“Phoenix,” I rasped, finding my voice. “Thank you.”
Silence and then heartless Phoenix’s voice cracked. “Love her well, Dante. We don’t know our future. Twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours,” I repeated, then ended the call.
“We have a house,” El said for the third time. “An actual house!”
I’d never seen her so animated, so excited, it rubbed off on me because hell yeah we didn’t just have a house.
No, because houses could be built.
My father had left me something I’d never had.
He’d left me a home.
CHAPTER FIFTY
El
DANTE STARED UP at the house, his eyes filled with longing, his body language stiff.
“Hey,” I reached for his hand.
He jerked in his seat when my fingers grazed his.
The velvet texture of his thumb ran across mine, his eyes closed like he was in pain, his thumb continued to caress me, barely touching me and my body was crackling with his awareness, my heart thumping with each breath he took.
With a shudder, he pulled back. “We should get inside.”
“Yeah.” I unbuckled my seat belt while he calmly stepped out of the car and grabbed our bags, gravel crunching under his boots.
I’d never seen such a beautiful porch in my entire life. Two white chairs were placed next to a large swing, I don’t know why but it felt romantic — and at the same time.
Devastating.
Maybe because this was the type of home you filled with children, the type of place you past down generation after generation.
And it was empty.
Maybe because now I knew, it was built for a mom Dante never met, by a man who was completely owned by the mafia, it had wrapped its tentacles around him just like Dante.
And part of me cried out in despair — would we face that exact same fate.
Twenty-four hours.
And then complete unknown.
Dante set the bags gently by my feet as we both faced the screen door.
He let out a breath. “Do you wish you would have gone with safe now?”
I reached for his hand and quietly said. “Safe is boring.”
“Boring also means living.”
“No.” I turned to him, dropped his hand and gripped his face between my hands. “This, right here, this is living.”
His breath hitched as I pressed a feather light kiss to his mouth, his lips were hot, his tongue heavy as he deepened the kiss, his muscled body pinned mine against the door. It was a full-on assault of the senses, the addicting power behind his kiss, behind his body, behind the very hands that had spilled blood — that had promised to love and protect me.
To kill for me.
To die for me.
He pulled back as I sagged against his chest trying to catch my breath. Kissing Dante made me never want to breathe again, breathing meant prying my lips free from his and that always sounded like the worst possible choice I could make in life whenever he was near.
“You’re driving me insane.” He rasped, kissing my head before pulling the door open and turning to give me one of the sexiest smirks I’d ever seen that had my thighs clenching together in memory of what it felt like to have his head between them. “And I don’t think twenty-four hours is enough time to do all the things I want to—” he stopped himself his eyes slowly raking over me before he cursed and held the door open for me.
I stepped in.
Eyes wide.
Mouth gaping.
“This is,” I did a small circle of the entry way, every piece of wood looked like it had been specifically picked by hand. “Incredible!”
Dante’s face fell as he clenched his jaw. “Yeah.”
The tension in the room could have made even Phoenix sweat, the way Dante switched moods, one second ready to rip my clothes off the next like he wanted to ram his face through a wall and stay there for the next twenty-four hours.
It was another reminder how well we didn’t know each other, how much time we still needed to get past the phases where one of us or both say or do the wrong thing.
All I knew about him other than my feelings for him.
Was that the only thing that tended to calm him down was fighting.
Blood.
Not really how I planned on the next twenty-four hours going, but I went with it anyway.
Maybe I was a woman desperate.
Maybe I was in over my head.
But I wanted my monster.
And I wanted to break through whatever was going on in that head of his.
So without any warning, I punched him in the shoulder, and when he turned to me with a mixture of shock and irritation.
I did it again.
This time he blocked me. Murder in his eyes.
Yeah I was going to end up in a body bag.
What was I thinking?
Dante could take down four guys at once.
Dante shot a complete stranger because another complete stranger told him to!
He gripped me by the shirt and slammed me into the wall closest to me. I sucked in a breath at the impact.
And then his mouth nipped mine, he bit down on my lower lip sucked me dry, tangled my shirt in his hands and then jerked it free from my body.
I closed my eyes as the sound of one giant rip filled the quiet house.
And then his mouth was on me again.
His hands everywhere.
“Never,” He gritted his teeth as he tugged my bra free and skimmed one of my nipples with his tongue before sucking it completely into his mouth, his tongue flicking, harder, harder, I whimpered. “Never do that again.”
“Talk to me—” I gripped him by the hair, forcing his face to meet mine.
“After.” His blue eyes flashed with pain. “I’ll talk to you after.”
“After what?”
His answer was another smug grin before he fell to his knees in front of me and ducked under my skirt. He bit inside my thigh.
