Chapter 4
Zeno
The birds chirping outside my window woke me from the deepest sleep. I stretched my legs, squeezed my pillow closer to my chest…
And fucking stopped.
My pillow wasn’t my pillow. It was soft yet had a firmness to it no pillow had ever had. And it smelled like the most delicious treat I’d never allowed myself to taste.
I flexed my fingers. Squeezed once again.
Then froze as my pillow groaned.
My eyelids were heavy, but I forced them open and blinked away the grit in my eyes.
A head of blonde hair was tucked under my chin, and it was that, those long locks, that smelled so damn good.
For one fraction of a moment, I allowed myself to fall back into my dream. My fucking nightmare. Where I’d pulled Clara close to my body. Rubbed my aching dick against her hot, soaking flesh. Pushed so deep inside of her I thought I’d be lost there for good.
But my pillow squirmed in my hands, and that dream was my fucking nightmare.
It was Clara’s breast I held in my hand. Clara’s body weighing down my arm.
Clara’s back my aching dick was pressed against.
And it was her hand coasting along the outside of my leg, which was draped over her hip, pinning her to the bed.
“Zee.” Before I could make sense of where I was or see anything but the barest outline of the room—my den, not my bedroom; my couch, not my fucking bed—Clara spun in my grip.
Then it was her back I was holding, her stomach my dick was pressed into.
Her hands skimming up my bare chest.
She kissed me. Pressed her pouty lips to mine. And for a moment, I was sure I was back in my dream.
Nothing felt right.
Nothing felt real.
How had this happened? How was I wrapped up around Clara Vinci when I’d done everything in my power to stay away from her for the past five years?
She’d bloomed later than most her age, but my God, when she did?
Un-fucking-believable.
The love I’d always had for this little girl I’d helped raise had morphed into something I couldn’t afford to feel.
I’d babysat her when her parents were too busy with their own lives to deal with her.
They’d dropped her off on my doorstep and left her for weeks at a time. How could this be my reality?
I’d pushed her away, spent less time with her, watched her spiral out of control. I loved her like she was my own.
I wanted her as my own.
“Clara.” I gasped for the air her kiss had frozen in my lungs, pulling away from her lush, perfect lips. They tilted in a beautiful smile that should have warmed my heart, but instead caused a fire to blaze in my chest.
Before I could yell or scream or jump from her grasp and run far, far away, she pushed her fingers through my long hair and said, “Good morning, gorgeous.”
Gorgeous?
I grabbed her hand, yanking it away from my head and taking some of my hair with it. “What are you doing?”
“Enjoying my morning with you.” She shook her hand loose as she said it, trailing it down my chest, leaving flames in its wake as she reached for my cock.
“Fuck!” This time, I shook off the haze of sleep and did what I should have done when I woke up.
I jolted away from her, scrambling off the couch with my chest heaving and my dick screaming at me to go back, to let her touch and feel, to let her guide me between her legs until the two of us became one. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
Clara sat up, resting on her elbows, the blanket we’d had over us barely covering the little blonde tuft of hair between her legs.
My mouth flooded as my heart thundered at the sight of her bare breasts.
With every ounce of effort I possessed, I tore my gaze away from her dusky pink nipples, only to find a frown on her face.
“I’m thinking about the most amazing night of my life.” She sat up, and the blanket fell, revealing too much.
Too much.
My pulse thudded through me as Clara reached for me. I squeezed my eyes shut as she wrapped her warm fingers around my length.
“Best. Ever.” It was just a whisper, but those two little words thundered in my head like a raging green monster howling at the moon.
Ever?
As in, she wasn’t a virgin?
As in, she’d let someone else fuck into her pretty cunt?
Adrenaline crashed through me as the desire to kill pulsed through every drop of my blood. I grabbed Clara’s wrists, pulling them between us, allowing space between her fucking gorgeous, naked body and mine. Allowing my brain to focus, to process.
Allowing my gaze to zero in on the crooked, mischievous grin that told me not all was what it seemed.
I’d seen that grin too many times to count.
I’d watched her lie to my face as she tried to get her way.
Even with my dick screaming at me to allow it, to let her have her way with me, to bend her over the couch and spank her ass until her pussy was dripping with want before I shoved my dick in her and fucked her into oblivion, some string of logic held me back.
“Liar.” Her lips twitched, making my dick do the same. “You’re lying to me.”
