Star-Crossed (2 page)

Jules told him. She was bold and mouthy and starkly descriptive. Romeo didn’t just love it, he got off on listening to her describe the way she fingered herself, and it was completely euphoric for Jules after a lifetime in a small town that didn’t appreciate her forward nature.

“Touch your clit,” Romeo urged, his voice still breathy with the rising tide of pleasure. “Imagine my mouth’s on you, sucking it, tasting it. Do it fast and imagine my tongue’s rubbing against that pretty pussy of yours. You got the sweetest, prettiest pussy I ever seen, Juliet; did you know that?”

8

“No, shhh.” She hummed, arching her back. She moved her hips against her hand because she was tempted to do as he said, to relive the memory of Romeo licking her.

“Don’t encourage me…’cause it feels really good when it happens like this. I like it.”

“Yeah?”

Jules panted. “Um, yeah, I do it like this when I got extra time and the house to myself…like tonight.”

“I’m gonna come,” Romeo admitted with a pained groan. “I’m so fucking turned on I’m going blind from it.”

“Oh, do it.” Jules couldn’t keep the whimper of longing out of her voice. “I wanna hear it. Lemme hear you come thinking about me and listening to me finger fuck myself.”

“Shit!” Romeo shouted. His breathing was harsh, making it obvious he’d given in and come. “Fuck, Juliet!”

Jules gasped, squeezing her eyes shut as the sounds he made caused all the fine hairs on her arms to stand on end. She remembered the way he felt over her, making those same low moans of surrender, his face buried in the curve of her neck as he fucked her into the mattress.

Usually it took her forever to get herself off like this, but with Romeo’s release fueling her imagination, Jules suddenly cried out when the climax hit her. She was desperate, winded, with sweat running down the line of her spine and moist at her temples. The pleasure was drawn out, radiating from her center and flowing into her limbs to the point she was weak and sprawled against the window.

It felt amazing, better than it usually did because Romeo was listening, his labored breathing sexy against her ear. Even after it passed and she was left feeling nothing but a warm, relaxing hum, she refused to feel embarrassed.

“That was fun.” A smile tugged at her lips as she kept her hand where it was because moving it felt too hard. “You take the work out of masturbating.”

9

“You wanna do it again?” Romeo asked, his voice still low and husky with sex.

Jules raised her eyebrows, not at all surprised by the suggestion because Romeo was sexy like that. He put all of Jules’s other lovers to shame. He didn’t just have a big dick and nice moves—Romeo Wellings had stamina.

Jules knew the responsible thing to do would be to apologize for her boldness and cut the ties now. Something terrible could happen. She could pull a Clay and fall hard and fast, and she didn’t see a happy ending with someone like Romeo.

But her body was still pulsing with pleasure. His voice was so damn sexy, and this wasn’t a Shakespearean tragedy. This was just a little excitement to fuel her through a dull lifetime of nothing but a happy drawer to keep her satisfied. There were a lot of reasons why she’d decided a long time ago not to mess with fighters, but she conveniently forgot them as she remembered what Romeo looked like naked and sweaty after sex.

“Yeah, let’s do it again,” she said, barely recognizing the sated hitch in her voice.

“This is what I want for Christmas, and I never ask for anything. I wanna listen to you and touch myself till I pass out.”

“Well, that’s convenient.” Romeo gave a husky laugh. “’Cause listening to you come until you pass out is
exactly
what I asked Santa for.” 10

Chapter One

Five days earlier

“What the fuck, Romeo?”

Romeo shrugged and looked away from his brother. Casanova puffed out his chest in a way that was common whenever he wanted to start something. But there wasn’t enough hot air in the world to change the fact that Romeo wasn’t just older, but also considerably bigger than his brother. It didn’t matter how bad and powerful he thought he was; Casanova was still a little brother to Romeo.

“Chill out, Nova.” Romeo held up his bandaged hand. “I’m touched by your concern, but it was my left hand and it’s not that serious. No harm done.”

