“What the hell are you doing here?” I slammed Roman up against the wall, my words dripping with venom in the dark hallway.
Running into him last night could’ve been a fluke, but two nights in a row? That wasn’t a coincidence. Not when Roman was involved.
I’d hired a private contractor I’d worked with in the past to look into him the instant I left the bar, but they hadn’t unearthed anything yet. That in and of itself was concerning; they usually had a full report for me within twelve hours, which meant Roman was damn good at covering his tracks.
And the only reason someone would cover his tracks was if he had something to hide.
“Attending a restaurant opening, just like you and your lovely wife,” he drawled, seemingly unfazed by my hostile greeting. “My wedding invite got lost in the mail, but she’s beautiful. I see why you can’t take your eyes off her.”
Arctic needles of fear pierced my spine, followed by the slow simmer of rage. “You touch a single strand of hair on her head,” I said softly. “And there won’t be a place on earth where I won’t hunt you down and kill you so slowly you’ll be begging for death.” My arm pressed tighter against his throat. He didn’t flinch, but something flashed in his eyes before it submerged beneath pools of green ice.
“You didn’t find me all these years. Not until I showed up right in front of your face.”
“I wasn’t looking.”
“No. You were too busy building your empire to remember your dear brother.” His mouth curled with a mirthless smile. “How does the money taste, Dom? As good as you’d always dreamed of?”
Goddammit. I let out a low curse and released my hold, but I kept myself between him and the dining room. “I’ll ask you again. What the fuck are you really doing here, and how the hell do you know Sebastian?”
I’d intercepted him on his way out of the bathroom after he ran into Alessandra. It was a role reversal from last night, when he’d left without answering any of my questions about where he’d been, how he found me, and why he’d showed up again after over a decade of silence.
“You’re not the only one with connections.” Roman straightened his jacket. He’d dressed up for the opening, but even in designer clothing, he exuded trouble. “We’re a long way from Whittlesburg, aren’t we?”
My jaw clenched, his presence and the mention of our hometown unearthing memories that were better left buried.
“We’ll both make it out of here one day.” Roman’s eyes glinted with a stony determination that belonged to someone older than his fourteen years.
A dark bruise marred his face from where our foster mom had hit him. “And when we do, everyone will pay.”
Roman and I had been foster siblings in my fourth home. He was only a year younger than me, and he’d been the closest thing I had to an ally in that hellhole until he fell in with the wrong crowd and landed in juvie for arson my senior year of high school. I’d refused to provide him with a fake alibi; I’d just been accepted to Thayer, and I couldn’t risk upending my future over someone else’s criminal offense. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since.
Until last night.
“Don’t worry. I won’t touch your precious wife. I simply wanted to say hi even if I shouldn’t.” The flash of earlier emotion resurfaced and disappeared as quickly as before. “If you don’t want people to find you, you shouldn’t splash your face all over the Wall Street Journal and society papers.” Roman brushed past me. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a dinner party to return to.”
He made it to the end of the hall before I spoke.
“Tell me you’re not in trouble again.” I shouldn’t care. We’d cut ties long ago, but a small part of me couldn’t shake off my guilt over leaving him in Ohio. He’d made his choices, and I’d made mine, but once upon a time, he’d been the only real family I had.
Roman stopped, his frame falling so still he resembled a statue backlit by the restaurant lights.
“Don’t act like you care,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you.”
The first half of dinner passed without incident, but I barely tasted my food.
I was too distracted both by Alessandra, who sat at one end of the table, and Roman, who sat at the other.
He was up to something. He had to be, and my suspicions only grew after Sebastian admitted he didn’t know him personally. Someone on his team had sent Roman the invite.
Meanwhile, Alessandra was doing her best to pretend I didn’t exist, though I caught her looking at me a few times when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. It should’ve made me feel better. Instead, her proximity to Roman, who was smart enough to detect and exploit the tension between us, made me want to leave dinner and drag her with me to safety, etiquette be damned.
“Stop staring,” Dante said without looking at me. “You’re about as subtle as a sledgehammer.”
“Look who’s talking.” He was infamous for his heavy-handed tactics when it came to punishing people who’d crossed him. Broken bones, comas, the whole shebang.
Nevertheless, I tore my eyes away from where Alessandra was laughing with Vivian and Isabella. We needed to talk about what happened at the bar, which would be easier if I could actually get her alone. I only came tonight to see her, but her friends were like bodyguards who refused to leave her side. I should—
A loud clatter broke through the hum of conversation, followed by a fit of choking and wheezing. It cut off abruptly, and the dining room quieted as I jerked my head toward the previous commotion.
