Chapter 26
Alessandro
My cheek is pressed against her chest, the reassuring beat of her heart thumping against my ear, her legs wrapped around me.
I’m still inside her after one of the most intense orgasms of my life.
I don’t ever want to move. Unfortunately, I can feel her thinking.
I can’t have that. I only want her feeling tonight.
“Hungry?” A spark lights up her eyes. I grin. “For food I mean?”
“I could eat.” Her finger touches my lips, tracing them, and I’m reminded of the first time she touched my mouth when I was thirteen and had a bloody lip—how gentle her touch was, how it sent a blissful, foreign sensation coursing through my body, just like it’s doing now. My cock begins to swell.
Down boy.
“Good because you’re definitely going to need the energy.” I kiss her, relishing her swollen, sweet lips just because I can, and then make myself roll off her. I ditch the condom and pull on my boxers since we are technically on a public beach. Then I drape the cashmere blanket over her shoulders.
As we talk, I feed her mango salmon ceviche and baked pomegranate brie on crackers, fresh blackberries and honeydew. Putting things on her tongue and watching her swallow is my new obsession.
We’re both trying to avoid anything serious, just catching up, sharing funny stories, and relearning things about each other.
But I begin to realize I’m in serious trouble.
In the back of my mind, as I focus on every word she says, every morsel she gives me from her life that I’ve missed, I recognize something is happening.
I’m trying to ignore it, but it’s powerful.
More powerful than lust. More powerful than the rage that has consumed me for the last decade.
It’s soft and bright, a pinprick of light in the vast darkness of my emotional landscape.
“Remember when you and Milo decided to play chicken on jet skis, and you almost died?” She bites her bottom lip in distress. I pop a berry into her mouth to give her something else to bite and then caress her raw bottom lip with my thumb.
I’ve come way closer to death since then, but I don’t tell her that. “Yeah, Gunnar saved my life that day when he pulled my unconscious ass out of the water.” I lift her hand and press a kiss to the pulse point on her wrist. “Don’t worry, I’m hard to kill, Angel.”
She gives me a lazy smile, and then it disappears just as quickly. “I secretly wished Milo was the one with lungs full of saltwater. Does that make me a bad person?” She whispers her confession.
I shift in the lounge chair. My eyes narrow. It would take a lot to make my angel wish someone harm. Putting a finger beneath her chin, I make her look at me. “What did he do to you?”
After a lot of coaxing, she finally tells me about what happened on the roof.
I’m going to kill him.
The Beast is pounding his fist on my rib cage. My heart is about to explode. “Why didn’t you tell me back then?”
She looks up at me through her lashes, her eyes bright with distress. I’m going to kill him slowly. “He threatened to throw you off the roof if I told you.”
With a groan, I pull her into my chest. “I would gladly die protecting you, Lennon Rose.” Then to lighten the mood I tug on her hair. “But you don’t really think Milo could’ve successfully thrown me from the roof, do you?”
She puffs out a laugh and it breaks the tension. When she looks at me now her eyes are sparkling with mischief. “Not today anyway. You were kind of skinny back then.”
“Is that so.” I grab her and sink my teeth into her neck as she squeals.
***
At one point she’s running a finger over the scars on my knee from where Mother made me and Rocco kneel for an hour on broken pieces of her lamp. We’d accidentally smashed it throwing a football in the house.
She sighs hard.
I reach over and take her hand, slide my fingers through hers. “We all have scars, Lennon. Some are on the outside and some are on the inside, like yours.”
Her lips curve upward slightly, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She holds it a few seconds too long, as if acknowledging and accepting what she’s lost. What we’ve lost. Then she brushes her finger over the tattoos on my hand. I have her legs in my lap again. We can’t stop touching each other.
“What does this mean?” She’s stroking the dark Memento Mori script in front of my knuckles.
“Remember that you will die,” I say.
She tilts her head and then looks up at me. “It does make things sweeter, doesn’t it? Knowing that it’s all temporary.”
