Wrong (Spada Crime Family #2) (10 page)

“Jesus, Nick!” I push up from the chair and start to pace. I promised myself I wasn’t going to let him get to me, but that’s impossible. Everything about this situation is getting to me. “Most people take years to decide if they want kids. Some even take that long to decide if they want to get married. How do you expect me to make that decision in the amount of time it takes you to have a damn meeting with Phil Spada?”

“I don’t see how it’s that big a deal. Either you want my protection or you don’t. Simple yes or no.”

“No, it’s not that simple. We’re talking about a
baby
, Nick. Another life being brought into the world. It’s not just a deal. It’s bigger than that.” How can he write this off so simply? He has no idea what he’s really asking from me. Having a baby won’t just mean sacrificing my body. It’ll mean giving up part of my soul. Forever.

“Well,” he says, and he’s starting to sound angry, “I don’t have years to decide. I’m thirty-six years old. It’s time I put down roots when I have the chance.”

“What about me?” I have a feeling I wouldn’t be able to get any of this through his thick skull even if I tried to pound it through with a rubber mallet.

“I’ll protect you, and I’ll protect your bakery. That’s your legacy, right? Fair and square.” He picks up his beer again. “We talked about this already. Even trade.”

I can’t make this decision. It’s too much. I don’t know what to do, and I feel like he’s railroading me into deciding before I’ve had enough time.

But he’s right, sort of. What he’s offering me isn’t that much different than what I already agreed to with Sal, except Nick’s more likely to treat me decently. He’s not the type to smack me around—I’m pretty sure of that. Just the way he responded when Nick hit me at the party tells me that.

The big thing is, though, that saying yes could buy me some time. Surely he won’t want to get married immediately, and if all he wants is me pregnant, there’s no guarantee that’ll happen right away, either. In fact, it’s more likely it’ll take a while. Months, even. I could work with that. I might even be able to get out of the deal before I’m actually carrying his kid.

Looking at it that way makes it almost seem palatable. Not ideal, of course, but a better way out than anything else I’ve seen.

“You’ll help me with the bakery? Get the equipment I need so I can actually make some money?”

Nick jumps on that like a dog on bacon. “Yes. I’ll be sure you’ve got everything you could possibly want. And not just for the bakery. For yourself. Anything and everything you need, I’ll be sure you’ve got it. Clothes, shoes, jewelry, books, movies—I don’t care. It’ll be yours.”

“I have clothes,” I protest.

“No, you don’t. You’ve got nothing right now, Sarah. You can’t go back to Sal. Not for anything. You know that.”

I just stare at him. Surely he’s kidding. But no, that doesn’t seem to be the way he functions. He doesn’t kid around, even when what he’s proposing sounds like he’s bat-shit off his rocker. “I can’t just…leave everything.”

“You have to. Trust me on that.”

I don’t want to trust him on anything. There’s a lot of me left at Sal’s place. If I just abandon everything, then what am I really?

He’s not done talking, because of course he’s not.

“You start over. Fresh. Leave everything behind. You’re not Sal’s anymore—you’re mine. You do exactly what I tell you, no questions. Especially when it comes to Sal, or Spada, or anybody else in the organization. That includes your friends—any wives or girlfriends you’ve been hanging out with while you’ve been with Sal.”

I don’t have much in the way of friends—Sal’s seen to that. I’m not going to tell Nick that, though. He’s pushed this deal to another level and I don’t like where it’s going. “How is that any different than being with Sal? You
own
me? What the fuck is this, the Middle Ages?”

“It might as well be.” His voice is flat, humorless. “I figured you would have worked that out by now.”

The sad part is, he’s right. When I stepped into Sal’s world, I stepped back a few centuries. Now I’ve got to live with it, at least until I can find a way out. Nick’s proposal isn’t a way out, but it’s at least away from Sal. I can work out the rest later.

Then I realize I’m actually considering this idea seriously. What the hell is wrong with me? Nick is still talking, though, and I’m still listening.

“I’ll take care of you, and I’ll keep you safe. I can handle Sal. Sal’s an asshole, and I’m not the only one who wants him gone. But when it comes down to it, I’m putting my life on the line here, too. He’ll come after me. You know that. He’ll kill me if he gets half a chance. He’ll kill you, too.” He’s gotten intensely earnest, leaning toward me so close I’m afraid he’s about to fall off the edge of the chair. “It’s not really that crazy a deal, if you think about it.”

