Dante (21 page)

“Almost,” Cat breathed.

“Perfect,” she heard him hiss.

One of his hands left her thighs, coming to find her pussy. She felt wetness smear from the tips of his fingers over her folds as his thumb pressed into her clit roughly. Any breath that was left in Cat’s lungs rushed out, taking her sanity with it. She couldn’t see, and there weren't very many thoughts in her mind, either.

Nothing but him.

All she could feel was him. Fucking her. His mouth kissing the small dimple on her right cheek, teeth nipping to the side of her lips. His breath, harsh and short in her ear. Those fingers of his teasing, pinching at the hood of her clit, sending bursts of sensations shooting straight into her womb.

Then, the hand that had been pushing her leg wide on the counter was grabbing her jaw, under her chin. Dante forced Cat’s face up, making her stare straight into his hooded, heady gaze. His fingers dug roughly into her flesh, so beautifully harsh. Cat couldn’t speak, not with the force of his fucking driving her insane and the way he was looking at her like he owned her.

“You’re mine.”

The two words came out thick and forced past his clenching teeth as his eyes searched hers.

So goddamn simple, but they weren’t.

“You’re mine, Catrina,” Dante repeated.

Cat nodded. “Yours.”

“Nobody ever touches you but
me
.”

“No one,
bello
.”

Cat’s orgasm came so hard and fast, she literally felt her body release with it. All of the tension let go as it raged through, her eyes flying wide to find Dante staring at her with a hunger that set her nerves on fire. Her body turned hot, like someone had dropped her into a sauna. She tried to calm as the last bit of the euphoria drove through her trembling, sweaty body, but she couldn’t.

Hell, Cat couldn’t even
think
.

Without a word, Dante reached up and untied the makeshift restraint. He caught her arms with his hands, wrapping them around his neck. Cat’s whole body was jelly. She needed a second to get back down on solid ground.

Dante picked her up from the counter as if she didn’t weigh a thing. It was only then Cat realized his cock was still hard and buried inside the clenching, soaked walls of her sex. Every step he took toward his bedroom jostled her on his length, waking her up, promising …

“We’re not even close to being done,” Dante whispered into her ear as her back met the bed.

It was all too reminiscent of their wedding night.

Cat couldn’t fucking wait.

• • •

Cat’s gaze caught the sign directing her toward the airport, but she wasn’t paying attention. Her anger was boiling and the only thing keeping her from going into a rage was thinking about how well Dante had kept her sated and thoroughly fucked for the last week.

Because if she didn’t think about sex with him, she was going to think about slicing his throat with her knife. Pretty fucking simple.

Cat dialed her husband’s cell number, agitation churning her stomach. Dante picked up on the second ring, but she didn’t even give him the chance to greet her. “I thought I told you no enforcers were to follow me on this trip, Dante.”

“He was simply making sure you arrived at the airport safe and sound,
Amore
.”

She tried to keep cool, but nothing seemed to help. After specifically asking him to let her do her thing, especially since this was intended—to his knowledge—to be her first trip away doing business again, he still sent someone to watch after her.

Cat was pissed.

“Well, I’m not even half way to the airport yet and I’ve already lost him,” Cat informed, keeping her tone cool. “Next time, pick a better fool to babysit me or fuck off, Dante.”

“I wasn’t trying to baby—”

She hung up the phone and tossed it into the middle console, still steaming. The moment a middle link way came up on the highway to switch from one direction to the other, Cat took it. She was headed in the complete opposite direction from the airport now.

Oh, Cat had business to do. Just not the kind her husband would want to know about.

Thirty minutes later, Cat pulled her car into a dirt road off the highway when her GPS signaled for her to. Forty or so feet into the private road, a black car was waiting. Cat drove her car beyond the black one and parked it. Getting out, she locked her white Mercedes—the only wedding gift she allowed from her husband—and walked up to the black sedan. Feeling under the wheel well, Cat quickly found the spare key she knew should be there. Five minutes later, she was back on the road again and still not driving toward the airport.

No, she just had to get out of the city to reach her destination.

She reminded herself to thank Gaetano for being so good about keeping her plans quiet. He deserved some kind of award for being as loyal as he was to Cat. She didn’t know what she would do without him and Pao.

None of this would have been possible if not for them. Gaetano had flown in to New York, picked up a rental car for Cat, and dropped it off where she requested. Gaetano would lay low for a couple of days until Cat returned with Dante none the wiser about where she had really been and then he would return the car before leaving again.

Yeah, she owed that man a lot.