My knees buckled as little bites up my other thigh followed, and then panties discarded somewhere near my feet as cold air hit me in the ass.
Then heat.
So much heat that I had trouble standing straight as I lamely tried to grip the flat wall with my fingers, digging them into the plaster in the vain hope that I wouldn’t end up passing out from pleasure.
Dante stretched me with his tongue, then as he gripped my ass with his hands dove into me face first, the man sucked with the same precision, the same intensity as he killed.
With every cell in his body focused on one solitary thing.
My pleasure.
Me.
I squeezed my thighs, trying to slow down the waves of pleasure, only to earn a hard smack on the ass followed by a bite that had me both embarrassed and turned on.
“Not done yet,” he said against my thigh. “Damn you taste good.”
Feather light touches from his tongue were my undoing.
The lightest of touch did it.
“Dante—”
I was so close when he stood, when the wicked glint in his eyes pinned me to the wall, when his mouth met mine again, his velvet tongue tasted like me, like us.
With quick movements he kicked my legs further apart, then stopped kissing me altogether as he reached between my drenched thighs and cupped me, his palm coaxed a scream out of me.
“What are you—” I closed my eyes.
“Watching you,” he answered. “I’m watching what I do to you, letting it fucking burn in my memory so I never forget, even if it’s only twenty-four hours.”
He shuddered as I came apart.
With swift movements he freed himself and groaned as he drove into me, my head fell back against the wall from the force of him. It was impossible to hold back.
“Your turn.” He moaned. “Watch what you do to me, El, never forget this moment, this is you and me,” His hooded gaze was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my e
ntire life, the way he slowed his movements, rocked his hips like he had all the time in the world even though his jaw clenched with the need to go deeper, harder, faster.
“This,” He slammed his hand against the wall near my head as he pounded harder into me only to slow down. “You drive me fucking crazy.” His jaw popped, heat and power radiated off his body in torrential waves of pleasure as I gripped his shoulders pulling our bodies closer, needing to feel more.
He found my mouth again, his kiss urgent.
This kiss was different.
This kiss was complete desperation on both our parts.
To hold onto this moment.
I wished for things I had no right to wish for.
I wished for a life with him.
I wished for children in that house.
I wished for peace.
“El!” He roared my name, his body taut as he pumped into me one last time, as his frenzied pace continued.
All at once my climax hit, his mouth found mine in sloppy, hot kisses, his lips running down my neck until he pressed his forehead against my chest, still inside me, still heaving from exertion.
“Look at me,” I begged, I needed to see it in his eyes, the same will to live, the same hope that everything was going to be okay. “Please.”
“Just ask, El.”
“Everything’s going to be fine, right?”
He didn’t lift his head when he whispered. “I promise.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Dante
IT’S INSANE.
The fact that I hate lying.
I’d rather shoot someone in cold blood than be dishonest to their face, maybe that was the one gift God decided to give me in this fucked up life.
Honesty.
I still couldn’t look at her.
She wanted reassurance I couldn’t give her.
I stayed like that, my head pressed against her chest, listening to her heart race for a few minutes before I finally pulled away, fully expecting to see disappointment in her eyes.
Instead, I found resilience.
The same resilience I’m sure was her only friend when she suffered under the hands of Xavier.
She pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I’m going to change, and then maybe find us something to eat? You think they left it stocked?”
And that was it.
She grabbed her bag.
And returned to the room ten minutes later in a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt.
They looked new.
I tilted my head, examining her from head to toe, I rarely saw her outside of her Eagle Elite uniform and even then she typically dressed to cover her body.
I could see the outline of her ass perfectly.
I licked my lips.
“See something you like?” She asked in that teasing tone that had me ready for round two and a hell of a lot of naked time with those legs.
“Always.” I grinned. “I always like, trust me, even when I pretended that I didn’t like what I saw, I always did, I think your beauty fueled my anger.”
“I’m trying to find the romance in that.”
“My curse.” I shrugged. “Complete honesty.” I grabbed my own bag and pulled out a new shirt. I peeled off the old wrinkled one and put on a black T-shirt.
El made a noise in the back of her throat. I turned. Her face was pink, her neck was pink, about as pink as all of my favorite parts that I kept licking.
“You all right over there?”
She nodded. “Sorry I just, is it normal to have abs like that?”
Not what I was expecting. I burst out laughing. “When you get your ass handed to you by five guys on a daily basis and need to defend yourself — yes, normal. How else am I supposed to brace against all their punches?”
“Armor?” She offered.
“Yeah I wasn’t there the day they handed out the new mafia armor with full on bullet proof vests and helmets, maybe next time though.” I winked.
