Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Family dinners were a big deal. For both the immediate family and the extended one.
He was careful not to divulge important information about the workings of the mob, but I did learn about some of the hierarchy and connections, stuff I figured I could probably even figure out with an internet search.
He told me about the house when he’d first bought it—a split-level, decades in disrepair—and how much work he’d done to turn it into the beautiful home he had now, with his mind on a wife and kids. Hence the four ‘guest’ rooms upstairs when he never had any sort of overnight guests.
I liked listening to him talk. And he seemed to have a never-ending source of stories, thanks to the aforementioned large family.
He asked me about myself, too, about my life before Warren. Which was, admittedly, not all that interesting. I’d still been in that ‘young, and trying to figure it out’ stage. I hadn’t been able to figure out what I wanted to ‘do with’ my life, so I’d skipped college and went right to work at a local chiropractor’s office, making enough money to pay my bills and put a little bit in savings for a rainy day, but not exactly live the high life.
That was probably why I’d been so taken with Warren and his expensive suits, fancy cars, and the exclusive restaurants he brought me to, and the jewelry he bought me.
“Did he buy you that?” Aurelio asked, gaze slipping to the cross I wore around my neck.
“No,” I said, my hand going to it. “This was from my mom on my Confirmation.”
I refused to wear the jewelry Warren bought me after he’d dragged me back. I loathed wearing the clothes he’d picked out for me, but having no way of getting my own, I’d needed to endure that.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked, watching Aurelio’s profile as he looked off into the backyard, lit with the floodlights from the back deck.
“Wondering if that tree limb would work for a swing for Judah,” he said, gesturing toward the one in question.
There was that warmth again.
Amplified this time by the second glass of wine flooding my system.
I was feeling flushed and a pleasant kind of fuzzy as I placed my glass down on the table.
“Let’s see,” I said, making my way down the steps and toward the tree, hearing Aurelio joining me.
I stood under it for a second, gauging the distance, then doing a small squat, and jumping upward, glad when my fingers grabbed the limb.
It wiggled a bit under my weight, but held tight.
“I think it would do,” I told Aurelio as he stepped closer, something deep and gooey in his eyes that I didn’t quite understand.
But it only intensified that ache in my core, that warmth rushing through my veins.
“Seems like it,” he said.
Then, suddenly, his hands were lifting, grabbing me at each of my sides, over my ribs, fingers so close to my breasts that suddenly felt heavy and desperate for touch.
We were both well aware that I didn’t need help down. I was only dangling a few inches off the ground.
But neither of us seemed to care about that fact as his fingers held me tight, as my fingers loosened, as I let him take my weight.
He didn’t pull me right down, though, didn’t just drop me onto my feet.
He pulled me closer toward him, so that my body slid against his as he lowered me down.
I swear he did it in slow motion. But maybe it was just the wine and the anticipation sizzling across my nerve endings that made it feel that way. My breasts—free of a bra because I felt too weird asking him for them when I’d given him my list—pressed against his wide, strong chest, my arms falling to my sides.
There was no stopping the little shiver that moved through me as my feet touched the ground, but I still found myself pressed tightly against him.
“Cold?” he asked, his hands moving from my ribs to my arms, chafing the skin.
“No,” I admitted, my gaze holding his, finding his lids as heavy as mine felt.
“No?” he asked, head tilting to the side a bit as his gaze triangled from my eyes, lips, then back.
Did I lean in first?
Or was it his hand sliding over my shoulder to rest at the side of my neck that happened first?
I couldn’t say for sure.
All I knew was that time slowed, and my heartbeat felt hard and slow, even as a that warm feeling in my veins caught fire.
Aurelio exhaled hard, the last of his restraint leaving his body, and then his lips were on mine.
Just a gentle pressure at first, waiting to see if I was going to pull away.
But as that fire caught and spread, there was no way I could deny myself the warmth.