Lucian (32 page)

Jordyn once told him she wanted the kind of love from a man who noticed every little detail about her. Silly things, big things, and all the in-betweens.

She didn’t want a good man. She wanted her kind of man.

Three times this week she hadn’t made it to noon before she was sick. That cream colored skin of hers was more flushed than usual. In bed, when he loved her, she seemed so much more sensitive in a very good way. On their drive to Maine, she demanded he stop to let her use the washroom more times than could be normal. Last month, she hadn’t touched her feminine products under their master bathroom’s sink.

Two months ago she missed three little pink pills because of the many changes they were going through like moving into their new home, and starting a life in general.

Silly things, big things, and all the in-betweens.

Oh, Lucian noticed.

He was still waiting for her to, though.

Maybe when they arrived home at the end of the week, she’d find a white and blue box on the bathroom counter, just waiting with its plus or minus sign.

Maybe …

Besides, he knew what it would say because he knew this woman.

Lucian just hoped this particular change wouldn’t be too soon for her.

They were a little bit filthy, Lucian’s family. 

Lawbreakers. Troublemakers.

The brothers like to cause issues more often than not. His parents were always sticking themselves into their sons’ lives and personal affairs whether they wanted them to or not. There was always going to be directions they had to follow, both privately and publically. Living in a world of crime regaled by its beliefs and rules wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

Their life didn’t fit into society’s norms. It didn’t fucking have to.

Lucian wasn’t an honorable man with his Cosa Nostra roots and the gun always hidden at his back, but he was Jordyn’s.

And with her, it was good to be filthy.

About the Author

Bethany-Kris
is a Canadian author, lover of much, and mother to three very young sons, one cat, and two dogs. A small town in Eastern Canada where she was born and raised is where she has always called home. With her boys under her feet, a snuggling cat, barking dogs, and a spouse calling over his shoulder, she is nearly always writing something ... when she can find the time.

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Coming Soon

Filthy Marcellos: Giovanni

Filthy Marcellos, Book Two

“What’s your name?”

“My friends call me Kim.”

Gio tasted the name on his tongue. Silently trying it out in his mind to see if he thought it truly fit the girl, or if she was just lying to appease him. She didn’t necessarily have a reason to be lying about her name.

“Just Kim, huh?” Gio grinned. “Kim with no last name?”

“I am tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll go back to being whoever I need to be.”

Something in the lit of her tone stopped the heart in Gio’s chest for a split second. There were too many times in his life when he wished he could be someone different. That he didn’t have so many eyes watching and expecting something from him. Days when it was easier to let people see him crawl out from the bottom of a bottle than to show his other failures.

Gio was the troubled one. The black sheep. He was lawless and mostly, he loved it. Often times he didn’t think things through, but he was cunning as hell and able to get himself out of most bad situations he ended up in.

He was also careless, but never carefree.

A dichotomy in a world where everyone had to be just perfectly so. Where everything needed to be explained and understood.

That wasn’t Gio.

“I get that,” Gio finally said.

“You should be in the ballroom dancing and celebrating with your brother and his new wife,” Kim said, sparing him a glance that waged a war with his insides in just a look.

“I should.”

“It’s just not you, hmm?”

The side of Gio’s lips quirked up into a smirk. “Something like that.”

“Mr.—”

Gio tapped his finger to the table again, interrupting the dealer without even considering he should just fold his hand. The king of clubs popped up and sent his hand bust. Gio should have expected that. He probably should have held his hand last draw, but someone had him otherwise distracted.

The longer Gio stared at Kim, the drunker he felt. On what, he wasn’t quite sure. He’d taken all different types of illegal substances in his life and downed more than enough alcohol to know a buzzed out, high feeling when it came along. This girl only needed to be within sitting distance of Gio to get his nerves stirring like drug or drink had been infused straight from her air to his.

That was crazy.

And he wanted to know
why
.

“Miss?” the dealer asked Kim.

It was only then did Gio notice her hand. A three and an eight. Eleven. How fucking lucky was that? The dealer had stayed at seventeen, the house limit. Everyone else at the table had either folded, stayed, or gone bust. Kim, though, had not. She only needed to beat the house, and really, she had a pretty damned good chance of doing just that.

Kim smiled at Gio, the sight almost too innocent to be true. “Forty percent chance I hit a number lower than a five. Five percent says it could be a six. Fifty-five puts it high enough to beat the house. It’s a risk. A little too close to fifty-fifty for some. Which would you choose, Giovanni?”

How did she know his name?

You never knew who the shark was.

“I’d take a card,” Gio replied.

“Me, too.” Kim nodded at the dealer for another card and didn’t even bat an eyelash when a jack turned over. “Keep my bet for the house,” she told the dealer with a shrug. “I was counting. It’s unfair to the game.”

Just as easily as she’d slipped into her seat at the Blackjack table, she was suddenly getting up to leave. Gio reached out and snagged Kim’s wrist in his palm without even thinking about it. Like her reaction to the card game, she didn’t seem all too surprised at his interruption of her exit, either.

Who was this fucking girl?

“You didn’t answer my question,” Kim said quietly, the heat of her skin soaking into Gio’s palm like a drug.

“Which one?”

“Why wouldn’t you do what your brother did and pick both?”

“I wouldn’t do this at all,” Gio stated with a pointed look to the entrance separating the dance hall from the casino section.

“The wedding thing, or the marrying thing?”

“Why does it matter?”

Kim shrugged. “It doesn’t.”

Gio doubted that. “Maybe it’s just not my thing,
Tesoro
.”

He didn’t miss the recognition twinkling in her eye at his use of an Italian endearment for one’s sweetheart. Did she understand what the word meant?
Treasure. Dear. Darling
. Gio couldn’t think of another time when it’d slipped so easily from his mouth, yet he heard his father call his mother that every day of his life.

“Or maybe I’m not the marrying kind,” Gio added.

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right one to tame you, yet.”

A smirk crept over his lips. “The fun isn’t in the taming. It’s in the attempt.”

“
Sì
,” she agreed.

Kim pulled her wrist from Gio’s grasp without another word. He wasn’t entirely sure this was how he wanted their odd encounter to end, considering the bubbling attraction curling around his senses and the lust pooling in his gut. Even still, he rested back in his chair and watched blue peep-toes walk away from the table without even a single glance back.

When she disappeared into the influx of people moving into the casino room from the ballroom, Gio turned back to the table.

“Mr. Marcello?” the dealer said, gaining Gio’s attention once more.

“Hmm? I think I’m done for the night.”

“Ah, no, sir. On the table, Mr. Marcello. It was underneath her cards when I picked them up.”

With those words, the man handed over a key card. The fancy script of a hotel’s name was scrawled across the front in golden embossed letters. The hotel directly across from the plaza they were currently in. On the back, a floor and room number were printed above the barcode.

Hell … Gio did like to take his risks, after all.

What was one more?

Copyright
© 2015 by Bethany-Kris. All rights reserved.

WARNING: The unauthorized distribution or reproduction of this copyrighted work is illegal. No parts of this work may be used, reproduced, or printed without expressed written consent by the author/publisher. Exceptions are made for small excerpts used in reviews.

ISBN:
978-0-9937797-2-5

Cover Art © Viorel Sima

Editor: DL Curley

This is work of fiction. Characters, names, places, corporations, organizations, institutions, locales, and so forth are all the product of the author’s imagination, or if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to a person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.