Page 69 of Ruthless Sin
I reach across the console before I decide to. My thumb finds the chocolate at the corner of her mouth and wipes it clean. I pull my hand back and put my thumb in my mouth and suck it clean and look at her.
She goes still. Her eyes drop to my mouth. The color comes up in her face starting at her throat, moving up her neck to her cheeks, and her mouth is slightly open and my cock is so hard it hurts and I put the SUV in drive before I do something I can’t undo.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever, you idiot. Drive.
My hands are white on the wheel. My pulse is in my ears. I drive.
We pull through the compound gate.
I stop in the drive.
She opens her door, gets out with the box against her chest and the ice cream carriers balanced on top, and walks to the front door without looking back.
I do not turn off the engine until she has closed the front door behind her.
Then I sit in the car.
Fuck.
I turn off the engine, get out, walk inside.
I put my hand on the front door before I open it. The knob is still warm where her hand was. I want things I am not going to name tonight. I go inside.
15
MILA
Sofia holds out the hairpins and steps into the room without asking. She used to stand in doorways. She doesn’t anymore, and I notice it every time, and I don’t say anything because neither does she. I let her in because the dress is already on and her fingers know what they’re doing.
She moves behind me at the dresser and finds the strand at my left temple, twists it back and pins it. She does the same on the right.
She walks out without another word.
The stairs are wide. My feet know them. Tonight every board is a separate thing under my shoes. The wood grain under my soles, the rail that’s been touched by every hand in this family for years, the light from the lower floor warming the wall as I come down.
Maria is at the bottom.
She has a cloth in her hand. She isn’t using it. She’s watching me come down the last three stairs without saying anything, then crosses herself, quick, the way she does in the kitchen over Nonna’s pots when she thinks no one sees, and turns away to the kitchen without looking back.
My chest pulls. It means something, being looked at like that. I don’t have a word for it yet.
I follow her into the noise.
The dining room is loud.
Renzo has Marco laughing, a short, surprised sound that doesn’t fit the serious set of his jaw. Izzy’s wine is almost gone. Giada is in a dress I’ve never seen on her, dark blue, no scrubs.
Cassia is to Dante’s right with the bump full under green silk and her hand on the table like she was putting it there for balance and forgot to move it. Nonna at the kitchen doorway in her apron. Marco in a clean shirt.
There is a man I don’t know.
Dark suit, no entourage, no signal of rank. He is sitting across from where Nico sits, and he is the only person at the table who hasn’t turned toward the door since the noise started. His eyes find me the second I’m in the doorway. One beat, top to bottom, door to table, threat or not, and then he looks back at his glass. The scar at his right temple catches the chandelier light for a second. His hands are flat on the table. Still. Not gripping anything.
A careful man. I know what careful costs. I respect it.
I stop in the doorway.
