The Mob And His Messenger (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 204) Read online

  I glare at him. “I was literally walking ten feet from the car to put this in the mailbox, which for some reason is wedged at the side of the freaking building. If I have to go into a high rise or whatever, I take her.”

  With a touch of amusement, he says, “And when people object to having a dog inside their building you just drop my name, and suddenly every person in there can’t wait to pet her and give her treats.”

  I fold my arms and then immediately regret it. It pushes my breasts together and causes him to glance there, almost fiercely.

  Yep, definitely grossed out.

  “Am I in trouble, then?”

  His lips tremble the same way Poppet’s do when I put out in her food bowl. He looks savage for an instant like he wants to devour me at the thought of me being in trouble like he’s dreaming up gorgeous sadistic ways to punish me.

  My overactive writer’s mind has me bent over his desk, his strong hands moving over my bare ass, his fingers teasing closer to my soaked hole with each kissing spank. And then he falls to his knees and buries his mouth against my sex, sucking, licking, consuming …

  Calm. Down.

  “I should fire you,” he says. “But since I’m about the most magnanimous man you’ll ever meet, I’ll just tell you to never do it again. And I’m going to have one of my men ride with you from now on.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’ve driven around the city advertising that you work for me while I’m at war with a ruthless psychopathic killer who’ll use any means he can to get to me. That’s why. I’ve got no doubt that he’d …”

  “What?” I say when he trails off. “What is it—”

  “Quiet,” he commands, his voice changed, deep and certain. “Listen.”

  He raises the package and tilts his head like a predator listening for the noise of its prey in the underbrush.

  “There’s a fucking bomb in here,” he whispers.

  And then everything happens fast.

  He spins and tosses the package and then leaps over the hood of my car, sliding with the speed and agility I’d never guess from a man of his size.

  With one hand he drags me down and with the other, he efficiently grabs Poppet and guides her behind the car, and then he shields us both, putting his back to the rear car door and enveloping us.

  The explosion tears through the ground.

  Through the car.

  Through everything.

  Chapter Three

  Domenico

  “We think there was a radio mic in the package,” Gabriel murmurs, standing at the window of my hospital room with his arms behind his back.

  But that doesn’t hide the way his fingers twitch, conducting an invisible orchestra, or the frantic quick-fire bursts of his speech.

  “They wanted to wait until we were together. Maybe they got the time of the meeting wrong. Maybe we’ve got a mole, Skip. I don’t know anymore. But when they realized they’d been made, those motherfuckers detonated it and almost killed my best friend and my daughter.”

  His daughter.

  After waking up in the hospital, the events of that alleyway groggily returned to me.

  I felt my body seizing up in those first moments of consciousness, something deep inside of me roaring that it wasn’t true, the savage primality I felt for that woman, felt for her the second I laid eyes on her.

  She’s mine, she’s fucking mine to take and impregnate and use any damn way I want.

  My carnal thoughts exploded as my mind repainted her image.

  With her cascading blonde hair down to her shoulders, her eyes looked even brighter. Her stark blue eyes and lips were sassy and brimming with personality. And her body—her fucking body. She was wearing light jeans and a T-shirt, but her curves drew my gaze inexorably, her hips wide, made for grabbing, for guiding, for dominating. Her ass was round and juicy and those breasts, the way the strap of her bag kept digging into them was driving me mad.

  This feeling is entirely new to me, seeming to seize onto me, as though a deeper, more ancient force is trying to make me do things I shouldn’t. She is Gabriel’s daughter, for fuck’s sake, Gabriel’s daughter, the one woman I feel a damn thing for and of course, fate makes it her.

  I feel a swelling of relief knowing that she and Poppet are at Gabriel’s penthouse apartment, surrounded by armed guards. They weren’t hurt in the blast. My body shielded them. They’re both safe.

  Gabriel turns to me, drawing me from my thoughts with a raised eyebrow.

  “I take it strong-arming the Unions isn’t our plan of action now?”