I
am
thinking about it. More seriously than I ever thought I would. It stinks, but he’s right. I’ve put myself into a position where this is actually the best choice I have. At least I know he’ll be better than Sal. At least I know I’ll enjoy sleeping with him. Add that to his promise to help me build my bakery into a real business, and it starts to feel like something better than just the lesser of two evils.

I don’t realize I’m nodding until he says abruptly, “There! I knew you’d come around.”

That’s nice for him, because I didn’t know I was going to come around. He rises from his chair and moves to sit next to me on the couch. I draw back a little, not sure what he’s going to do.

“Are we going to make up a contract or something?” I ask him. That’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. Get it in writing. Then I wonder what kind of lawyer or whatever would sign off on something like that.
Easy answer. A mob lawyer. Duh.

“You have my word, Sarah.” He lifts a hand and strokes his fingers along the side of my face. “Do you really need anything else?”

I’m thinking I probably do, but instead I just turn my face against his touch. His fingers are warm. I know from experience now that he knows just how to touch me. He’ll have me going crazy in five minutes if I stop fighting myself.

“Maybe,” I say. “We can talk about it later.”

His thumb traces over my lower lip. I’m still stunned at how good it feels to let him have his way with me. It’s not just that he knows how to play a woman’s body—he knows how to play
my
body, and how he figured that out so fast is anybody’s guess.

He smiles and leans forward to kiss me. “Later is good,” he says just before his lips touch mine. The kiss is gentle but filled with promise. Not of affection or any sort of emotion, but of heat. His tongue traces the seam of my mouth, and every cell in my body knows he’s going to set me on fire.

The kiss goes deeper, until he’s exploring my mouth with his tongue, claiming it in a way he hasn’t before. It’s like he knows he can do anything he wants now, so he’s not wasting time taking anything slow and easy. His hand moves down between my legs, fingers pressing against my thighs. That’s when I draw back a little.

“No,” I tell him.

“No?” His fingers slide farther between my legs, pressing hard against my crotch. “I’m not sure ‘no’ should be part of your vocabulary right now.”

I give him a look. “Not here. Take me to bed.”

His eyes narrow, then he smiles. “All right. I suppose it’s only fair.”

He bends to pick me up and carries me toward the stairs. He’s conceding to my request, but he’s also reminding me of his strength, of the control he has over me. It’s fine, I tell myself. My stomach’s fluttering, but the anxiety is a turn-on. I don’t like to admit that, even to myself, but it’s true. I’m a little bit afraid of him, and not only is that not a problem for me, but it’s actually making me that much hotter.

He starts kissing me again halfway up the stairs, his mouth fusing to mine. The way he’s holding me—he barely has to exert himself, or at least that’s what it feels like. He’s got me, and I’m not going to fall.

Not this time.

I get lost in his kissing, the movement of his tongue, the way he’s stroking the inside of my mouth. I’m so involved in it I barely notice when he moves through the door to his bedroom. Then he’s laying me down on the quilt, easing himself over me, all while still kissing me.

He gets himself situated, and his mouth shifts, kissing my face, moving down my neck. His hands cup both my breasts, and then he starts easing my buttons open. I don’t have on a bra—I didn’t wear one here, after all—and it only takes a few buttons before he’s able to slide a hand under the shirt and cup one of my breasts. He plays the nipple with his thumb. I focus on the sensation, trying not to think about what I’m actually doing here. Because I’m selling myself, pure and simple. Yes, I did it once before, but this feels different. Maybe because this time I understand what I’m doing, much more deeply than when I succumbed to Sal’s demands.

Just stop thinking.
Yes, that would be best for both of us. I push all my thoughts to the back of my head and just focus on what Nick’s doing to my body. His hands are warm, his fingers spreading to clasp my breast then moving down my stomach to unbutton the jeans I lifted from his closet.

“Where did you get these?” he asks as he slides the zipper down.

“Found them in your closet.” I lift my hips so he can slide the jeans down off my hips.

“Ah.” He frowns a little. “I wonder who they belonged to.”

