It was only once she’d stopped grinding against his mouth, did he hover above her again. He pressed a kiss, wet with her arousal against her shoulder as he slid in behind her. That was how he fucked her. Side by side, her leg lifted and hooked around his thigh, while his hands worked her crazy.
His strokes came with an ache. Deep inside, he fucked her with fast, short thrusts that had her falling into a second orgasm faster than she’d ever done before. She had no doubt that before the night was over, the man would have her mind blank and blissed.
They would be them again.
Vanna and Bene.
Nothing else had to matter then.
21.
Bene
“HEY, did you get that text I—”
“Oh, you mean the meme of the cat?” Bene rolled his eyes, adding, “Yes, Beni, I saw it. You do know I have better things to do than answer your fifty text messages each with a different meme, right? Do you even work?”
“First of all—”
“So no, you’re not working.”
“I’m collecting payments for a Capo, all right,” Beni muttered. “It’s fucking boring. The least you could do, since you don’t want to come visit me in Chicago on a regular goddamn basis, is answer back my texts. Even if they are cat memes.”
“Does August know about your love of cats?”
“She’s allergic.”
Bene snickered. “That’s ... that’s perfect, eh.”
“And I don’t love cats; I like funny memes that make driving on this road bearable—fucking move, you fucking stupid cocksucker! Who taught you how to drive?”
He had to pull the phone away from the side of his head because that’s how loud his twin’s voice was in his ear. It hurt. The one thing a lot of people didn’t know about his twin was the fact Beni had terrible road rage, and it only became worse when he was on a freeway where traffic often became backed up.
It was Chicago, after all.
“And now you know the reason I don’t visit you in Chicago as much as you want me to,” Bene muttered, shifting through the papers on his desk to find the one he needed. Once he did, he could fax it off to the asshole who called about it that morning wanting numbers on a business venture he was attempting with a friend outside of mafia business. The asshole being his lawyer because contracts were a real thing, and everything needed to be perfect. “I can’t talk for very much longer; I need to head out of here soon.”
“What, why? August is busy, Bene. She’s got a thing today with Lissa. I need somebody to talk to while I drive.”
“That’s illegal.”
“I have Bluetooth. Everybody has fucking Bluetooth.”
Right, right.
“And besides,” his twin said, scoffing, “driving while talking is the least illegal thing we do in this family, let’s be honest.”
“Yeah, but people with kids drive on the roads, Beni. Pregnant women. You know?”
That quieted his brother.
“Vanna getting knocked up made you different,” he eventually said.
Bene nodded, though his brother couldn’t see it. “I know.”
“It ain’t bad.”
“No.”
“But it’s ... new.”
Bene sighed. “Yep.”
“What are you doing, anyway? What do you have to run off for?”
“Ultrasound appointment.”
“Shit, yeah. You’re finding out the sex today, right?”
“Supposed to if I can get you off this damn phone.”
Because ah-ha he’d finally found the paperwork with the numbers his lawyer wanted. Opening the top of the fax machine, he slapped the paper down and pushed the buttons needed to send it off to his lawyer.
“Okay, I gotta—”
“Bene,” his brother said sharply enough to make him quiet.
“What?”
“Promise you’ll call me right after?”
He grinned at that, and really, kind of wished his twin was there. “Well, we’re gonna tell everyone on Sunday, actually,” he said. “You’re coming into town for dinner, so I thought—”
“Really? If this was my first kid, I’d fucking tell you as soon as I knew.”
Bene laughed. “Fuck it, I will call you as soon as I know, okay? But I swear to God, Beni, if you tell Ma or Papa what the baby is before I can ... or anyone else, I will carve your heart right out of your chest. You got me?”
“You know how I appreciate a good threat.”
“Mmhmm. And how I follow through.”
“Right, got it. Hey, what if there’s two babies in there?”
“Beni, there’s one. One single baby. We’ve heard the heartbeat.”
“Yeah, but I heard about some twins that hide behind the other, and you can’t see them until they’re on—”
“The ultrasound, yeah. But we had one of those when she was like ten weeks just to check on size and everything. We saw the baby. There’s only one, and that’s it. Back to my threat because I was fucking serious.”
Beni grumbled under his breath. “Fine. No telling. My phone will be beside me.”
“Better be.”
He barely got the call with his brother hung up before the phone beeped with yet another person trying to reach him. He had a damn good mind to ignore it altogether, but when he realized who it was trying to get a hold of him, he knew that he had to pick up the phone or he would be in a hell of a lot more shit with his father. Considering the thin line he was already walking inside their famiglia and with business, well, he tried not to push the rules set out for him any more than he had to. Things weren’t great with other men in their mafia, but he made it work. At the moment, it was the best he could do.
It was all his father and brothers asked for.
“Kevin,” Bene said, picking up the phone, “what can I do for you today?”
“I’ve got a problem with the asshole on the east side.”
Bene’s brow dipped. “You mean the Capo—”
“Yeah, that asshole. He’s pushing his lines with me again. We’ve had about fifteen sit-downs between Chris and Marcus about it. I called Chris this time and was told to call you. Apparently, you made friends with the fucker and he likes you, so you can go see him today about this problem.”
Why?
Why was this his life?
Oh, he loved it.
He wanted to be a made man, and now he was. He wasn’t a Capo yet, probably wouldn’t be for a while. And he did a fuck lot more running for other people than he wanted to. Really, he probably hadn’t deserved his button and a few people liked to make it known they thought the same, but otherwise ... business was good.
Except on a day like today.
“I’m kind of busy—I can run over in a few hours, though,” Bene said.
“Nope. Now.”
“But—”
“Call Chris, if you don’t fucking like it. You’re now the go-between. That’s what I was told.”
Fuck.
Bene knew better than to call Chris, Marcus, or even his father and ask for special treatment. It didn’t matter what today was or how he promised to be there with Vanna when they found out the sex of the baby. The mafia was what it was—it had to come first, even when he sometimes wished he could put it last. Sure, his brothers would probably work it out, and so would his father, but he didn’t want them to feel like they had to treat him differently than anyone else, either. After all, hadn’t he done that enough before?