• • •

Cat pulled up to the single-level, modest bungalow style home. She had only been inside the house once before. Actually, when she purchased it under an assumed name. It sported two bedrooms, a small bath, the usual kitchen and living areas, and a decent sized backyard which was completely enclosed by a ten-foot high privacy fence. Along with the quiet, safe suburb neighborhood it was located in, the locale and house was a perfect fit for what Cat needed.

No one would assume the people living inside were anything other than a normal mother and son so long as they didn’t get too close. Cat had made sure Isa knew the rules, anyway. She wouldn’t talk to the neighbors unless she absolutely had to.

Bruno Savino would never think to look for the people Cat was keeping hidden from him if they were in plain sight. He probably thought Cat had them stored away somewhere a few states over. Or hell, maybe he thought she left them in Italy.

Wrong.

Well, truth be told, Cat didn’t know what Bruno thought at all and she didn’t want to. Just thinking of Bruno’s name sent her anger spinning, sickness rising, and her worry compounding hard in her chest.

He was a vile man, an abusive one who cared little for women. He had been her sister’s lover before Catherine’s death.

And the supposed father to Cat’s nephew, the little boy she stole from him to keep safe.

Cat knocked four times on the front door of the home and waited.

Isa, her nephew’s nanny and full-time caretaker, opened it with a smile. “
Ciao
, Catrina!”

“Isa,” Cat said with a smile.

“Hurry, come in. He misses you.”

Cat stepped into the house, immediately reaching to take the baby boy from Isa’s arms. Michel squirmed like any almost eight-month-old boy would do to be let down to the floor, but Cat wouldn’t. She wanted to hold him because she wouldn’t get very much time with him. To protect him, she needed to stay away. To protect this child … she had married a man whose last name and family would scare his father from taking him back.

She wouldn’t risk all that she had worked for to keep this child—her blood—safe only because she wanted to visit him more often.

It had been nearly seven months since she had last seen this child. He was practically brand new, then. He still had the new baby smell, a toothless smile that wasn’t really a smile at all, and a mostly bald head. Now, his crown shined with golden curls, his brown eyes were alert and looking straight at her, and his grin was honest.

Briefly, she thought about Dante and how he would feel to learn she had hidden her true intentions for marrying him. Betrayed, likely. It was too late, now. Cat couldn’t take it back. If Dante had known the full truth when she approached him, he’d have thought her nothing more than a risk to his family, and he would have turned her away.

Cat needed someone bigger than herself to protect Michel, even if they didn’t know they were doing it. Dante was that person.

“Michel!” Cat tickled the baby’s fat belly, watching his pink cheeks puff up. “Oh, you’re such a handsome boy!”

“Ma!” the baby shouted.

Cat blinked, shocked.  “No, Michel …
Zia
Catrina, not your Ma.”

Her heart ached to say it. Michel didn’t have a mother at all, not after his father all but beat her to death, left her to birth this child alone, and at the end, did nothing to help her when she bled out.

Isa laughed. “You left a bag of your sister’s belongings here. You and Catherine happen to look a lot alike, so maybe he’s mistaking you for her, is all.”

“Maybe,” Cat echoed.

Isa’s smile faded. “He will need a mother and father eventually, Catrina.”

“I know.”

They were the only two things Cat didn’t know how to give Michel.

The one reason she married Dante was for Michel’s safety. All of her status and reputation as the supreme ghost Queen Pin that she was giving up slowly to be Catrina Marcello, the very public wife of a mob boss whose clients wouldn’t trust her now, was for this child.

But she didn’t know how to give Michel anything else.

Chapter Twelve

“Oh, don’t you look comfortable.”

Dante mumbled something even he couldn’t understand into his pillow at his wife’s teasing.

“What time did you get in last night?” Catrina asked.

Turning his head enough so his words wouldn’t be a garbled mess, Dante said, “Around three.”

“Yikes, it’s like ten, now.”

“Fucking Gio,” Dante muttered.

Catrina laughed. The musical sound woke him up more, but he refused to get up unless he absolutely had to. “Fun night with your brothers, then?”

“Too much.”

After a particularly stressful couple of weeks going through résumés for contractors needed on the legal side of business, mixed in with the constant crap from the illegal side, Dante needed a night out. Catrina had suggested he take his brothers to a club for some bonding time without their wives tagging along once she got back from her trip to LA, so he did when he found time. It wasn’t like Dante sported a hangover or anything the morning after, but Christ, Gio could party hard when he wanted to. At least his brother laid off the substances, now.

Even so, Gio was the only one of the three Marcello brothers with the energy to stay up for hours on end, drink like a fucking fish, and not be any worse for wear come morning.

Catrina came to stand by the edge of the bed. The smooth, creamy paleness of her legs caught Dante’s eye. He reached out to rub his palm up her thigh, still keeping one eye closed and the other half shut as well.