  “No,” I sigh. “They made an attempt on my life. We need to respond with violence. But controlled violence, Gabriel. No deaths. Attack their warehouses. Attack their bars. But only when they’re closed and we’re certain no-one is inside. The police chief will tolerate some retaliation, but the second this goes overboard, she’s no longer our man. Perhaps even the Feds will get called in. We need to keep this shit contained.”

  “What if they shoot at us?”

  “Defend yourself,” I growl. “But if I learn of one man overstepping his mark, I’ll put a bullet in his head myself. There are too many lives at stake to play this stupidly. If we don’t retaliate, we risk seeming weak. If we go too far, we’ll get innocents hurt and most likely bring in the National Guard.”

  Gabriel drops down on the seat next to my bed. I let out a slow breath, feeling the bruising pulse across my back. The blast sent a shockwave through the car, thundering into me, but it stopped with my body.

  I protected her. And I always will.

  I push that thought from my mind as I sit up, bringing my feet to the cold hospital floor. Now that I’ve been checked over, I’ve got no desire to stay here to be pampered back to health.

  I stand up, ignoring the pain lancing through me, and walk over to the door where my men have hung my suit, with a small bag next to it with my other clothes inside.

  “You saved her, Skip,” Gabriel mutters at my back, as I begin to carry my clothes toward the bathroom. “If you didn’t throw that bomb away, Jesus Christ, my daughter would be dead right now. What the hell was I thinking, hiring her to be a messenger for us?”

  “It’s not your fault,” I tell him firmly. “It’s Patty McGuinness’s fault.”

  “Fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that I owe you.”

  “You’ve never owed me anything, Gabriel,” I say. “You’ve more than earned your place. Now let me get changed. I feel like an asshole standing here in this hospital gown.”

  He chuckles grimly and I shut the bathroom door behind me, trying to tug my mind away from Dallas Smith, my consigliere’s daughter, my best friend’s daughter.

  I never saw her again after her mother took her out west. Sometimes Gabriel would travel there to visit her, and sometimes she’d come here, but I never had cause to see her. Or, if I did, she was just a background teenager, a girl I’d never look twice at.

  But the woman I saw in that alleyway is an entirely different story.

  My heart starts hammering the second I think about the way her denim jeans tried to trap that round-as-fuck ass. Then, as I shrug off the hospital gown, I can’t stop myself from imagining that ass naked and bent over for me, smothering shiny oil all over it, getting it wet for me, and then smoothing my hand between her closed legs and getting something else wetter, too, and then smearing her juices all over her round made-to-be-fucked ass.

  I groan when I feel the blood rushing to my manhood, my thick length inevitably getting rock hard at the thought of her.

  It’s too easy to imagine fisting her messy blonde hair and tugging lightly as I slide into her, again and again, getting harder with each stroke of my manhood until she’s squirting white cream all down dick.

  I have to put my hands behind my back and let out a shuddering breath.

  What the fuck am I going to do, start jacking off right here with my consigliere in the next room?

  I grit my teeth and
force myself to get dressed, trying to push her from my mind.

  But the moment I manage to consign her to the periphery of my consciousness, thoughts of her begin to drift in, little whispers and images. I feel her body against mine, curvaceous, and hot. I see the strap of her satchel cutting into her breasts. I imagine my hand instead, squeezing, massaging, making her nipples hard and tingly and then sucking them until they are red-raw.

  Stop. Stop this now.

  “Fuck,” I grunt, when my manhood nearly catches on my zipper, the massive in-the-way length now sideways in my briefs.

  I walk to the sink and splash cold water on my face, hoping that will jolt some wakefulness – and some sense – into me.

  Just because I haven’t felt even one percent of this for another woman, ever, doesn’t mean I’m going to act on it. I can’t forget Gabriel, the kid who looked up to me, who then became a man and built my organization with me.

  Gabriel, who stayed with me even when Samantha took his daughter west.