That grin turned into a full-fledged smile that was as bright as the sun. It should have swept away the hurricane of thoughts and feelings storming through me, but it didn’t.
Possession screamed, yet logic told me to walk away. To run, to put a continent between us and never look back.
“How did you know?”
Couldn’t answer that truthfully. That my dick ached in a way it only did if it had been too fucking long since I’d enjoyed the warm comforts of a woman’s pleasure. That I knew there was no way we’d had sex without me knowing, without the girl before me being ravaged to hell and unable to walk.
That if I’d fucked her, if I’d given into my deepest desires, there was no way I would ever stop.
Because I would have marked her, branded her with my touch the way she had branded herself on my soul.
I stuffed my rage down, stuffed my lust, my desire for her tight body, back into the darkness where I kept it locked up. I swallowed down every hint of longing and a huge chunk of the anger that had me shaking in my place.
She started laughing before I could.
Laughing as if my inability to contain the wild animal inside me that she’d freed with her touch was somehow the most hilarious thing in the world.
“It’s not fucking funny, kid.”
She schooled her features but that did nothing but make her look like a chastised schoolgirl, and that thought had my mouth watering and precum piling at the tip of my dick.
“I think it’s very funny.” She stood and stepped toward me, hands in the air as if she’d ever been innocent, and stopped just before we touched. Something swept over her face—a dark cloud that hid away the sun. “It wouldn’t have been so bad, though. Right?”
Narrowing my eyes at her, I asked, “Bad?”
As I watched, her brown eyes dimmed, and she dipped her chin. She peeked up at me under her lashes. “You and me? It wouldn’t have been bad, right?”
Fuck. “Clara.” I shook my head, then dragged a hand down my face. “You’re a kid—”
“I’m twenty years old!”
“And I’m forty-one! I’m old enough to be your dad—”
She didn’t even wait for me to get to that point before that grin had taken hold of her lips once more. “Yes, Daddy.”
The doorbell rang, putting a pause on our conversation and a pit in my gut. Clara ignored my wide eyes, jumping forward at the chance to press her perfect fucking lips to mine before I could stop her.
“That’s your nine o’clock. You better get dressed, unless you make it a habit of greeting your patients with a hard-on.” Her fingers grazed my shaft before she curled her palm around my balls and squeezed. “Can’t say it’s a bad look.”
“Kid!” I yanked her away from me, ready to swat her ass for what she did to me. But the girl was already strutting away, that bare ass tempting me to use more than just my hand. “Go get dressed. You’ve got your first final in an hour.”
She spun to face me, a finger raised to her lower lip. “Will you take me?”
Fucking hell, I wanted to take her, right here on the floor of my dining room.
Regardless of how she made that question sound, I knew that wasn’t what she meant.
At least, not entirely.
“I’ll take you to class. Now go get dressed.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
Clara squealed as I chased after her, chased her to the bottom of the stairs at the back of my house. I couldn’t tear my gaze away as she scrambled up them on all fours, her pink pussy on full display as she laughed like this was a game.
The doorbell ringing again made me remember that this was anything but.
I rushed back to my den, grabbing my trousers from the pile of folded clothes Clara had left on the floor in front of the TV.
I tugged them on, shoving my cock down and zipping carefully so I didn’t get stuck in the zipper.
Then I snagged my shirt and pulled it over my head as I raced to the kitchen and the monitor hanging there, where I could see the man standing on my doorstep.
Grabbing my gun from the nearby drawer, I tucked it in the back of my pants before heading toward the front door.
All my life, I’d worked to ensure my safety, to ensure that I wouldn’t be caught unaware again. The last time, it had ended in death. I wouldn’t let there be a next time.
It was bad enough I was here, cock at half-mast and wearing yesterday’s clothes, while my thoughts drifted to the storm cloud thumping around in her room overhead.
I needed to focus on my next patient. I needed her to be quiet so he wouldn’t guess the thoughts I was sure were written all over my face.
I reached for the chains and deadbolts that secured my front door, undoing every last one before finally pulling open the heavy wood, revealing Cosimo Provenza, D’Angelo’s oldest and longest-standing lieutenant.
He raised his rheumy eyes, and I swore his gaze was ticking off every wrinkle and spot that made me look like a frumpy mess.
Then, looking down his long nose at me, he swiped his tongue over his front teeth and plastered on what had to be the ugliest smile I’d ever seen.
“Zeno.”