She rubbed the head, teasing me as I climbed on top of the desk with her. Looking down at Maggie, I took her leg in one hand, breathing hard, and jerked her toward me so she slipped right onto my cock.
Every time I had her, it was the same—new and tantalizing. I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of the taste or the feel of her perfect body.
Maggie squeezed against me as I drove inside her, moving her legs apart, her hands on my ass, gripping, pushing me further in.
I took her mouth, blinded by the need to spill everything I was into her. I didn’t know what this was. Knew I should be scared by this, but wanted all of it—this woman, the scorching heat of her body, her tightness, her sweetness wrapped around me always. I’d think about what this new feeling was later. When I wasn’t so caught up by what just being inside of her was doing to my rational thoughts.
“Bella…” I panted, my fingers in her hair, holding her head still as I kissed her. I slowed, trying to be as deep inside her as I could be.
She fit me everywhere and clenched around me so securely when I leaned back, still moving inside. I kept my rhythm slow, methodical, taking in the beautiful, soft features of her face and the thick pout of her luscious mouth.
“Smoke…this…ah, this is good…”
And it was.
It was better than I’d ever had it and like usual with Maggie, I wasn’t thinking of how to be done with this and on to what was next in my night.
I wanted to be here, with her and never let this end.
Moving my hips faster, increasing my speed when she clenched harder, Maggie’s breath got labored and she scratched at my back, arching toward me.
She came around me, taking my cock between her warm walls. I was helpless to do anything but give in, holding onto her face, my moans moving into her mouth between lips and tongues and teeth as I kissed her.
We collapsed together, turning so Maggie lay on my chest, boneless. I held her there, keeping her close, loving how she felt against me. Loving how it had come to seem so natural to me; this woman here, against me. Like she belonged to me. Like she was made to be boneless in my arms, sated and sleepy from how I’d taken her body.
“I’m sorry about your bad day,” I told her, kissing her forehead, but there was no response.
She’d already drifted off, her even breaths moving the hair against my bare chest.
The grin on my face came easy and that sensation I’d felt earlier only intensified as I pulled her closer. I still didn’t know what it was, but let it root and stretch until I thought I might like what it could be.
Then, my cell buzzed, and I stretched an arm over my head, gripping the damn thing before it woke Maggie, spotting Rickey’s name and number pop up on my screen.
“Rick?” I said, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want Maggie awake yet, but he only called when Dino couldn’t and the man had been gone too long.
“Boss, we got a problem with Dino…”
My stomach tightened and I tried to inhale, keeping my breaths even and my pulse from getting too fast. “Tell me.”
“We don’t know who hit the West docks, but they got Dino. Those fuckers tried to take him out.”
Eyes squeezed shut, I wanted to jerk away from the desk and throw the phone through the window. I wanted to scream and beat on something to make it bloody. But Maggie had never seen that side of me.
If I had my way, she never would.
“How…” I cleared my throat when my voice cracked and held the phone away, needing a second to calm myself before I brought it back to my ear. “How bad?”
“We’re following the ambulance. He went to check on Will. Looks like they got the kid and Dino tried cleaning up the docks. He took two to the chest as far as I could tell when we got there. Passed out but was still breathing by the time the paramedics showed.”
Maggie stirred and lifted her head. The smile on her face lowering when she watched me. There were tears burning the back of my throat and I guessed my eyes had already gotten red.
She went to move off of me, but I held her to my chest, finally realizing what that sensation inside had been, hating that I recognized fear for what it was.
I shook my head and she moved back down, snuggling closer, her fingers smoothing over the crucifix in the center of my chest.
“I’ll meet you in half an hour.”
“Yeah, boss.”
Maggie looked up at me, touching my forehead, rubbing her thumb between my eyebrows.
“And Rickey?” I said, taking Maggie’s hand from my face to kiss the center of her palm. “Watch your back.”
He hung up and she opened her mouth, readying a million questions for me she knew I wouldn’t answer.
When I shook my head, Maggie smiled, like she expected an excuse from me and was already fine with whatever it would be.
I hoped she’d be just as fine with what came next.
“Maggie, you and me, we’re gonna need to have a conversation…”
This is what came of my gray business. This is what happens when you have something to lose.
“Yeah?” she said, sitting up.
She wasn’t mine. Neither was Mateo, but soon, I’d make sure they both were.
8
Maggie
“No, asshole…give that to me!”
“I can manage. I’m not a fucking idiot…”
“Yeah? Then why the hell are you trying to put a metal pin in that shit when the instructions say a wooden dowel?” Dante waved the paper at his brother, top lip curled up and nose flaring. “You big chooch, see?”
“Give me that!” The paper ripped, the corner falling to the floor as Dario grabbed it, then held it in front of his face, his big eyes moving as he focused on the instructions.
The mess the two Carelli brothers had made of my living room was ridiculous. There were slats of wood spread out across the floor, some only half-secured to a metal frame. Others still piled in a haphazard stack against the sofa. It killed me to ask these knuckleheads for help, but since Smoke was keeping a low profile—worried about everyone’s safety since Dino had been shot—there had been no one, other than his brothers to help with things I, begrudgingly, had to admit were beyond my physical control. Like lugging in the massive box Mateo’s new toddler bed had come in into our apartment.
Despite my vow to only outfit my kid’s life with things I’d purchased myself, Vi had ordered the bed a week ago when my boy had figured out he could shimmy from his crib by kicking his leg over the railing and slipping down the side. It had nearly given the poor woman a heart attack to find him mid-slide two weekends ago when she went in to check on him during his nap.
“He’s a wild child,” she’d proclaimed when I came home after my shift. “We have to prepare.”
But preparing for whatever Mateo had in store for us meant more than buying a new bed. It meant we’d have to figure out how to put it together. We were capable. But when that box came and we couldn’t even manage to push it from the hallway into our apartment, Vi reasoned we had to admit our limitations.
“We can do a lot of things for ourselves, sugar, but picking that up? No way. We need some muscle.”
But the muscle I wanted, if I was honest, was attached to the one man who wasn’t around. Not since Dino had been shot two weeks ago and Smoke took him from the Cuoricino hospital, which he claimed wasn’t fit to help his man, to the hospital in Edgemont, an hour away. But Smoke hadn’t gone silent.