Sweet fingernails Dante loved feeling claw down his back danced on his neck. “No women, right,
bello
?”

“Don’t even ask that question.”

Her fingers skipped down his spine, making his cock harden against the mattress. “Oh, I don’t doubt there were no women you were looking at. Women, on the other hand, are always looking at you. Just wondering if there’s a new female I should chase off.”

Dante chuckled. “Retract your claws, Cat.”

“But you like them.”

“I do, when they’re warranted. What time did you say it was?” Dante asked.

“Ten.”

Dante thought about that for a moment before a heavy realization sunk it and he bolted up in the bed to his knees. “
Merda
!”

“What?”

“Church,” Dante barked.

Catrina laughed in that way of hers again. “We’re not going, Dante.”

“It’s not really a choice we get, Cat.”

Dante stumbled out of bed, blindly reaching for the suit he had tossed off the night before after he got home. It wasn’t there. Not that it would have been suitable for Sunday services, likely.

“Your suit is in the drycleaner bag,” Catrina informed. “And we’re still not going.”

Dante shook his head, willing the sleepiness to leave his vision. “Like I said, it’s not a choice we get to make, kitten.”

“Well, since everyone thinks we’re in bed with some awful flu this morning, yeah, I think we’re safe.”

Turning fast on his heel, Dante stared at his wife like she was speaking gibberish. “You called us in sick to church.”

“Church, your mother … same thing, I guess.”

“My brothers know—”

“They can owe you for once,” Catrina interrupted, grinning slyly. “Take the day and be bad with me, Dante. You know how much I like it when you’re bad.”

Dante snorted. “Skipping church is on the very bottom of my bad-shit-I’ve-done list, Cat.”

“I know, but still, there are only so many rules you absolutely won’t break and church is one of them. I can think of a dozen other dirty things we can do today.”

It took him far too long to realize what his wife was saying. Turning just enough to give Catrina a good once-over, Dante noticed she was wearing one of his dress shirts with only two buttons done up at the middle and very little fucking else. She looked like pure sin—all legs, her trim waist accentuated by his shirt, and her lips painted red just how he liked. Her hands were hidden behind her back, as if she were keeping something from him.

Yes, sin, but his.

“What do you have on under that?” he asked, grinning mischievously.

Catrina shrugged. “A little bit of lace.”

“Is that all?”

“And a lot of skin.”

Dante groaned, loud and hard. “You told my mother we were sick to get us out of church and dinner so we could fuck all day?”

Catrina smirked. “Pretty much.”

“We’re going to hell.”

“It’ll be a fun ride.”

“Christ, you are wicked,” Dante said, laughing.

“Oh, I know,
bello
.”

Then, Catrina brought her hands out from behind her back, flashing a device Dante hadn’t expected her to have. The Nikon professional grade camera with a six-hundred dollar attached lens was already turned on and before he could think, it was held up and the flash blinded him.

Dante put his hand up, blocking his wife from taking another picture. “Where did you find that goddamn thing? I haven’t used it in years.”

“In the TV cabinet. It’s pretty snazzy.”

“Snazzy?”

“You know, like bells and whistles.”

Dante refused to lower the shield that was his hand. He liked taking pictures on occasion, but he didn’t like to be the one photographed. Keeping his face
out
of the limelight had always been a pastime of his.

“Because it used to be a hobby of mine,
Amore
,” Dante explained.

Catrina dropped the camera, so Dante lowered his hand. “Used to be?”

“The last few years have been a busy time for me. I just lost interest as other shit became more important.”

“A photographer, huh?” Catrina asked, dangling the camera from two fingers.

Dante watched the device swinging two and fro, hoping to hell she didn’t drop the camera. “Stop playing with that damn thing like it’s a ball or something. It cost me four grand.”

“Well, I didn’t plan on being the one who used it,” Catrina said, winking.

She tossed the camera at him like it was a toy and not the very expensive electronic it was. Dante caught it easily but still shot her with a look, hoping it voiced his displeasure with her teasing.

When Catrina’s fingers slipped down and found the buttons of his shirt she was wearing, Dante’s throat tightened, his sleep pants suddenly turned uncomfortable, and he couldn’t fucking breathe. She undid the only buttons holding the shirt together, letting the fabric fall open. Peachy flesh displayed for him, giving Dante a peek at the valley between her breasts and the smooth path leading down to the bareness of her sex covered by black lace.

“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to have a little fun with me?”

“People weren’t my subjects, Cat.”

“I think you’ll do me justice.”

“Why is that?” Dante asked.

Catrina watched him under her lashes. “No one sees me like you do.”