One of the guests had collapsed face down in his plate. Blue suit, distinctive silver hair. Martin Wellgrew, the CEO of Orion Bank.
Sebastian was out of his seat in a flash. “What happened?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. We were talking and then he…he just collapsed,” the woman sitting next to Martin stuttered. “Is he okay? He’s not moving. Oh God…what if…”
I could hear a pin drop while Sebastian checked Martin’s pulse. He sucked in a breath, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“He’s dead.”
There was a moment of stunned silence before pandemonium erupted.
Half the guests rushed for the exit while the other half ran to the restrooms, presumably in case the food had caused Martin’s sudden death. They nearly trampled each other in their haste, and I lost sight of my friends in the mayhem. However, I was only interested in finding one person.
I pushed through the crowd, my heart ricocheting in my chest. A familiar buzz drowned out the mounting hysteria in the room. I didn’t know what happened with Martin, but I needed to see her and make sure she was okay. She could be hurt, trampled, unconscious…
The buzz sawed through my head with high-pitched frequency.
Fuck, why was it so hot in here?
Sweat slicked my palms as I searched for brown hair and a red dress.
Come on, baby, where are you?
The restaurant was small, and it was chaos as I tried to sort through the crush of people.
Black hair. Black dress. Gray hair. Navy suit. The guests blurred into a generic entity. Someone bumped into me, and I was about to push them off when I looked down and a familiar pair of blue-gray eyes met mine.
Relief knocked the breath out of my lungs. She’s okay.
We stared at each other for a suspended second, our chests heaving with adrenaline, before another guest jostled us and spurred us into action again.
She didn’t resist when I gripped her wrist and wrestled us toward the exit. The police had just arrived on the scene, but we managed to slip into a cab without them stopping us. I was sure they’d follow up with every guest later about Martin’s death, but I had zero desire to wait around and play concerned witness at the moment.
Alessandra remained quiet when I gave the driver the penthouse’s address. She seemed shell-shocked by the evening’s jarring turn of events, and I didn’t blame her. I’d attended hundreds of society gatherings over the years; none of them had ended in death.
Then again, none of them had had Roman as a guest.
I hadn’t seen him since Martin’s collapse. Not in the stampede toward the exit and bathrooms, and not outside the restaurant.
A tight knot of dread formed in my stomach. Between the SEC investigation into DBG and Martin’s death, there was a suspicious number of crises involving the banking industry. I didn’t know where Roman’s sudden reappearance fit in, but it was a piece of the larger puzzle. I felt it in my gut.
“Well,” Alessandra said as we pulled up to our building. I still thought of it as ours, even though it hadn’t felt like home since she left. “That was the most memorable dessert course I’ve ever had.”
Despite my trepidation, a smile ghosted my mouth. I’d missed her little quips. Her sense of humor was one of the many reasons I’d fallen in love with her, but it’d made fewer and fewer appearances over the years.
Contrition extinguished my temporary amusement. “Sebastian is going to have a PR nightmare on his hands,” I said. I wasn’t a fan of Martin, who’d been notoriously corrupt and underhanded when he’d been alive, so I couldn’t say I was too torn up over his death. However, its circumstances and timing would have massive ripple effects to come.
“I bet.” Alessandra’s fingers tightened around the edge of her seat. “Oh God. Someone died. He was sitting right across…he…”
Her breaths shallowed. Fuck.
I quickly paid the driver and ushered her into the building and up to the penthouse before she went into shock again.
“It was likely an allergic reaction.” I doubted it, but if it made her feel better, that was what I was going with. “Unfortunate timing, but it happens.
There was nothing you could do about it.” Still, I wrapped her in a blanket and brought her a mug of tea when we entered the penthouse. The staff had clocked out for the night, so the living room was silent as she curled her hands around the drink.
“You probably think I’m overreacting.” She stared into the mug, her face unreadable. If she had any feelings about being home for the first time in weeks, she didn’t show it.
Emotion tangled in my throat. “I don’t. Seeing someone terminate in front of you is pretty traumatic.”
Alessandra’s brow arched a fraction of an inch. “Terminate?”
“It sounded better than die in my head.” I rubbed a hand over my mouth. “It doesn’t, does it?”
“No. Not really.” Her soft laugh warmed the room. Our gazes lingered on each other, and her smile slowly faded as silence descended again. This time, it was a poignant silence, filled with memories and regrets and, perhaps, the tiniest bit of hope.
“Can I confess something?” Her voice was barely audible. “When the chaos erupted and everyone was running, you were the first person I looked for. I didn’t want to, but I did.”
My heartbeats pulsed like they were finally alive.
“Good,” I said quietly. “Because I was looking for you too.”
