Page 40 of Wicked Mafia Mistake
I can't help it. I laugh. It comes out breathless and wrecked and edged with something that might be tears. "Clause fourteen. The screaming clause. We're adding it."
He lifts me off the counter, wraps my legs around his waist, and carries me down the hallway to my bedroom. My arms circle his neck and I bury my face against his throat, breathing in cologne and the warm scent of his skin.
He lays me down on my white linens and follows me down, his body covering mine, his weight pressing me into the mattress. His mouth finds mine and he kisses me slow and deep, and I taste myself on his lips. His hand cradles my jaw and his thumb strokes my cheekbone and he pulls back just far enough to look at me, his face inches from mine, close enough that I can count the flecks of gold in his brown eyes and see the tiny scar at the corner of his left eyebrow.
"Sloane Whitmore." He says my whole name, quiet, like he's trying it on for size. A hand moves up my body until he’s cupping my face and his touch feels reverent. "I should have paid attention sooner."
My heart breaks open. "You're paying attention now."
He holds my gaze. Nods once. Pulls me into his chest and wraps both arms around me so tight I feel his heartbeat in time with mine.
I just signed myself over to a man who doesn't know I chose him long before he chose me. He thinks this started with a wrong number on my birthday. He doesn't know it started eleven years ago.
Someday I'll tell him.
Not tonight.
Tonight I close my eyes and let myself be held by the only man whose hands I trust and pretend, for a few perfect hours, that this contract is real and I get to keep him forever.
Ten
Massimo
Penthouse 106 has never sounded like this.
Sloane is in my kitchen wearing my Harvard t-shirt and a pair of black shorts that barely qualify as clothing, her blonde hair loose and damp from a shower, her bare feet padding across the hardwood while she opens and closes cabinets like she's conducting an inventory of my life. The faint scent of her shampoo drifts through the kitchen every time she moves, something floral and warm that has already started replacing the smell of leather and whiskey I've been breathing for eight years.
"You have fourteen bottles of whiskey and zero snacks." She pulls open another cabinet and peers inside, the hinges squeaking in the quiet penthouse. "Not even crackers, Massimo. Who lives like this?"
"A man who eats at restaurants."
"A man who eats alone at restaurants." She finds a box of stale water crackers behind the Macallan and holds it up with two fingers like evidence. "These expired four months ago."
"I've been busy."
"Busy dying of scurvy, apparently." She tosses the box in the trash, and I lean against the island and watch her move through my kitchen with the ease of a woman who has already decided this space belongs to her. She's been here less than two hours and she's rearranged the coffee mugs, criticized my lack of throw pillows, and informed me that my bathroom needs plants.
My bathroom needs plants. I've lived in this penthouse for eight years and it never occurred to me that the bathroom needed anything other than a shower and a toilet.
I take a pull of ice water now because apparently I drink too much and let the coolness settle into my chest. She looks up and catches me watching her, the evening light from the windows casting long amber shadows across the island between us.
"What?"
"Nothing." Everything. She's in my kitchen. She's in my shirt. Her name is on our marriage contract and my ring will be on her finger by the end of the week and I still can't believe any of this is real.
My intercom buzzes. I check the screen. Kon's face fills the frame, Onyx tucked beside him with her dark hair and sharp eyes already scanning the camera like she's looking for evidence of something.
Of course. Word travels fast in this family. Luca probably told Kon who told Onyx who told Kon they were coming over whether anyone invited them or not.
"Company," I tell Sloane. "Kon and Onyx."
Her eyes go wide. "Onyx is here? Right now?" She looks down at my t-shirt and the shorts and her bare face. "I’m a wreck."
"You’re beautiful."
"You’ve had your eyes on my ass for the past two hours." She's already moving toward the bedroom. "Stall them. Give me five minutes."
"You don't need five minutes. You look?—"
