"The redhead with the mean dad?"
"Emmie," Lucky supplied.
"Yeah, Emmie. Remember how she used to get teased mercilessly because she was always wearing hand-me-downs that never fit? Until one day Luca went all White Knight on everyone's asses, saying if they said shit to her, they answered to him? He's always liked being needed. Just a little bit. He likes solving problems."
"Yeah, he's so Type A like that," Lucky agreed and the two of them were having a harder and harder time keeping straight faces as my agitation clearly kept growing.
"I've had enough of this," I told them, going down to my room, throwing on a pair of basketball shorts, then coming back out. "I'm going for a run," I informed them.
"Try not to get distracted daydreaming about your damsel and fall into a ditch," Matteo called after me before I slammed the door behind me.
Ribbing aside, it was nice to have him back.
Being a pain in the ass was a job requirement of younger siblings. I had gotten used to it years before.
Besides, I realized as I ran until my legs felt shaky, my entire body drenched in sweat, they weren't exactly wrong, were they?
I was into Romy.
She was just a little bit in distress.
And I did like helping to fix problems.
And last, but certainly not least, one could absolutely make an argument that I was beginning to get just a bit obsessed with her.
Fuck.
That was a complication I didn't need in my life right then.
Chapter Eight
Romy
That happened.
Completely unexpected.
And, well, completely delicious too.
Yes, delicious.
That was the best word I could come up with.
I'd never been someone who was into arguing as foreplay, who liked things like make-up sex. Namely, because arguing with men brought back childhood memories of what came along with those shouts.
Pain and blood and bruises.
Scars of both the literal and figurative sort.
It wasn't sexy to me to see men angry.
That said, what was sexy was the fact that Luca seemed like he had been overcome with his desire for me, had been struggling to control it.
Then he finally snapped.
I'd been kissed a lot of ways in my life. Each kiss was different in its own way.
But I wasn't sure I'd ever been kissed with such uncontrolled need before.
If Matteo hadn't shown up, I was pretty sure Luca's hands would have been roving, roaming, grabbing, claiming, owning.
And, what's more, I would have leaned into it, would have begged for more, for everything.
Everything fell away in that moment. The men upstairs who would have heard if things got more heated. The strangeness of our circumstances. The fact that this man was an underboss in the mob. Even, yes, the reality of my missing sister.
That was how powerful desire could be.
It could wipe your mind blank.
It could replace everything with a clawing, aching, uncontrollable, undeniable need.
Even an hour later, tucked away in my room while Luca went off on a run to blow off some steam, I couldn't seem to get the unyielding pressure on my lower stomach, the throbbing emptiness between my thighs to ease, to let me think rationally through it.
Because rationality was what this situation required.
I couldn't just go around sleeping with high-ranking members of the Cosa Nostra.
For God's sake.
Even thinking of it should have been absurd, impossible.
Yet here we were.
Here I was.
Wondering what Luca's lips would feel like on my neck, my shoulder blade, my breast, my stomach, my inner thigh. What his weight would feel like pressing me into the mattress. If he would be as uncontrolled in bed as he was with a simple kiss.
All those thoughts continued to assault me even as I tried to remind myself that it was a bad idea, it could screw up an already tense situation, and doing so could hinder my ability to find and save my sister
That couldn't happen.
Which meant Luca and I couldn't happen either.
Now someone just needed to get that message to my poor body. Because it clearly wasn't getting the memo.
On a sigh, I climbed back out of bed, moving through the quiet house. It was deceptively quiet, though, because I knew there were armed guards around, even if I couldn't see them.
The remnants of our impromptu card game had been cleaned up.
A bottle of whiskey was on the center of the table with a bow and note on it.
Curious, I made my way over, finding quick, sloppy handwriting.
Without knowing, I knew it was either Matteo or Lucky.
Went and stole this from the restaurant. I think you need it. - M.
I felt a