Lips parting and moving slowly together, she threaded her fingers through his hair as already awakened sparks of desire flickered into flames inside her, and when she felt his arousalgrow and jut against her thigh, she deepened the kiss and tilted her hips in silent invitation.
With the faintest of groans, he lifted himself onto an elbow. His lips fusing back to hers, he reached down for his length and guided it to her opening. Gazing into his hooded eyes, she wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him and welcomed his possession, sighing her pleasure to feel him inside her again.
Did it matter that he was her enemy if he could make her feel like this, she wondered dimly as they began to move together. If marrying the devil meant pleasure like this, then that was a trade she could live with, because devil or not, this was heaven.
She could feel every glorious inch of him moving so deeply inside her. Elio filled her with a zinging, burning completeness that was better than anything else on this earth. When her climax had crept up on her the first night he’d taken her so tenderly, it had caught her unawares, shocking her with both the heavenly sensation and the strength of it. Elio had taken her to that heavenly place many times since then, and now she actively chased it.
Sliding her hand down the smooth, muscular plane of his back, she groped for his buttock and squeezed it tightly, urging him on, raising her thighs higher and seeking another of his dizzying kisses.
As if sensing her body’s growing need for release, his movements lengthened and quickened. A hand gripped her thigh to spread it wider, and now he was no longer just filling her. Their bodies were locked so tightly together that he was a part of her, the coil inside her winding tighter and tighter until it sprang free and the heavenly sensations exploded inside her again. Holding him tightly, she rode the waves, crying out at the bliss of the spasms rippling through her body, lost to everything but this perfect, heavenly moment and the heavenly heat ofElio’s mouth on her ear as he gave a strangled groan and drove into her one final, blissful time.
* * *
Elio finished shaving his neck and was patting it dry when his tiny flip phone buzzed. Before looking at it, he flicked his stare to the closed bathroom door. On the other side of it, Siena would be getting dressed. She had as many phones as he did, so the handful he used had never been commented on. In their world, burner phones were a must. For this particular phone, there was only one contact stored on it, under the name of Michael. The contact number went to ‘Michael’s’ burner phone. ‘Michael’s’ message consisted of just one word:Done.
For the briefest of moments, the room seemed to spin around him before he expelled a long breath.
He’d wanted it to be today. Today was the anniversary of his mother’s death.
Padding to the door, he put his ear to it. Hearing the sound of the hairdryer, he fired a quick message back:When can you get the car?
The reply came in seconds:A week on Tuesday.
He closed his eyes and allowed himself a private moment of elation before deleting the messages. There was little chance of Sienna seeing them and even less chance of her understanding them, but he hadn’t dragged himself from the gutter to the position of taking everything from the Espositos by taking chances, even negligible ones.
Michael was Vincent Angeli, the Espositos’ lawyer. The car was the Espositos. What was done was the completion of the documents to remove Lorenzo Esposito’s name from all the individual businesses and investments, including the casinos, that he’d gifted his wife and children during his lifetime.
Except he’d never fully gifted them. Lorenzo’s name had remained on them.
When his wife and children signed the documents a week on Tuesday, they wouldn’t be taking full sole control of those assets. They’d be unwittingly signing them over to Elio. The notary who’d be overseeing it all, a member of the judiciary who’d been on the Espositos’ payroll for decades, was now on Elio’s payroll.
All the pieces of the jigsaw Elio had spent over twenty years creating were now ready to be put into place.
When Elio went to bed in ten days’ time, every business and asset the Espositos used to launder their money through would belong to him. They wouldn’t know it, but the Espositos would belong to him.
They would be finished.
The hairdryer had stopped. He closed his eyes again and swallowed, trying to unblock his choked throat. He’d sworn vengeance. Promised his surviving family vengeance. Valeria Esposito was a dead woman walking. She’d known from the outset that her husband had set Elio’s father up. She didn’t deserve to live.
Her children, though…
They’d enjoyed a life of luxury that had been paid for with his family’s blood, then willingly stepped into the shadows. They’d embraced the life. Rico was the only one who’d turned his back on it. His life would be spared. The others would only lose theirs if they refused to cooperate.
He pictured the beautiful, smart, hot-tempered woman moving around on the other side of the door, and his heart made a twisting motion.
Only two weeks of marriage, and he was already getting used to sharing his life with her. Not thatused towas in any way adequate for the ride that was his marriage. By day, she was barely civil to him. In the bedroom, though, she melted forhim, and he pictured how, every night, she climbed primly into bed and held herself so still until he climbed on top of her and demanded his goodnight kiss. It was like she held her hunger for him in check until the moment their lips fused.
When he’d idly mentioned the other night, slumped on her after sex, his nose nuzzling the arch of her neck, her fingers softly stroking his hair, that she was welcome to take the lead and seduce him any time she wanted it, she’d whipped her hands off him and told him hell would freeze over first before pushing at his shoulders and telling him to get off her.
Her feelings for him, he strongly suspected, were as complicated as his were for her.
He also suspected that his wife was the only Esposito even remotely prepared for the retribution that was coming for them. Valeria had complete trust in Mattia’s judgement and so was happy to believe Elio’s marriage to Siena was the extent of the Ranieris vengeance. Mattia was too intent on proving himself a worthy successor to his father to dare question his own judgement. Tommaso was too loved-up with his wife to think with the brain in his head, and Rico’s angel had just announced she was pregnant, so his mind was elsewhere too.
Only Siena had kept her focus and her wits about her and was smart enough not to trust him. When this was all over, he’d be tempted to ask her to join him. Be more than his wife. Be a part of his team. He just had to wait to see how things played out.
For now, though, they were due to dine at a restaurant with Siena’s family to celebrate her birthday.
He could think of nothing he’d rather do less.