“Why can’t I be soft with you?” he asked himself out loud. “Why can’t I be kind? Why haven’t I learned that after all this time?”
She rolled up to him, gentle and lax as she rested her cheek on his chest and traced her fingers over the ridges of his abdominal muscles. “You want to be broccoli instead of a hot-fudge sundae?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he admitted as he kept his arm draped over his eyes.
“Good for me, rather than just tasting like sin,” she clarified and then ran her fingers over his lips, making him lick the pad of one on reflex. He flicked his tongue over it the same way he might her clit. She hummed low in her throat. “Nice.”
He lifted his arm and looked at Brianna, seeing that her light gaze was trained on his mouth, and she didn’t seem too terribly put out that he had just taken out four years of frustration on her body.
Tino grabbed her wrist, still watching her face as he flicked his tongue against the pad of her index finger again. She quirked an eyebrow, her gaze growing softer before she said, “You feel so bad. Make it better.” She pushed her hand up, spreading her fingers wide and presenting her palm to him. “Lick it.”
He couldn’t hide the faint smile that tugged at his lips, but then he closed his eyes and did a fucking amazing job of licking her palm. Putting real effort into getting it as wet as possible, sliding his tongue in between her fingers and then sucking the digits into his mouth.
He could hear the catch in her breathing, but then the joke was on him when she pulled her wrist free from his grasp and stroked his cock, still semihard from fucking her. He moaned, half tempted to shove her hand away because now he was the sensitive one.
Instead he let her touch him until he was fully hard again. Breathless. Exposed, but it didn’t bother him; it turned him the fuck on in a big way. Tino always associated sex with being used, and he’d grown to like sex as much as just about anyone, but being used by Brianna?
Where the fuck could he sign up for that job?
When she pushed her wet hair behind her shoulder and crawled over him, Tino nearly came off the bed he was so fucking hot for her. His eyes were heavy-lidded as he admired the way she looked straddling him—naked, her skin still rosy with desire.
“What do you want?” she asked, holding his cock between her spread legs as she stared down at him. “You want me to ride you like I mean it?”
“Sì, grazie.” He groaned and pushed his hips into her hand to prove his point. “Fuck me like it’s the last time.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said it.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the last.
But she fucked him like it was, and it was probably a good thing.
’Cause Tino was extra quiet when he packed to leave in the morning. Then he stood there looking at Brianna spread out on the bed for a long moment.
He took extra care with closing the door gently.
And did what he should’ve done in Garnet—he left without her.
Brianna rolled over, sated and rested in a way she hadn’t been in a very long time. So long, in fact, it was a foreign feeling, this gooey relaxation. She reached out to Tino on instinct.
When her hands touched a cold pillow, she jerked up between one blink and the next. Life had left her more than a little paranoid and on edge. There wasn’t any sort of fuzzy and confused moment of disbelief. She knew Tino left without her.
Her heartbeat was thundering. Her vision was fuzzy from the tears, but she crawled over to his side of the bed and found a semiautomatic handgun, three stacks of hundred-dollar bills large enough to buy a luxury car, an old throwaway cell phone, and a note with nothing but a number on it.
No good-bye letters.
No apologies.
Cash, firearms, a burner phone, and a rescue number—that was the love note of a Cosa Nostra hit man. Tino knew she understood the rest. That he loved her. That he left her to protect her. That he had likely planned all along to dump her in West Virginia.
So he didn’t spell it out for her.
Anything else could be evidence.
Tino did not like evidence.
There was a tiny part of her that was hopeful when she dialed the number. Her hand shook as she held the flip phone to her ear. It was answered on the first ring.
“Where the fuck are you?” a low voice barked at her, the lilt of a New York accent sounding like home, and so similar to the one she wanted to hear. She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined it was him as he asked, “Pronto?”
But there was no pretending it was a different brother.
“It’s Brianna,” she whispered. “He left me this number to call.”
Nova was quiet for a long time before he groaned. “Cazzo.”
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep and—”
“Where are you?” Nova asked before she could finish.
“Where are you?” she countered when she remembered that Tino had stopped here only because Nova hated it.
“I’m already home.”
She sighed. “That’s unfortunate.”
Brianna considered finding her own way home. She looked to the money again, noticing for the first time a hotel envelope underneath it. She pulled it out and stared at Tino’s messy scrawl.