“You know this isn’t about your hand.” Nova leaned into Romeo, who sat calmly on the emergency room table waiting to be seen by a doctor. “Rescuing Powerhouse’s girl from that lunatic made you look like his friend.” He lowered his voice, his breath warm against Romeo’s ear. “People could suspect you threw the fight.” Romeo couldn’t help the way his shoulders stiffened. He was sick and tired of his brother reminding him of a truly painful loss to Clay “Powerhouse” Powers. That UFC

heavyweight championship belt should have been his, but instead he had a concussion, a bum hand, and a family that was happy as fucking clams over the loss.

Sometimes Romeo really hated his life.

“What were you thinking?”

Romeo shrugged. “She was nice to me at breakfast, and I didn’t see any reason to let her get kidnapped and shot. Sue me.”

“There are newspeople everywhere.”

11

Romeo glared at his younger brother. Nova was in a dark mood, all hard angles and dangerous edges, as if his defense mechanisms had kicked in the moment he got the call from Romeo in the hospital. Nothing but eyes and ears, he was absorbed with the heavy job of damage control, but Romeo had shit to be defensive about too.

“Last I checked, stopping a crazed gunman wasn’t against the law. So back off before I use your friggin’ face to work off frustration.” Nova’s shoulders slumped with a guilty wince tossed in Romeo’s direction.

“You’re still pissed off about the loss.”

“Yes.” Romeo looked away once more as the back of his neck burned and his hand throbbed. “I’m still pissed off about the loss.”

Nova snorted as if Romeo was being juvenile, shaking off the guilt easily. “Big deal. You lost one fight.”

“It was a championship fight,” Romeo reminded him, not knowing why he was bothering to explain. If it didn’t revolve around family loyalty or financial gain, it was outside Nova’s realm of understanding. “I worked my entire life for that fight.”

“So you’ll win the next one. You win all your fights.” He knew Nova left it unsaid that Romeo won all the fights he didn’t throw on purpose, but that’s what Nova thought. Romeo didn’t know what hurt worse, knowing his brothers had expected him to throw a fight he’d worked his ass off to win, or the fact that he’d decided to win it anyway and then lost legitimately.

Romeo couldn’t decide if he should hate Clay Powers for kicking his ass in that match, or thank him for keeping a bullet out of his back with that technical knockout. If Romeo had won the fight like he’d planned when there was so much dirty money riding on his loss, someone would’ve shot him. He didn’t believe his brothers would have pulled the trigger. They would have fought to save him, but the cold, harsh reality was one didn’t fuck with the mob’s finances and live to tell about it.

Now Romeo was free and clear until the next time his brothers decided to fuck with his career. He had a clean conscience. He’d fought tooth and nail for the title that 12

meant so much to him not even a mob hit could scare him from it. Then he’d seen Clay Powers’s sweet little girlfriend get kidnapped by a gun-toting lunatic, and decided to step in. Now he was a hero.

It seemed his luck was changing for the better. Too bad Romeo felt totally fucking miserable about all of it.

“Where the hell is Powers anyway? Shouldn’t he be here kissing your ass for risking your neck? It took some friggin’
stugots
to do what you did.”

“He’s got a bullet hole in him, asshole,” Romeo told his brother. “He jumped that guy trying to kidnap his girl, and the scumbag shot him.”

“Maybe he’ll die,” Nova said indifferently. “Prick.” Charming of him to be put out over Romeo’s public ass kicking
after
Nova collected on the loss.

Romeo sighed. “Those country bastards are made of lead or something. Nothing hurts them. He’s not gonna die.”

He was certain of that if nothing else. He’d fought Clay. He knew the guy was almost inhuman. He’d never been in the cage with someone who radiated that much raw power and determination, and he’d sure as shit never seen anyone jump at a guy with a gun like Clay had done in the casino. Where Romeo came from, people ducked when guns were pointed in their direction.

Romeo still wasn’t sure what had made him go after Melody Dylan, who was sweet and cute and certainly not his type. She was a little
too
sweet for him, but Clay seemed taken with her, and he did save Romeo’s life by beating him fair and square in that title match. Even if Clay didn’t know it, Romeo supposed he owed him.