  Gabriel, who trusts me with his life, my best friend.

  I look at myself in the mirror, seeming just the same as I did earlier today, except for this new purpose in my eyes.

  It isn’t just the situation with Patty, which is my main focus.

  It should be my only focus.

  But there’s something else inside of me, a primeval drum beat, a call to action, the hunt, the hunt, as though something nameless is roaring at me and telling me to take her, to pump my seed into her childbearing body, to fill her and make sure I give her every hot drop I can until she’s pregnant.

  I stand up straighter and compose myself, the same way I do before making a public appearance. I make myself cold and try to kill this new fire raging through my body.

  I fail. It still flames. Because it’s fueled by her.

  I compromise and hide it as best as I can instead. I wait for my manhood to stop throbbing by staring at the sink, just focusing on the sink and nothing else, and not letting my mind stray to the thought of her bent over the sink, naked, ass sticking out, breasts bouncing invitingly. She’d arch her back and pump down onto my cock, her ass flattening against my abs and …

  No, no.

  A fucking sink?

  That’s how crazy she’s making me.

  “Skip?” Gabriel calls from outside.

  “Yes?”

  “Ah, nothing. Just checking you were okay.”

  “Do you think I need help to take a piss?” I snap.

  “No, just … paranoid. Sorry.”

  I sigh. “No, you’re right to be.”

  I open the door and walk out in my suit, feeling a little like my usual self.

  “Tell the boys to get ready,” I say. “We’re going to give this city a little fireworks show tonight.”

  Gabriel blinks. “You’re coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  Because it’s easier than fantasizing about your daughter.

  “Because I need to be there to make sure we do this right. If Patty thinks we’re weak, we’ll show him, Gabriel.”

  “Just like the old days,” he says, eyes bright with reminiscence.

  “Not quite,” I grin wolfishly. “But pretty damn close.”

  We leave.

  Chapter Four

  Dallas

  I lie in bed with my arms wrapped around Poppet, hugging her to my chest like I used to when she was a puppy. She cuddles against me, maybe sensing how tense my body is.

  A war of tension runs through me, tearing me right down the middle.

  On the one side, there’s the explosion, its reverberations causing me to shiver every time I remember it. I close my eyes and sense, more than see, the explosive light that lit up the alleyway. I feel the tremor in my bones. I feel my teeth chatter together.

  But mostly, insanely, I feel Domenico’s body pressed against mine. I feel the muscles pushing through his shirt and his solid forearm wrapped across my middle.

  The protective shield he turned his body into, it returns to me in white-hot moments, teasing me.

  In my frantic writer’s mind, I see the explosion tear away his clothes and leaving him standing there naked, the flames dancing in his eyes as he stares firmly at me.

  It’s wrong.

  He is dad’s best friend and, also, he’s The Domenico DeLuca, which basically means he’d never be interested in a twenty year old nobody like me in a million years.

  I roll over and end up nose to nose with Poppet. Her eyes are bright and knowing as she stares at me. She gives me a lick on the nose and then leans back, watching to see what I’ll do.

  “I’m not obsessing over him,” I tell her.

  She makes a huffing noise and lays her snout on her crossed forepaws, as though she’s had enough of my lies. I tickle her behind the ear and lie back, the room still undecorated, my boxes stacked all around me, and various pieces of clothes scattered here and there. I’ve been using the boxes as and when I need them. A paperback sits on my otherwise-bare bedside table.

  I close my eyes and then snap them open again because apparently even closing my eyes now is dangerous.

  The moment my eyelids fall shut, they become a screen projecting all kinds of lust-filled movies.

  We’re on the hood of Domenico’s jet-black Mustang and I’m sitting on him, sitting right down on his manhood, and I’m not nervous, or unsure, or any of that. I’m confident. I’m filled with conquer-the-freaking-world energy. I drive down with my hips and he gasps, groaning for more, as his manhood fills me, seeming to freaking swell inside of me, stretching my tight soaking wet hole and then I …

  I bite down.