If by sweeter, she means more heartbreaking than yes. I drag my fingers up the inside of her thigh, beneath the blanket, and grind the heel of my hand against her bare pussy to get her back out of her head. She lifts her hips and bites her lip. So goddamn responsive.
I chuckle. “Finish your water. I need you hydrated.”
A soft, low sound of amusement bubbles up and escapes her throat.
The light deep within my soul flares brighter.
She flings off the blanket. Then she tips up her water bottle, drains it, tosses it in the picnic basket, and straddles me. “Your wish is my command,” she says playfully.
I shove both my hands into her messy hair and pull her face down to mine.
“That is a very dangerous promise, Angel.” Then I claim her mouth like the fucking god she makes me feel like.
Right now she’s my angel with a crooked halo, meeting my lust with her own.
Fuck an afterlife. This is heaven right here.
We spend all night exploring each other’s bodies, talking, laughing, and sometimes being forced to rest from sheer exhaustion. She’s come so many times on my tongue and cock, I’ve lost count. The only thing I know is it wasn’t near enough times. Instead of being satisfied, I’m addicted.
As the sky begins to lighten, signaling the beginning of a new day, both our moods darken.
We’re tangled together on one of the lounge chairs, her head resting on my bare chest. Neither of us were willing to waste a moment of our time together with sleep so the exhaustion is heightening everything, every emotion, every nerve ending.
I feel completely raw and exposed, skinned alive.
I run my fingers lightly through her hair, memorizing the texture, the scent, the feel of her warm body pressed against mine.
As the ocean begins to sparkle with the rising sunlight, and seagulls fly overhead with their sharp, piercing cries, she stirs. With a sigh, she pressed a kiss to my chest, where my heart beats heavily for her. Then she sits up.
I squeeze my eyes closed and take a breath.
We dress slowly, silently. I drape my tux jacket over her shoulders.
Then we walk hand in hand back down the beach to the parking lot where Big Tony has returned to drive us back to the real world.
Heavy silence is our companion during the ride. Halfway back to her apartment, panic begins to creep in. I turn to her. “Lennon…”
Her hand flies up. “Don’t.” Shaking her head, her pale green eyes glassy with unshed tears, she holds her spine straight. “I know what your future has to be. I can’t be a part of it. So don’t try to give me hope, Sandro. It’s cruel. I have to move on. This was one night. For… for closure.”
My jaw clenches. She’s right. I have to let her go. Even if I wasn’t being forced to marry Giada, I couldn’t ask Lennon to be part of our world. The world that took her mother from her.
Well, since I can’t give her forever, I can at least give her the gift of closure on her mother, too. It doesn’t really matter if she thinks I’m a monster now.
I turn in the seat to face her. “Lennon, I have something to tell you.” I wait until I have her full attention. “Your mother… she was killed because she saw a Russian Bratva soldier with a trafficked girl in one of the hotel rooms. They broke the hotel rules.”
She blinks hard, her mouth twisting. Slowly her head shakes. “No, the police said it was a robbery.”
I want to reach out and hold her, comfort her as I deliver this news, but that’s not what she wants. So, I just say as gently as I can. “The responding officers, the investigating detective, they were in our pocket. They were part of the coverup.”
Her mind is spinning, her breathing growing irregular. “So you know who it was? Who killed her?”
And this is the moment of truth. The moment she’ll understand just how deep the roots of my sins and darkness grow. “Yes. Gunnar and I took care of it after you left. They’ll never find the body.”
A breath catches in her chest. She doesn’t move a muscle. Only her eyes are flicking back and forth between mine, searching for and finding the truth there. Her mouth opens and closes. I can’t tell what she’s feeling besides shock.
Is she horrified? Grateful? Who the fuck knows.
Big Tony pulls the Range Rover up in front of her apartment building. His eyes flick to mine in the mirror and I see sympathy there.
Fuck it. I reach for her hand as I search her face. She’s pale, her eyes glassy with shock. She won’t look at me.
I don’t know what else to say to her, so I just press a kiss on her palm and let her go.