Romeo was still pondering his life and the bizarre turn it’d taken when the curtain was pushed open. He was hoping for an ER doctor and a free pass out of the hospital.

Instead he got Valentino, his youngest brother. Like Nova, Tino wasn’t nearly as tall as Romeo, but they both still had the dark good looks of their mother and broad, stocky Italian builds that served them well.

13

“I sleep in and the world goes to shit. I grabbed a cab as soon as I got your text.

Did you see the bacon crawling all over this place?” Tino barked, his voice echoing off the white linoleum. “This hospital’s filled with pigs.”

“Wow, say it louder. I don’t think they all heard you.” Nova shook his head and met Romeo’s gaze. “Whatta idiot.”

“I don’t care if they fucking hear me,” Tino said defiantly, then eyed Romeo’s bandaged, bleeding hand. “Shit, Rome, your hand. You said it was nothing.”

“And it looks worse than it is,” Romeo assured him. “I really shouldn’t be here.

The only reason I came was because the cops insisted, and I didn’t feel like making waves.”

“What the hell happened? The hotel is surrounded by news cameras. I had a whole bunch of ’em attack me in the lobby. They’re outside the hospital too. They’re saying you’re a hero.”

Romeo snorted. “Lucky me.”

“Clay Powers’s girlfriend was almost kidnapped by her crazy ex-husband, and Superman here decided to step in,” Nova explained.

Tino nodded as if this was a perfectly normal situation. “Was she hot?”

“Yeah,” Romeo said, because no one could deny Clay Powers’s girlfriend was attractive. “She’s smoking.”

“Are you fucking her?”

“No.” Romeo frowned at his youngest brother. “Nova just told you she’s Powers’s girl.”

“Are you
gonna
fuck her?” Tino amended as if her being the girlfriend of Romeo’s archrival was of little consequence. “She’ll be real grateful after all this. She’d probably slip you something on the side.”

“I’m not interested.” Romeo hoped to end the conversation. “She’s not my type.” Tino frowned and turned to Nova. “Then I don’t get it.” 14

Nova shrugged. “I don’t get it either.”

An uncomfortable silence settled in the curtained room. Romeo had a different father than Nova and Tino—some big, blond shmuck of a construction worker who took off before Romeo could form a memory of him. Romeo and his two brothers were raised in the same house, with the same mother. All three of them grew up poor as fucking dirt and lacked a male role model because Nova and Tino’s father kept their mother as his filthy secret for a lot of years. He didn’t take any real interest in his sons until they got old enough to be useful.

It would make sense that Romeo and his brothers thought and acted the same, but sometimes it became obvious the six-foot-nine oaf who’d nailed their mother and knocked her up at seventeen left more of himself in Romeo than green eyes and a massive build.

He wasn’t like his brothers, and he never would be.

Romeo loved them. They were his family. He’d do just about anything for his younger brothers, but he didn’t understand them and more often than not, they didn’t understand him either.

Tino suddenly broke the silence with, “A blowjob?” Romeo sighed, knowing in his own way this was Tino’s floundering attempt to understand. “No.”

“Threesome?”

“With Powers?” Nova cut in. “What the fuck?”

Tino ran a hand through his short, black hair as he looked back and forth between Nova and Romeo. “What? You never shared a girl with another guy?” Nova shook his head, his eyes wide as he stared at their youngest brother in horror. “No.”

15

“What the hell are you doing in your spare time, Valentino?” Romeo asked, getting paternal when he thought about his youngest brother getting into God knew what kind of trouble.

“Romeo’s right. You gotta stop partying, man,” Nova said, still looking horrified.

“Some of the shit you do scares me. Fuck that. I don’t need to get it bad enough to rub dicks with another guy.”

Tino pulled back, looking affronted as he straightened his shoulders. “You don’t gotta rub dicks, ’cause see, chicks got—”

Tino was cut off by the curtain sliding back to reveal a paunchy, middle-aged doctor looking at a clipboard. “So what seems to be the problem?”

“Thank God.” Nova turned to look at the doctor, who effectively silenced Tino’s threesome explanation. Nova actually crossed himself as he breathed a sigh of relief.