But he’s at war and he needs to answer the phone … and no, it has absolutely nothing to do with the nerves gnawing incessantly at the edge of my resolve.
With the sassiest smile I can manage, I slide my hand into his suit jacket pocket and take out his cellphone. I intend to answer it with one casual swipe of my thumb, but my movement pauses when I see the name on the screen.
Gabriel S.
“It’s Dad,” I murmur.
Dom’s eyes flicker for a moment. The unsaid thing hanging between us rears its head, but then Dom nods shortly, as though silently agreeing to put it aside for now.
I answer with the same nod.
Let’s live in the dark together.
“Let’s have dinner soon,” Dom growls, taking the phone and clutching it, his hand shaking as though he knows how badly everything will explode when Dad finally founds out.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I want that. And I know you want to tell him … about everything. Soon, okay? Just give me a little time.”
He leans forward and kisses my forehead softly, the contact awakening the lust his touch erupts. I feel it all, my body wrapped in a blanket of desire.
I have to take a step back because I can feel his body trembling against mine, his desire flaming, and if I don’t he’ll miss his call.
And he can’t do that.
Maybe Dad needs help.
We’re at war.
This is so crazy.
“Gabriel,” Dom says, answering the phone. “What is it?”
Chapter Fifteen
Dom
“I’ve got two of these bastards ready for snatching,” Gabriel says.
I glance at Dallas, tension running through my body as I study her in the bathrobe. The way the silk dapples her curves is like light, the fabric so airy, tempting me to forget about my Family – my men – and cast responsibility aside.
The urge to grab her and tear that gown off her body like gift wrap is almost deafening, a rushing roar inside my head that tells me now, right fucking now.
I need to claim her. I need to taste her again, but never stop drinking this time. I need to make her soaked and tight around my massive throbbing cock, feeling the way her lips quiver, messages from her womb that she’s desperate for this.
Her body needs to take my seed, to plant it, and let it flourish into our offspring.
Perhaps she senses this savage intensity inside of me because she brushes by me and leaves the ensuite. I hear her baby-talking to Poppet, calming her barking episode, and can’t help but think about what an incredible mother she will be.
“Where?” I say, strolling over to the mirror and glancing idly at myself.
A seven foot starving man stares back at me. Not emaciated, not bone-thin, but in his eyes, he’s starving, every instinct in him – me, my animal-alert reflection – primed to charge into the bedroom and bend her over the bed.
Spank her ass. Throw her onto the bed and make her suck my fingers as I suck her nipples, suck them hard until they’re hard, and almost frothing with their milky release.
I push the thoughts down, willing myself to focus.
“We’re at the docks. I’ve got Giovanni and a few others with me. We watched three of them go in and now two are coming in and out, carrying shit into a truck. Maybe the other’s working a shift there. I don’t know. But I reckon we can grab these two while they’re loading. I just need your go ahead.”
“Alive, Gabriel,” I say firmly.
He huffs and I can almost hear him rolling his eyes.
“Alive,” I snap again. “I don’t want to tell you a third time.”
“I know, Skip. Alive. I’ve got faith you know what you’re doing—”
“I’m so fucking flattered,” I say, deadpan.
Gabriel laughs darkly. “But there’s still a part of me that wants to roll up and do these motherfuckers like they did Dante and Jimmy.”
Dante and Jimmy, the guards the Irish killed when they rolled up to Gabriel’s apartment building. It’s their funerals tomorrow, solemn affairs, and yet another reason for the men to want to resort to bloody street violence.
“I know,” I sigh, laying my fist on the marble sink surface. I grind my knuckles solidly and grit my teeth. “But they are part of a larger plan, a way to draw Patty out without setting the whole damn city on fire. Do this clean. Not a single bullet fired.”
Gabriel sighs. “You got it, Dom. You fucking got it.”
“Call me as soon as it’s done.”
He hangs up and I move into the bedroom. Dallas is no longer there. I follow her scent out of the bedroom door and down the hallway. I feel like a wolf as I follow her perfume and her just-her scent, like a vampire, my nose hyper-tuned to the release of her take-me endorphins.
I can just hear her in the garden, and join her outside, Poppet running laps up and down the flowerbeds. The sun blazes down and I see she’s changed into some sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt, none of which can hide the deliciousness of her body beneath.
I stand beside her in the shadow of the house, both of us watching as Poppet leaps and frolics, lost in her own excitable world.
“The fourteenth of August, nineteen ninety,” Dallas murmurs, reading the plaque on the bench nearby.
My blood turns cold for a moment and suddenly the sun doesn’t seem warm, but icy, as cold as a frozen-over hell. Memories stab at me and I remember the blood under my fingernails. I remember the mayhem in my mind and the animal calm that came over me as I stood there, listening to the sounds of the sirens and the city and the rush of violence in my own ears.
“It’s the date my parents were murdered in front of me,” I say softly.
The passcode for my phone. A silly bit of sentimentality.
I feel a weight dropping from my body, as though I’ve been wearing a metal vest all these years and now it’s
