“Oh, yeah?” he murmured, his voice gruff. His eyes scrunched up at the corners, softening like molten lava. He brushed his fingers over my lower lip. “And did it meet your expectations?”
“Yeah.” My response was so hushed, I wasn’t confident he heard me.
His warm breath puffed across my face, lingering. Teasing. My obsession with him came roaring back to life. A whimper composed of relief and despair sprang from my mouth.
“Are you going to kiss me again?” I whispered, hiking up my chin, shyly offering myself to him.
“I shouldn’t.”
“But do you want to?”
He licked his lower lip. “More than anything.”
I lowered my eyelids, and he went for it. His lips swept against mine. Once. Then twice. At first, it was more of a way to comfort me than anything else. That quickly changed. With every touch of his lips, my pulse surged until I was certain it was audible to the outside world.
Exhaling, I leaned back, deliberating how to end this before he hurt me again. The second my eyes connected with Sal’s, I knew I had overestimated my capacity to resist his lure. His hooded eyes and parted lips only made want to leap right back into whatever insanity held me captive for months.
He didn’t give me time to dissect my next move or burgeon my resolve. In a matter of seconds, his fingers tangled in my hair, his full lips on mine again. Demanding, inviting, and frantic, like he feared I’d dematerialize if he stopped. Like he was apologizing for keeping me at arm’s length for months.
Part of me wondered if my recently traumatized mind created this fantasy and I’d wake up from a deep slumber only to be alone and craving Sal more than ever. Yet, when his hands started exploring my body freely, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Whatever this was—illusion or reality—I’d take it and bask in the feeling of being wanted by this man until it ended.
His hand teased the sliver of skin between my shirt and jeans, and goose bumps dotted my arms. I parted my lips and let him inside. He devoured me like tomorrow would never come and we were the only two people who mattered. He tasted like freedom, fate, and home all wrap up in one wicked package. I dumped every emotion into the kiss—fear, want, longing and lust.
Seconds, minutes, or hours later, I didn’t have a clue, he was on top of me, his muscular frame flattening me into the bedding. His hips moved against me and I wrapped my legs around his waist, doggedly ignoring the warning bells ringing nonstop in my brain.
His lips journeyed down my jaw to my neck, and I brushed aside of all of the horrific things that happened today and focused on him, his soft lips, his calloused hands, his heady scent.
“God, Em, do you know how bad I’ve wanted to kiss you again? It’s been torture staying away from you. The minute I saw you in that cabinet in your dad’s office with that half-scared, half-defiant look on your face, I wanted you. Every time I pushed you away, it killed me.”
My heart swelled at a maddening rate, irrationally hungry for every kiss and every whispered confession. I was an addict gobbling up his words like they were my next fix.
“I didn’t ask you to stay away.” I hooked my arms around his neck. “You did that all on your own.”
His head dropped, resting against the center of my chest. “I know. I didn’t have a choice. You know what your dad would do if he found out…” His voice faltered, but he didn’t need to finish his sentence. We both knew what he was getting at, and the awareness of this hard reality was as potent as a bucket of ice. Rubbing a hand through his hair, he crawled off the bed. “I need to go before we do something we can’t take back. This isn’t supposed to happen like this. Your dad wanted…never mind.”
I opened my mouth, only I didn’t get the chance to argue with him. My dad’s voice rang out, and his heavy footfalls echoed on the stairs. “Emilia? Emilia! Where are you?”
“See even fate agrees.” Sal heaved out a weighted breath and opened my door. “She’s in here. She just finished eating, and now that you’re home, I’m gonna take off.”
He walked out of the room without a backward glance, and somehow, in a twisted turn of events, Sal had me thinking about him rather than what happened today. Then it hit me with the force of a bulldozer. I liked Sal. I liked him a lot. My infatuation with him hadn’t gone anywhere, and I had no business feeling anything about anyone connected to the Trassato Crime Family. I need to cut the tentacles linking me to them, not grow new ones.
Merda!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Do you want to talk about what happened the other day?” My dad’s coffee mug clunked against the long wooden table.