
Carina nodded quickly. “Okay, I won’t.”
The silence grew in the room, strangling him.
She spoke first. “He didn’t know it was me.”
“He did after.”
“You can’t even say his name, how are you going to call him, Sal?” she asked.
He didn’t know, but he also didn’t have a choice.