“But I do feel the same,” I gasp, the rightness of it infusing me like a drug. “Oh, God, Lorenzo. I’ve been thinking about you so much and I just never thought you’d want me like that. I just thought you saw me as your goofy gardener.”
In the back of my mind, an evil voice whispers that this is a trick, some grand prank and that I’m going to be made into a cruel punchline like I’ve been before. I try to kill it but the whispers keep going, seeding doubt.
But with the godlike physique of Lorenzo pressed up against me, and with his words singing through my mind with carnal conviction, I can’t sink into self doubt and self hate.
“Never,” he whispers, inching his face closer to mine. His breath washes over me, cascading across my cheeks and making them bloom rose red. “You’re my queen, my life partner, the mother to my future children. You’re mine, Lena. Say it.”
“I’m yours,” I whisper.
“That’s right,” he growls.
He crashes his lips against mine and snarls like a primordial beast. I part my lips and we taste each other, our tongues surging forward and clashing, the tips sending quivering nerves shooting through me, right down deep to my core and then over my skin.
Everything sizzles as I reach up and wrap my arms around his shoulders, squeezing through the fabric of his suit and feeling the unyielding flesh. He squeezes onto my hips with possessiveness and lifts me up onto a table.
I giggle with glee as he handles me like I weigh nothing. I’ve never been lifted up by a man like this before. I’ve never even kissed a man, really, except when I was very young and even that was just pecks on the cheek.
This is primal and I lose myself in it, feeling how much I belong to him as each scorching moment brings our passion closer and closer together. He slides his hand through my hair, freeing the bun and causing it to cascade down my back.
Fear jabs at me as I realize how sweaty I am from the garden work, my hair a little greasy since the water pressure at my apartment is one small step above a light drizzle and washing it properly is an uphill battle. But he lets out a groan and fists my hair, guiding my lips closer to his.
He moves forward and I can feel his manhood pressing against me like a concealed metal rod in his pants, grinding up against my shorts.
I want to keep going, to just keep sinking deeper and deeper into the kiss.
But I have to tell him before it’s too late.
It’s going to change everything.
It might even make him hate me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, as I lean away.
“I have to tell you something,” I whisper. “And you’re not going to like it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Lorenzo
The kiss is like a conflagration, a fire burning through both of us and fusing us, as though it’s a preview of what creating our offspring is going to be like. I feel her responding to me and hear the fertile longing in her high pitched moans. Her body is a landscape I could spend the rest of my life roaming, experiencing every inch of her again and again.
But then she breaks it off.
She has something to tell me. Her leaf green eyes flit around the room as she tries to summon the courage to say it, whatever it is.
I squeeze her tighter, our bodies pushed right up against each other. Her breasts are pressed against my chest and it takes all my self control not to tear through her shirt and free them.
I’d rip her bra free with my teeth and then softly graze her nipples, making them as hard and needy as they’ll be when her life giving milk is oozing from them.
My manhood aches at the base, throbbing with ferocious intent.
“You can tell me anything,” I whisper, smoothing my hand down her cheek. Her skin pricks with goosebumps and she smiles slightly, turning her head so that she can nuzzle closer to my hand.
“Anything?” she whispers, leaning back and tilting her head like the hellcat she is. My hellcat. “Are you sure about that? What if I’ve got a secret that’s going to frickin’ change everything, Lorenzo?”
“Tell me,” I say firmly.
She sighs, and then lightly pushes against my chest and hops off the table. I step back and give her the room she needs to pace up and down. She wrings her hands together and lets out a trembling sigh, shaking her head and then glancing at me with anxiety dancing in her eyes.
“I’m a virgin,” she blurts, throwing her hands up and glaring at me as though I’m about to challenge her. “There! It’s out now. And I know this is going to change everything—”
Suddenly, there’s a loud bang, bang, bang on the door. Somebody is thumping the wood with what sounds like the butt of a firearm. I turn, anger lancing through me at whoever the fuck thinks it’s appropriate to interrupt me when I’m with my queen.
I need to tell her how I feel about her admission, but first, I have to deal with this.
“Yes?” I call.
“It’s me, boss,” Matteo says. My anger morphs to curiosity, my predator’s instincts piquing. My consigliere isn’t the sort of man to bother me without cause. “There’s been an incident. Diego Romano has made a move against you.”
Fuck.
“I have to deal with this,” I tell Lena. “But I’ll see you soon, I promise.”
I walk across the bar, my shoes crunching on the charcoaled remains of one of the stools. Glass litters the floor and fire has eaten up an entire wall, the remains of a dart board lying like a chew toy among the mess. Patches of the bar remain standing, but in other places, it’s collapsed in upon itself, like a wooden pothole.
“Fucking Diego,” I mutter, kicking a broken bottle across
