“Thank you for taking care of my daughter. These two dumbasses are untrustworthy.”
“Morina took me to the bathroom, and we washed our hands together,” Ivy announced and Katie’s eyes softened as she looked at me. Then they snapped to Bastian’s, a look of determination there. “Take care of her, huh?”
I didn’t know if the sense of foreboding I got as they left was only from her words.
That night, Bastian and I made a little small talk, but we both retired to our own bedrooms.
It didn’t stop me from thinking about him under the same roof as me. Or halt the way my mind drifted back to our kiss on the ride.
He hadn’t kissed me again that day, but he’d held my hand here and there, enough that it almost felt real.
Except it wasn’t.
This was all a charade.
A touch shouldn’t be that complicated and yet my mind liked to run away with an idea.
I rolled over and tried to picture anything else.
22
Bastian
“Good evening, Morina. How was your day?” It was a week since the theme park, and I’d made it home every night. I split my time between businesses in Chicago, LA, and New York. Making it back here, though, proved to the world we had something going on.
Was I doing it to prove something to them or because of her outburst about feeling alone in the penthouse? I wasn’t sure.
I scrolled through my phone while lounging on the couch as the woman ambled down the hallway to greet me. Entertainment news had caught Morina and I together numerous times leaving this building, and the theme park trip was everywhere.
She grumbled something about a day of napping as she walked by, her sleep shirt rumpled and hitting just at mid thigh. She pulled off messy well, like she belonged that way.
“It looks like people have caught wind of our relationship.” I held up my phone.
She glanced at the screen. “Surprised they didn’t use our Splash Rollercoaster kiss as the photo.”
I didn’t comment. That photo wasn’t for the world to see.
Yet, pictures scrolled by of us holding hands, of her staring into my eyes. Each one appeared intimate.
“They really do an amazing job of making us seem in love.” Pointing, she chuckled. “Except this one.”
She giggled and plopped next to me, close enough that I knew she’d loosened up over the past week I’d been home.
“This one looks like I’m getting scolded.” She lowered her voice to sound like a news anchor: “Bastian Armanelli and Mediocre Mo fight already.”
I took note of the news outlet while she scoffed at the nickname.
“Would have sounded much better if they’d written Daddy Bastian puts Little Miss Mo in her place. And, oh my God, are they guessing my weight? My ass alone weighs much more than that.”
A chuckle escaped my lips, and the tension in my neck loosened. The woman truly didn’t give two fucks about the media. Her nonchalance had me wanting to grip her hips and knead said ass.
Desiring her shouldn’t have been in the cards but I still joked with her. “If only they knew how big and not mediocre your ass was.”
Her tanned skin blushed immediately and she licked her lips like she would be ready to go if I asked. When she turned her hips just a little, my hand acted on its own accord to graze over her hip bone. The phone in her hands clattered onto the table. “Bastian…”
Her moaning my name had my hands flying off her. I’d talked of my mother with her and I remembered how Mother had fallen so in love with my father, how she’d lost her passion for the world to that man.
Morina was just as vibrant, maybe even more so. She was young and full of life and I wasn’t pulling her any closer to the mob family I was trying to fix.
“Sorry.” I shook my head. “Sorry, ragazza. It’s time for bed.”
“And here I thought you were so much older than me.” She smirked, goading me to bend her over my knee.
I sighed, my restraint ready to snap. “Get your ass to your bedroom, woman.”
She laughed all the way down the hall like this was just some fun. To her, it might have been.
To me, I needed to keep my sanity and make sure she had a clear mind to sign those shares over to me. It meant clean energy and a clean family legacy. Even if I wanted her ass, I’d have to find another outlet. And it wasn’t just her body, I found myself liking Morina more and more. I had to be careful with that in the future.
I went to bed frustrated and thinking about her ass.
When I woke up, I almost knocked on her door to see if she wanted to do something about it.
Instead, I made coffee and read the paper. I took care of her plants and researched the damn orchid that didn’t want to bloom again. There had to be a solution.
She slothed down the hallway to the kitchen and mumbled something about needing water, and I turned, getting her a glass of it.
“No, no, no.” She waved it off. “I need to surf to wake up. I told you this a couple days ago.” We’d had a few conversations here and there in the days since Ivy and Cade had left. Most of the time, I was on my computer and she tinkered on her phone or with things around the penthouse.
Yesterday, she put up a painting of Buddha. When I asked if that was her religion, she laughed and said no. When I asked why she had it, she said she passed the picture in a discount store and thought he looked cute.
That was Morina. A free-spirited loner with a need to indulge every gut instinct and feeling to its full extent.
“Why do you need to surf in the morning again?”
“Because if I don't, I’m like this,” she hissed. Her voice directed malice at herself, though, not me.
The girl flew toward every feeling she had with a drive that wasn’t healthy. Right now, she’d veered into hating-herself land and combed erratically through her tangled hair with her fingers.
The first time I’d met her, I’d wanted her on my dick and today was no different. Even with no makeup, Morina was beautiful, maybe even more so. Her full lips pouted out soft and pillowy above her strong jawline, and her blue eyes pierced my soul through dark, thick eyelashes. Her face would’ve been striking to anyone, even when she tried to hide it behind a mass of wavy black hair. Her body tempted me, even in a baggy sweatshirt.
This one was monochrome, a black and white design of characters from the theme park. She liked shirts two sizes too big, and the fact Cade had bought that sweatshirt in just the right size irked me for some dumbass reason.
On top of all that, I could still see her full chest straining against the material. I shouldn’t have been looking.
I probably studied her much too long because those azure eyes glared at me like I was dumb and deaf. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Of course. Do you want to go surfing this morning?”