There’s a quick pang in the middle of my chest. Somebody stayed the night here, left their clothes here, and Nick doesn’t even know who it was. That’s the kind of man he is.

I bite my lip and close my eyes for a second, getting myself back under control. By now he’s gotten my jeans off, sliding them down over my bare feet. I didn’t bother looking for shoes or socks. It seemed pointless.

Now I’m glad, because it’s that much easier for him to undress me, one less thing for me to think about. Plus he strokes his thumb down the arch of my bare foot, firmly so it doesn’t tickle, and another wave of need passes through me. His lips touch my ankle, kissing me there, then up the inside of my calf, my knee, up to my thigh. His breath is warm against my skin. Softly he strokes his tongue along the inside of my thigh, then higher.

I reach down to grab at his hair, but he meets my hand there and disentangles my fingers, trapping them in his and pressing my hand against the mattress. He also doesn’t finish the move I thought he was trying to make. Instead of burying his face between my thighs, he presses his mouth against my belly and then starts to kiss up the length of my body. He pauses between my breasts, and I take the opportunity to unbutton his shirt and push it back from his shoulders.

There’s a moment of shifting and moving as he works the shirt the rest of the way off himself. I pull and tug where I can, but the angles make it hard to provide any real assistance. Since there’s no point trying to help much more with the shirt, I reach for his fly instead and start working on his trousers. He’s in dress clothes from the morning’s meeting, so the fly has an extra button. That doesn’t slow me down much, and it’s only a few seconds before his pants are halfway down his thighs and his shirt is completely off.

He’s hard—very much so—and I reach down to cup my fingers around the length of his erection. The heat soaks through the cotton underwear and into my hand. My pussy’s heating up, too, and I can feel moisture on the insides of my thighs.

Nick shoves his pants off along with his dress shoes and socks, and now we’re both naked, hot skin against hot skin. His cock throbs against my lower belly. As he lowers himself over me again, catching my mouth with his, the hard jut of his erection presses into my skin almost painfully. It can’t be a good angle for him, either, but he doesn’t seem to notice, focused now on kissing me again. His mouth is hard and demanding now, searching and exploring but not gentle or easy by any means.

My breath is speeding up, and I can feel my heartbeat in the base of my throat. There’s no denying I want this, no matter how much I’d like to do just that. He draws back from the kiss and studies my face a moment then bends his head to bury his mouth in the curve of my shoulder. He bites me there, and I whimper. It hurts just enough to make my whole body shiver, wanting more.

But when he shifts his hips, easing between my legs, I clench, suddenly realizing what he’s doing.

“Nick,” I manage. I grab at his shoulders, trying to push him back, but it’s like trying to move a slab of granite. He’s heavy and solid and determined. “Nick… Condom?”

His gaze finds mine again. He’s smiling a little. “Why?”

“Um…for the obvious reasons.” He’s not trying to force his way past my protesting hands, but he’s not pulling back, either.

“You agreed to the deal, am I right?” He strokes my hair back from my face as he says it. The action makes is clear that, no matter how hard I think I’m pushing against him, pushing him away, he’s not under control by any means. He’s in a position where he could do anything he wants to me, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.

I want to tell him no, I did no such thing, or no, I changed my mind, but it’s way too late for that. “Well…” I can’t bring myself to actually say yes.

He shrugs. “Then we might as well get started, right? The sooner I fuck that baby into you, the happier I’ll be.”

It’s such a crude way to say it. I should slap him right across his not-quite-smug face. Fucking asshole. But I don’t. I just look at him, feeling the hardness of his cock against my thigh. I want him. I want him inside me. Right now. And the idea of his seed inside me, finding its way to my womb—it should scare me, but it doesn’t. It’s more than just his promise of protection. It’s my body answering his. My mind isn’t quite there yet, and neither is my heart, but my body—dammit, my body wants everything he has to give me.

He shifts just a little, the head of his cock almost against my entrance. I hold his gaze, saying nothing. He just waits. It’s when I realize he’s not going to do anything without my agreement that I finally relax under him. I nod. “Okay.”

Bending forward, he kisses my forehead then my face. I’m surprised he doesn’t go straight for the prize. He strokes my hair a few more times, his hips shifting between my legs, then he’s right there. I let my thighs relax, and he slides inside. I close my eyes.