Ruthless: Mob Boss Book One (21 page)

“Don’t you defend them,” Nico said, his voice low.

Carmine crossed the room and stood in front of him. “It’s my job to advise you,” Carmine said. “I’ve done that to the best of my ability. What you decide to do with that advice is up to you, but it seems you and Carlo are at an impasse.”

Nico turned his back on Carmine and poured more Scotch into his glass. Carmine was right. He was walking a tightrope between Angel’s safety, his feelings for her, and his need to bring her father to justice, to say nothing of the Syndicate’s expectations and his responsibility to the people who worked for him.

When he’d calmed down, he turned to face Carmine. “I’m sorry.”

Carmine nodded. “Think about what I said, will you?”

“I will,” Nico said.

Carmine looked at his watch. “It’s late. I should get on the road home.”

“Why don’t you stay?” Nico offered. “Head back in the morning.”

“I wish I could, but Mary’s expecting me. She worries when I’m out late.”

Nico smiled. Mary, a voluptuous woman with a heart of gold, was Carmine’s wife of forty-plus years. “Next time then.”

Carmine patted Nico’s cheek like he was still five years old. “Take care, Nico. And keep me posted. I’ll talk to Frank, urge him to keep the Rossi family calm in Carlo’s absence.”

“Thank you,” Nico said.

Carmine looked up at the soaring ceilings of the foyer as they made their way to the door. “Your mother loved this house.”

“She did,” Nico said. “It’s part of why I love it, too. I can still feel her here.”

Carmine looked into his eyes. “She would want you to be happy.”

Nico tried to smile. “Maybe someday.”

Carmine kissed him on both cheeks and walked out the door. Nico looked after him for a minute before returning to his study. He picked up his glass and realized it was already empty. He toyed with the idea of pouring another, then thought about Angel. He didn’t want to be drunk and angry around her. There was already too much baggage between them. If only they could have met apart from the mess between their families. Of all the things he ever had to lose, she was the most valuable of all.

He was fucked. They all were.

He hurled the empty glass at the fireplace.

33

Angel stepped back into the shadows as the short man named Carmine strode from Nico’s office.

I’ll never hurt her, Carmine. And I won’t let anyone else hurt her either.

She’d believed it even before she heard Nico’s voice through the door, but now it felt even more true. She was debating the merit of checking on Nico versus giving him time alone when the sound of breaking glass erupted from behind the closed doors. She wasn’t even aware of making the decision to enter the room.

Nico looked up, anguish visible on his face in the moment before he saw that it was her. A second later his features were smoothed over into the expression of calm assuredness he seemed to wear for everyone.

“I just… I wanted to make sure you’re all right,” she said, closing the door behind her.

“I’m fine,” he said, turning to face the window. Turning away from her.

She crossed the room and stood behind him, sliding her arms around his waist and resting her head on his broad back. “Talk to me.”

He turned to face her. His eyes burned into hers. “I don’t want to talk.”

She looked up at him and ran her hands over his chest, linking them behind his neck, pressing her body to his. “Then let’s not talk.”

She kissed him, gently at first, waiting for his lips to soften under hers before she slid her tongue inside. Finally, his arms came around her, pressing her more tightly against him as he dove into her mouth. But she didn’t want him in control this time. It wasn’t what he needed. And it wasn’t what she needed either.

She pulled away and took his hand, pulling him toward the center of his office. She kissed him again, this time more forcefully, then pushed him so he was sitting on the sofa. He reached for her, and she lowered herself onto his lap where the hard length of him pressed between her legs.

She took his face in her hands and left soft kisses at the corners or his mouth before nibbling on his lower lip. His hands slipped into the hair at the back of her head. He tried to pull her closer, tried to deepen their kiss, but she moved her lips up his jaw and bit softly on his ear.

His hands came around her waist, sliding down to her ass. He pressed into her until she could feel every inch of his erection, could almost feel the exquisite push of him into her. This was going to be harder than she expected. She wanted him filling her, wanted him fucking her. But not yet. First she wanted him to forget everything but her. Everything but this moment.