She bit down on her lip still checking me out, then nearly ran into a wall before finding her way into the kitchen.
“Any food in there?” I called.
“My guess is they sent Chase to grocery shop because whoever did it remembered cookies and wine.” She held out a bottle and then tossed me Oreos.
“Whoa!” I caught them with one hand. “One doesn’t just toss a bag of Oreos, El, they’re delicate.”
She pressed her lips together like she was fighting a smile. “You know they still taste good if they break, don’t you, Dante?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Never.” She winked and lifted her hands innocently into the air. “I’ve seen what you can do with your… body.”
I closed my eyes and groaned. “We should at least eat first, before I do things with my body.”
She sighed. “If you say so.”
“Killing me.” I ran my hands over my face in frustration. “I’m trying to be gentle with you, ease you into things, the last guy you were with—”
“Was a complete sociopath.” She finished. “And never looked at me once the way you do.”
“How do I look at you El?”
“Like I’m not just an object, a means to an end, you look at me with purpose — you look at me the way I think every girl on this planet wants to be looked at.”
My chest heaved as I waited for her to say more.
She swallowed, and uncertainty lit her eyes before she looked away and whispered. “You look at me like you can’t see every dirty impure inch of me — you look at me like you aren’t worthy. And sometimes, it breaks my heart, because that’s how I feel when I look at you. So I know what it’s like, to want so badly but be afraid that it’s going to get ripped away from you the minute you give in.”
I was too stunned to speak.
She eyed the Oreos. “Want some milk?”
“You say that,” I croaked. “And then you offer me milk?”
“We have time.”
I wanted her to take it back.
Because time was the one thing we didn’t have.
A choking sensation wrapped around my neck as I glanced between her and the rest of the living room.
Was this how my father felt?
When he was with my mom?
When he knew his time was limited?
All I was told was that they were given a sort of pass by Frank to be together, but it was only a few days.
I was conceived in a few days.
In a cabin that looked just like this.
El placed a glass of cold milk in my hand. I almost spilled it. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You look haunted.”
“This house is haunted,” I said eying where I’d dropped the diary onto the floor.
El walked over and picked it up. “Want me to read to you?”
I gave her a jerky nod.
And then her voice washed over me like a warm blanket, like safety, like love, and I prepared for the worst between those pages.
I prepared for shattered promises.
Broken hearts.
Death.
I prepared for my future.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
El
MY HANDS WERE shaking, I was afraid to read the secrets, afraid of what they would reveal.
“Diary of Joyce Alfero,” I said, reverently running my hand over the first entry just as a slip of paper fell out.
I read it out loud.
“Son,” My voice cracked, I reined it in. “A war was nearly fought over this damn diary. It holds many secrets, many regrets, it holds it all. I remember when Joyce told me about it, I felt so much shame for my part in ruining life after life after life. Son, I am not a good man. If you take one thing from this diary take the God’s honest truth.
I have killed.
I have warred.
I have fought.
I haven’t won.
And finally son, I have loved. God gave me a moment in time with the only woman I
ever had eyes for — I loved her with every beat of my heart, with every inch of my body. I loved her, and you were born out of that love.
If you’re reading this — it means only one thing.
I have failed you as a parent.
I have left this earth too early to raise you to be the man I need you to be. My only hope is that Frank and Phoenix did the right thing in finding you and your sister.
My last hope as you were told, was for you to take the rightful place as the boss to the Alfero family. Frank pushed me into the Nicolasi’s because my father wanted power.
We were both rightful heirs to the Alfero throne.
But my father wanted more.
He was blood thirsty.
And I was born out of that blood — not love.
My dying wish was for Frank to find you, to place you where you belong.
My dying wish is selfish, because it’s to see my son as the head. You are Nicolasi by birth.
You are Alfero by blood.
Maybe, my story, the story of your mother and I, will help you with that decision.
My final advice, my final wish for you is that you will find a love so deep, so pure that it transcends this life of war.
That in your love, you will find peace, even as the world burns around you.
With love in your heart, a gun in your hand, and family at your side.
You. Will. Not. Lose.
I welcomed death, not because I wanted to leave you — but because I knew that through my death — my own blood would rise to power. My family would become unstoppable.
Nixon. Frank. Phoenix. Tex. Chase. Sergio. You.”
I frowned when I realized he’d left out Mil.
“The new Cosa Nostra.
People will fear you.
Let them.
People will fight you.
Let them.
People will die for you.
Let them.
Never forget who you are.
Dante Luca Nicolasi Alfero.
My son.”
I looked up. Dante had tears in his eyes. I’d never seen him cry, never seen any emotion even close to it on his face.
Wordlessly, he stood, and walked out of the room. His footsteps echoing behind him.
A door shut.