Yeah, this woman was so damned sexy it hurt. Catrina didn’t even have to try, she just was. From the way her body moved, to how she watched him like he was a God … it was enthralling.

Catrina spun on her heel, glancing over her shoulder at the same time Dante lifted the camera. He didn’t bother to check the settings. Catrina didn’t need adjustments. He did turn off that goddamn flash, though. There was more than enough natural light coming in through the windows, bathing his wife in a halo of color.

When her thumbs slid under the collar to draw his shirt down over her shoulders, Dante was already taking shots. The shirt dropped to the floor, exposing black lace contrasting against white skin. Catrina kept watching him all the while.

He was sure she expected him to take shots of her as a whole, but he had other plans. She was so gorgeous—every last fucking inch of her was breathtakingly beautiful in a way he couldn’t explain with words. But pictures? That might be something Dante could capture.

The curve in her waist. The red of her lips and how they quirked up at the corners when she was thinking too hard. The swell of her backside, or the small birthmark on the back of her thigh where her ass melded into her hip. Those fingernails of hers with embedded crystals glittering on the manicured tip as she turned, tracing her cheekbone.

And her eyes.

Hell, her
eyes
… Always on him, wanting just him.

Fuck, Dante loved this woman.

It smacked him like a kick to the heart. Swift and painful and drawing away before he could think on it too long and react.

But it was there and he had felt it.

Dante knew at that moment he was fucked.

• • •

When did this happen?

How?

Dante kept asking himself those same two questions over and over until the words were permanently imprinted in the back of his fucking mind.

Another photo finished processing from the printer. He pulled it out and absorbed the impact his wife’s sensual smile had on his heart and soul, not to mention his body. The colored photograph had almost turned a black and white from the natural contrast of the light earlier that morning.

Dante made sure his office door was still closed before clicking a button on his laptop to print another photo. He had dug the printer and specialty photo paper out of the storage closet earlier, wanting to see what the shots would look like in physical form and not just digital.

They were perfect. A lot like Catrina.

Sighing, Dante massaged the ache beginning to throb in the base of his skull.

He couldn’t pinpoint a time when he started to fall in love with Catrina. There were no particular moments that stood out to him for why he jumped headfirst into something he had always fought against.

The one thing he knew for sure was it hadn’t been a fast love, but rather, something that grew over time. Slowly, like a seed implanted and sprouting. Definitely a weed, though. Because once a weed was there, it didn’t matter how many times you pulled it out, it still grew back.

Love.

It was such a sickening, awful creature. Like something had come along, sat itself down on his chest, and now it couldn’t be moved.

Dante had long since trusted himself to make the right choices, to know when to push forward or back the fuck off. Apparently he didn’t know a thing if someone like Catrina could bleed her way into his veins without him even noticing.

Love was hell. It kind of hurt, too. And not in a good way, but in a really bad way. Because he loved her but she didn’t love him. Things were
never
going to be the same after this. She wouldn’t want love.

Dante set himself up for failure with Catrina. He was going to lose everything because of this, including her.

Simple as that.

• • •

“Morning,” Lucian said as he stepped inside Dante’s condo.

Dante ticked his chin up at his brother from the couch. “Hey.”

“What are you doing still sitting in front of the TV at eleven in the morning, man? We’ve got shit to do today.”

Dante scoffed. “No, you want to go eat at Cazza, fuck around for half the day, then maybe try and get some work done later. I know you, so don’t even bother trying to deny it, Lucian.”

“I work. Shut your mouth,
cafone
.”

“I never said you didn’t, I simply said I knew what your plans were for today. Tribute is coming up and you always take it easy leading up to it.”

Lucian glared up at the ceiling. “Because it’s a long day.”

“Longer now that you’re an underboss.”

“Exactly.”

“Cazza for lunch?” Dante asked.

“It’s got the best food this side of New York.”

“It’s your restaurant. It’s not surprising you think that.”

“Still has the best food,” Lucian pointed out.

“According to you,” Dante shot back.

Dante pushed off the couch, brushing invisible dust from his pant legs. There wasn’t a spec of fucking dust in the condo, not with Catrina around.

“I’ve got to grab my suit jacket from the office,” Dante said, canting his head for his older brother to follow. Lucian did, quietly. A little too quietly for Dante’s liking. “What’s up with you?”

Lucian cleared his throat as they stopped outside Dante’s office. “You know where Cat is today, right?”

“Visiting with Jordyn,” Dante replied. “She and Kim are just about the only two females Catrina actually likes. It even surprises her. You know how she is; men are easier to manipulate than women. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

Dante crossed his arms, waiting for his brother to spit out whatever in the fuck he was chewing on. “Do you have some kind of issue with her being there, or what?”