Trying to distract herself, she unbuttoned his shirt and moved her lips down his neck to his chest. She took one of his nipples in her mouth, closing her teeth gently on it before sucking it to a peak.

He gasped. “Angel…”

He reached for the bottom of her shirt and lifted it over her head, then pulled down the pink lace of her bra so her breasts spilled out of the top. She let him close his mouth around one nipple while his hand worked the other one. His tongue flicked against the tiny bud, sending arrows of fire through her body, and she let her head fall back, losing herself in the moment.

“I want to be inside you,” he said, his mouth moving to her other breast.

His words shook loose her purpose. This isn’t how this was going to go.

She bent her head to kiss his lips. “No.”

She rose off his lap and knelt between his legs, undoing the button on his slacks before rubbing her palm against the impressive bulge between his legs. He groaned, and she felt him thicken further under her hand.

She unzipped his pants and slid them off his body, releasing his magnificent cock. She took him in her hand, his flesh hot against her palm, and licked the smoothness of his tip before closing her mouth around it.

He drew in a ragged breath, and she pulled back, alternating between flicking her tongue against the head and sucking it until he became even bigger. Then she closed her lips around him and slid down his shaft until he was trapped in the moist heat of her mouth.

“Fuck, Angel,” he gasped.

She waited a few seconds, feeling him pulse with desire in her mouth, then slid her mouth back up while she stroked the base of his shaft. She took him again, in and out of her mouth, circling the tip with her tongue when she reached the top, burying him when he was all the way inside her mouth. She got wetter as he got harder, her own desire building as she felt the evidence of her control over him. Her power. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.

“Let me taste you,” he said, tugging at her arms.

She stroked him with her hand while she looked up at him. His eyes were glassy with desire. “No.”

She stood, untying the drawstring on her pants and letting them fall to the floor.

“Condom?”

He gestured in the vicinity of his pants on the floor. “Wallet.”

She found what she was looking for and stepped out of her lace panties before straddling his hips. A few seconds later she was poised over him, his tip straining at her entrance.

He looked at her with something like rapture. “Someday I’m going to come inside you, Angel. Then you’ll really be mine.”

She bent her head, dipping her tongue into his mouth, then lowered herself onto him with one slow movement.

He moaned in her mouth and grabbed ahold of her hips, thrusting upward. She was slick with need, and she met his movements instinctively, their bodies moving in perfect time while their tongues sparred in a frenzy. His body rubbed against her clit with every thrust, and she felt the orgasm mounting inside her, pushing her to the top of a peak from which there would be no return. No existence beyond the one she shared with Nico here and now.

“That’s right,” he murmured. “Come for me, baby.”

His hands slid down, spreading her ass, opening her further as he drove harder into her. The movement sent a shockwave of pleasure through her body, and she came apart in his hands while he continued moving inside her, his thrusts increasingly frenzied as she came again.

Then he was calling out her name, burying himself in her warmth while he held her hips, forcing her to relinquish any idea of control she might have had as he made her his all over again.

She collapsed on top of him, her body coated with a fine sheen of sweat. They didn’t say anything for a long time, the room seeming even more quiet as their breathing slowed. When she moved to get off him, he lowered her to the couch instead and stretched out next to her.

He stroked her hair back from her face while he looked into her eyes. “Do you know you’re mine yet?”

Yes
, she wanted to say.
I’ve always been yours.

But she couldn’t. It was nice to forget the things between them for awhile, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think that meant they didn’t exist.

She moved closer to him instead, then kissed him tenderly on the mouth before nestling into the crook of his arm, his heartbeat slow and steady under her ear.

This is Nico, she thought, drifting toward sleep. This man. This heartbeat.

34

The room was dark when Nico woke up with Angel, still naked, in his arms. He looked around, trying to orient himself. Then he heard something pop from outside, and he knew the noise was what had woken him.

He slid out from under Angel’s body and pulled on his clothes, hoping he’d been wrong.

