Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Fiero
The room is filled with tight breaths and accusatory glares. The former largely from the Di Santo’s—they’re understandably a little embarrassed and very apologetic about bringing a fucking heathen into my club—and the latter from my brothers.
Remo’s glare cuts like a knife into my side. Cass and Brando were less aware of my growing infatuation with my childhood crush, but now I’m pretty sure they’re up to speed. And their expressions aren’t filled with approval.
But right now, with the barrel of my gun still hot and my veins crackling with the embers, I don’t give a flying fuck.
Augie Zanotti, Cristiano’s underboss offers an apology.
“Bring her to the wedding. Let her see we’re not all total asshats.”
Remo jumps in before I can respond.
“Thanks for the invitation but we’re not bringing the fucking help.”
He pairs the last word with a glare in my direction. I run my tongue along my teeth. I want to hurt my brother for saying that. The best thing I can do is get out of this room and cool the fuck down.
Cristiano clears his throat. “Shall we adjourn for now? I’ll send in a cleaner to deal with the mess.”
My gaze follows his to the imbecile with the absolute fucking audacity to leak his blood all over my floor.
“Might be for the best,” Cass says, good-naturedly, sliding his mask back over his eyes. “Let’s go get a drink in the lounge.”
Brando remains seated, the blade turning once again.
I stand, feeling Remo’s eyes track me. “Don’t you go to her,” he barks.
I turn to him slowly. Everything I felt when he confronted me in the penthouse still stands. My brothers are still everything to me, but no one—and I mean no one—tells me what I can and can’t do. Especially when it comes to Pfeiffer.
“Last time I checked, you weren’t my fucking father,” I spit. He jerks backward, surprised I would throw that accusation his way. “Don’t turn into him.”
I leave him seething, with only Brando for company, and I stalk out of the exit Vivienne took Pfeiffer through, and head to the twentieth floor.
The elevator doors slide open and I stride into my apartment, my gaze searching for her. She’s standing by the window overlooking lower Manhattan, her arms wrapped around herself. Her hair has fallen loose over her shoulders, and her cheeks are stained with tears.
The moment she hears me enter, she turns and those liquid blue eyes find mine instantly.
For one terrible second I brace myself. She just watched me put a bullet through a man’s skull without blinking. Is she revolted? Afraid?
She knows I murdered her uncle—she’s seen the gruesome photographs—but she wasn’t there. She didn’t see my fury completely unleashed.
She hasn’t physically seen what I’m capable of doing. And up until now, the prospect of me killing another person for her, was an idea, not an actuality. Tonight, there was no escaping it.
Any sane woman would run from me now.
“Are you alright?” I ask carefully.
The words have barely left my mouth when she moves.
She runs toward me.
I don’t have time to react before she launches herself into my hold, wrapping herself around me so hard it almost knocks the breath from my lungs. Her legs lock around my waist and her arms vine around my neck like she’s terrified I might disappear.
Something inside me completely fucking unravels. “Pfeiffer—”
She kisses me and there’s a certain kind of madness to it. I kiss her back, hard. We inhale each other’s breath as our teeth clash.
My back hits the wall while I catch her properly against me, gripping beneath her thighs while her mouth moves against mine with frantic heat.
Christ.
My brain short-circuits.
This woman just watched me kill someone without hesitation, just for touching her, and she’s kissing me like I’m the most precious person in the world. She’s aware that I brutally murdered someone close to her and that I fucking reveled in it. And she doesn’t care.
A dark, disbelieving laugh escapes me into her mouth, because what the fuck is wrong with us?
I kiss her back harder, unable not to, weeks of restraint snapping clean apart. Her fingers burrow into my hair while I devour the soft sounds leaving her throat.
Who the fuck am I fooling? Pfeiffer McAllister has always been mine.
That thought explodes through me like a scourge of violence.
When I finally drag my mouth from hers, both of us breathing hard, I stare at her in disbelief.