The rest of our unspoken words spilled around us, one spark away from igniting.
Alessandra’s eyes darkened, and the spark flared to life. Flames of emotion surged through the air, incinerating any inhibitions or rational thought. The only thing left was a gnawing, insatiable desire to kiss her before I died of deprivation.
She must’ve read the intentions scrawled over my face because her breaths turned ragged. Her lips parted, and that was all the invitation I needed.
One second, we were sitting on opposite ends of the couch. The next, my mouth was on hers, her body was against mine, and we were stumbling into the elevator in a tangle of pent-up longing and heightened adrenaline.
Thank god for the penthouse’s private lift because there was no chance in hell we could make it up the stairs without injuring ourselves. Not when my blood was on fire and Alessandra was grasping my hair with a desperation that cut into my soul.
We somehow made it to the bedroom in one piece. I kicked the door shut behind us, and our clothes fell to the floor with little care.
Dress. Shoes. Shirt. Underwear.
They left a rumpled trail behind us as we fell onto the bed. I kissed my way down her neck and chest while my fingers found the heat between her legs.
So wet. So perfect. So mine.
Alessandra let out a small whimper when I closed my mouth around her nipple, licking and sucking until she pulled my hair hard enough to hurt.
“Please,” she panted, bucked against my hand in a fruitless search for more friction. “More. I need more.”
“More what?” I grazed my teeth over her nipples and soothed them with soft, leisurely licks. One hand forced her writhing hips still while the other played with her clit, lingering on the spots that drove her wild. “Tell me what you want, amor.”
“I want… oh God. ” Her hands fisted the sheets as I continued my journey down her torso. My mouth trailed between her breasts, down her stomach and over the smooth rise of her pubic bone. Her skin was hot to the touch, and tiny trembles wracked her body the closer I got to her clit.
I paused at the juncture of her thighs and looked up, soaking in the sight of her flushed face and glazed eyes.
“I asked you a question,” I said calmly. I pushed a finger inside her, eliciting another cry. “Tell me what you want, or I’ll keep you here all night.”
“I want you inside me,” Alessandra panted. She squirmed, clenching around me with obvious need.
“I am inside you.” I added a second finger, withdrew, then pumped inside her again with agonizing slowness. My body practically vibrated with the need to thrust inside her and taste her cries as she came, but I wanted to draw this out as long as possible and savor every second. “Be more specific.”
“Fuck me.” Her plea escaped as a gasp. “I want your cock inside me. Please.”
Her words nearly undid me. I groaned, sweat beading my forehead as I pulled my fingers out and buried my face between her legs.
“Not yet.” I circled her clit with my tongue, letting the taste and scent of her distract me from the ache in my cock. “I want you to come on my face first. Show me how much you want it.”
Alessandra’s pleas morphed into unintelligible sobs as I feasted on every inch of her. I loved the way she arched into me, greedy and searching.
I loved how she panted my name and pulled on my hair. I loved her, and I’d missed having her in my arms so damn bad that I would give up every possession just to freeze this moment in time.
I gripped her thighs and rested her legs on my shoulders so I could thrust my tongue inside her. I locked her ruthlessly in place as I tongue fucked her, letting her sobs of pleasure drive me faster and harder until she finally came with a shuddering climax.
Her arousal drenched my senses, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
A quick shift in positions and I was inside her, sinking in slowly for both our sakes. Her because she was hypersensitized from her recent orgasm, me because she felt so good I had to grit my teeth and silently run through the Yankees roster before I embarrassed myself.
I exhaled deep, ragged breaths each time I pulled out and pushed in, making sure to hit her most sensitive spots instead of pushing her into the mattress and fucking her brains out like my baser instincts screamed at me to do.
My wife was home, and I’d be damned if I wasted the night on a one and done deal.
Alessandra clung to me as I drove into her, harder and faster, until she was gasping for air. My hands fisted on the mattress; my breaths grew choppier. The headboard slammed against the wall with each thrust, and even though I should’ve known better, I made the mistake of looking down at where we were joined.
It was the end of me because seeing my cock slide in and out of her—
seeing how perfectly we fit and how fucking well she took me—was so fucking hot and primal that my orgasm peaked without warning. It climbed up my spine, snapping my restraints and driving me to fuck her deeper with long, savage strokes until she fell apart with another scream.
It’d barely faded before my own climax exploded. It flayed me raw, contracting my muscles and heightening my senses to the point where I might die from the stimulation. Alessandra’s nails clawed at my back, prolonging our waves of pleasure, and as we rode them out together, I had the dim thought that if I did die, I would do so happily because I was exactly where I belonged: with her.