But then he heard it again; several muffled pops from somewhere outside the house. He was leaning down to wake Angel when Luca slid into the room with two duffel bags in his hand. He didn’t waste any time getting to the point.

“The property’s been breached.” His voice was calm, but Nico saw his worry even through the darkness. “We have to get you and Angel out.”

Nico drew a blanket from the back of the couch over Angel’s naked form to shield her from Luca, then crossed the room.

“Which one of these is hers?” he asked Luca.

Luca handed him one of the bags and he hurried back the sofa.

“Angel,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We have to go.”

Shouting sounded from outside, followed by another series of muffled gunfire.

She sat up quickly. “What’s happening?”

“Someone’s here,” Nico said. He rummaged through the bag and pulled out a pair of jeans, a turtleneck, and a pair of sneakers. “Get dressed.”

She only hesitated a few seconds before she took the clothes from his hand.

Luca spoke from the shadows. “We have to hurry.” Angel’s eyes skipped to him, and she looked down at the blanket covering her body. “I’ll turn around,” he said.

She started pulling the clothes on as soon as his back was turned.

Nico hurried to his desk while she dressed, unlocking the drawer and pulling documents and cash from the false bottom. He took the other bag from Luca and stuffed everything inside. By the time he turned back to Angel, she was ready to go, duffel bag in hand.

Another round of gunfire sounded, closer this time, followed by a crash near the front of the house.

“Let’s go,“ Luca said. “Car’s ready.”

Nico pulled his leather jacket off a chair and helped Angel put it on. Then he positioned her between him and Luca, who maintained point in front the way they’d rehearsed it in the drills Nico had forced on his men.

Luca handed Nico a gun and pulled another one out of a holster under his jacket.

Nico took one last look at Angel. “Stay between us.”

She nodded, and he wondered if she knew what she was doing. If she was coming with him because she wanted to, because she had finally accepted the fact that she might not be safe with her father’s men, or because everything was happening too fast to come up with a plan for escape. He didn’t have time to come up with an answer.

Luca opened the door, listening for a second before sticking his head into the hall and looking both ways. He waved them forward, and Angel moved out behind him, Nico covering her back. They moved silently down the hall toward the back of the house just as the sound of splintering wood reached them from the front of the house.

Men shouted from the foyer, and Nico knew they’d been breached. Fuck. How the hell did Carl’s flunkies get past his men? Men who were young, highly trained, and prepared to kill for him?

He filed the question away for another time and stepped into the darkened dining room after Angel. They were almost to the kitchen when gunfire broke out behind them. He looked back to see two men in black entering the dining room, the muzzles of their guns flaring as they fired.

Nico turned to Angel. “Go with Luca. I’m right behind you.”

She shook her head, her eyes wide. “But you…”

“I’m right behind you,” he said again, shoving his duffel at Luca. “Go!”

Luca took her arm, forcibly pulling her through the door to the kitchen as she shouted his name. “Nico!”

He ducked behind a sideboard just as a bullet tore through his thigh. It felt like he’d been shot with fire, then quickly turned numb. He peered out from under the cabinet’s raised legs. Just the two men, one of them behind a dining chair and the other behind an old cabinet that stored his mother’s silver.

It was doable.

He thought about Angel, worry thrumming through his body at the thought of something happening to her. She was with Luca. She would be okay. Nico would get her out of here, and the men who had compromised her safety would pay.

He marked the first man, his head visible between the open slats of the chair back. Then he sprayed the room with bullets, taking advantage of the brief moment when they sought cover to turn his gun on the man behind the chair. Wood splintered around his head as he fell back onto the carpet.

Nico forced himself to take a couple breaths as adrenaline surged through his body. Mistakes were made in the space between thought and action, especially when thought was colored by panic.

He took another glance at the guy behind the big cabinet, and wood splintered around his head. He crawled to the other end of the sideboard, tipping it on its front to give him more coverage. Silver and china spilled to the floor around him.