“Perché non hai paura di me?” I rasp, breathless.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers, licking over her ripe lips.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Her eyes widen and she stares at me like I’m speaking German, not Italian, and definitely not English.
“I just killed him for touching you.”
“I know,” she replies, her brows pinching together.
“He was dead before he hit the damn floor.”
“Yes,” she says slowly. “I know.”
Why isn’t she trying to get away from me?
“You understand what this means, don’t you?” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not normal, Pfeiffer. Not around you.”
A tiny, shaky smile touches her lips.
“I know that too.”
Fuck me.
Something dangerously close to emotion climbs up my throat. I tighten my grip beneath her thighs instinctively, needing her closer somehow even though she’s already wrapped completely around me. My palms are burning through the cotton of her dress—smarting to feel her skin.
Her forehead presses against mine.
“He put his hand between my legs,” she whispers.
The rage simmering in my belly flares again. If that dead bastard somehow came back to life right now, I’d kill him again—slower this time.
“I saw,” I say tightly. “I’m sorry it went that far.”
An ache spreads through my chest and I hold her with one hand while reaching the other to her face, brushing my fingertips tentatively across her cheek.
She leans into my palm and almost destroys me.
She’s letting me touch her. This moment, right here, means more to me than any of the other moments leading up to it.
She hasn’t been touched since she left New York ten years ago.
The idea of it has scared the living shit out of her. But… she’s letting me.
And I don’t deserve it.
I brought her here to ruin her. My ill intentions broke through her fucking hymen for God’s sake. She deserves someone who never had an ulterior motive—who had only honorable thoughts from the start.
But when Val-sticky fucking fingers-Marino pulled her onto his lap, I saw red. Immediately. The only reason I didn’t put a bullet in his skull that very second is because I was trying to maintain some sort of professional decorum.
I held out for as long as I physically could. And then I couldn’t.
She’s watching me with parted lips and heated gaze as I slowly caress her skin. It’s even better than I’d imagined. The softness at one with my fingertips and her temperature exactly right to soothe my burning pulse.
“Come here,” I whisper, pressing my lips to hers. I kiss her again, slow and deep, pouring everything I can’t say into the movement of my mouth against hers. Because words have never been my strong suit. Not since high school.
Her fingers come up to my jaw, soft and trembling.
“Thank you,” she whispers against my lips.
I rest my forehead against hers and close my eyes. “You don’t understand what seeing him touch you did to me.”
Watching another man put his hands on her felt like someone was splitting my ribcage open with an axe.
“Make it right,” she breathes, her lids fluttering closed as she drifts her lips over mine, “Make it better.”
“Pfeiffer…” I groan.
It doesn’t take much effort for me to reach down to lower the zipper of my pants and release my cock. It takes even less to nudge her panties to one side and lower her all the way down my dick.
We both breathe through the moment, acclimating to being joined again. She adjusts around my length and girth, short breaths getting longer and her chest relaxing.
She lets out a sweet moan and licks her tongue over mine.
I don’t care what I wanted from this arrangement in the beginning—I’m fucking feral for this woman now. Being inside her isn’t a one and done experience; it’s my goddamned home.
I turn around and press her back against the wall, holding her up as I pull my length out of her. Her eyes widen then roll back in her head as I push back into her warmth.
“Why don’t you hate me?” I grit, sliding into her again.
“I feel a lot of big things for you Fiero. So big there’s no room for hate.”
We lock eyes as I fuck her slowly. There’s something sitting right on the edge of both our tongues now. I see it in her eyes and I feel it in my chest. One more second and one of us is going to say it.
My grip tightens instinctively on her thighs and danger floods my bloodstream. Not because I don’t feel it, but because I do. I feel it too much.
I kiss her again before either of us can speak.
But when she trembles around me and cries my name into my shirt, one alarming truth settles in my stomach. I’m gone for this woman, completely. And I’ll burn every goddamn thing I’ve built to the ground before I let her go.