We stayed like that for a moment, his chest panting for air against mine. His ragged breaths fanned my neck while he remained still.
His lips pressed against my ear. “You want to know a secret?”
I shivered at the deep voice, but I didn’t answer because I was still trying to figure out how to breathe with him inside me.
“I’ve never fucked a woman without a condom.” He nuzzled my neck. His voice was warm and smooth, but his teeth were clenched. “And I’m afraid you’ve just created a monster.”
He held me by a fistful of hair at my nape and then he fucked me.
Skin against skin. A scrape of teeth. The heavy weight of him. Unrelenting. It was so intense I fought to find air to breathe, to find anything that wasn’t harsh and him. Soon, the intensity softened, my body warming and molding to his. Every thrust began to kindle a spark inside of me that only the next thrust could sate. My nails dug into his biceps, and a small shudder rolled under his skin.
He talked while he screwed, right against my ear in a deep rasp, and it made me crazy.
“You take it so good,” he praised.
“So fucking tight.”
“So wet for me.”
The words sank into my skin and filled every space in my body with warm satisfaction.
Every time his pelvis ground against mine, molten heat spread from my clit outward. A throaty moan escaped my lips with every thrust, as though he pushed each one out of me.
I was nothing but heat and flame and pleasure.
“Fuck, you’ve got to be quiet,” he groaned in my ear. “Or this is going to be over before I’m ready.”
I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. It was like trying to stop breathing.
He covered my mouth with his palm, while the other hand remained fisted in my hair. It was rough and restrictive and so addictive.
And I suddenly knew this was what had drawn me to Nicolas Russo. What fascinated me. Maybe the Cosa Nostra had tainted me from the start, like a poison in the water supply, because I needed this: restraint, domination, to feel him everywhere. I’d known it would be like this, so intense, but it felt so much better than I’d ever envisioned.
The orgasm was immediate and so violent it sent a shudder through me that chattered my teeth. Heat pulsed in my lower stomach before branching out in tingles and dazzles of the best feeling ever.
When I came down, it was to him motionless inside of me, watching me with a gaze dark as night. He pulled his hand from my mouth, and by the teeth marks I realized I’d bitten down on it when I came.
“Who fucks you?” he growled.
I shivered. “You do.”
“Who else?”
“Just you,” I breathed.
A rumble of satisfaction came from his chest, and he rested his forehead against mine. “I’m going to come inside you and then I’m going to fuck you again.” His lips hovered above my own. They were so close that with a slow thrust and a tense breath, they brushed mine so lightly it was like it never happened.
I could almost feel his lips pressed against mine, sliding and licking and biting. Wet and messy and rough. Because that’s how Nico would kiss. I wanted to experience it violently enough it was a war between my head and my mouth.
He’d taste like whiskey and bad decisions.
This time, my head won.
He stayed like that, our lips inches apart, as he thrust inside of me, deep and slow, and with an intimacy that made me feel like someone had rubbed my skin with sandpaper until I was raw and exposed.
But I couldn’t escape it, not with his fist in my hair and his body on mine. Not with his dirty words still resounding in my ears. Not with the warmth that blossomed in my chest at the mere mention of his name.
I’d let him inside of me.
And now I’d never get him out.
“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”
—Maya Angelou
HEARTBEATS ARE FICKLE THINGS. BEATING one moment and then stopping the next. Raging a storm and then lying as still as a tranquil sea. But what I didn’t know is that they change. They glow and warm and expand in a chest. They ache and yearn for a reason to beep.
My heartbeats had a fondness for the romantic.
They began to skip, to multiply, to fill with a contentment as thick as honey and as warm as the sun. They did it all as my skin grew cold and while I stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore them.
I couldn’t fall in love with this man.
I would rather never fall in love at all than to experience it unrequited. I’d seen it enough times to despise the possibility.
I couldn’t love a man who treated me like a commodity, or even worse—a pretty bird in a cage, and not like a wife. If there was anything I knew with a certainty about Made Men, it was that they couldn’t grasp the concept of fidelity. Those heartbeats tied into a knot, a strangling, uncomfortable ball in the back of my throat.