  Hard.

  I cut my lip and then sit up, letting out a shiver.

  Am I really going to let myself get that close to pleasuring myself with Poppet in bed with me?

  No way.

  I stand up and walk an aimless circuit around the room. The sun has risen and outside the distant sounds of the city call up to me, all the way up here in Dad’s penthouse apartment.

  I peel back the curtain and look down at the sun-bathed city, a shadow of a cloud moving like a giant crawling beast across the park. Then I turn and walk toward my dresser, where I’ve stowed the clothes I’ve unpacked and washed. Basically, any clothes I’ve needed in the past two weeks since moving here.

  “It’s all so silly, Poppet,” I say, searching for a T-shirt and some sweatpants.

  But with nothing else to do but hang around the apartment, I don’t see the need to get dressed properly. Perhaps this will give me the motivation I need to get to work on my book again because these past two weeks have been so crazy I’ve sort of let that slip.

  Letting my ambition slip. What a cliché of a writer.

  I stand there in my pajama shorts and a tank top, no bra, glad that Domenico isn’t here to see me.

  Every time I think about the way he winced when he saw my body, something in me seizes. I’ll try not to think about it, I decide.

  Because ignoring things always makes them better.

  After getting dressed I see that Poppet’s head is cocked, most likely listening to a sound deeper in the building. She springs from the bed like a flurry of snow and pads languidly across the room. A moment later, I hear the front door open and the sound of my dad’s footsteps.

  “Dallas?” he calls. “Are you home? Are you alright?”

  I open the door and Poppet sprints down the hallway, decorated with surprising elegance considering Dad’s the one who did it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a personal designer in here, come to think of it, with the marble-colored walls and the plush rugs, yet light enough not to become clammy and trapping in the sun. Poppet rounds the corner at the end of the hall and I follow her, emerging into the cavernous open-plan room that dominates the apartment. The large room houses the living room, the kitchen, and the dining area, separated only by the change from hardwood to carpet.

  Dad is sitting at the kitchen bar, lea
ning down to scratch Poppet behind the ears as she leaps up at him.

  “I’m still shocked she still remembers me,” he says, grinning.

  I smile and move across the room. Dad is wearing a sweat-soaked shirt and faded blue jeans. The jeans have black marks on them.

  Ash? Paint? What?

  “You should’ve seen the look on Mom’s face the day they brought her to the house,” I giggle. “I thought she was going to have a heart attack.”

  Dad smiles but keeps staring down at Poppet. “I knew she’d be perfect for you,” he says. “Eight years old and look at her, still full of energy. And you know I wanted to give you more, Dallas. I always did. But—Well, sometimes we don’t always get what we want.”

  But Mother refused my money because she knew where it came from.

  That’s what he wants to say, I just know it.

  But even if Mom has never had a problem disparaging Dad – now there’s a euphemistic word if there ever was one – Dad never returned the favor.

  He looks up at me with the tight grin-slash-grimace I inherited from him.

  “Are you old enough to drink coffee now?”

  I roll my eyes. “If that wasn’t a joke, I’m moving out of here ASAP.”

  He chuckles and wanders over to the coffee machine.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay. Jesus, if something had happened to you … What the hell were you thinking, Dallas? Name-dropping Dom all around town?”

  I feel a fierce blush infuse my cheeks, both at the mention of Dom’s name – get a grip, girl – and also at the embarrassment of the mistake. Dad’s right. There’s no excuse for a slip-up so catastrophic.

  “I’m sorry,” I sigh. “I wasn’t thinking. But then, you know, it’s not exactly like you ever explicitly told me you’re in the Italian Mob and I shouldn’t go around saying my boss’s name. As far as I’m supposed to be concerned, you’re just a businessman, and Domenico DeLuca is just a businessman, right?”

  Dad works his tongue around his mouth for a moment, seeming to harden. He reaches down and gives Poppet more loving attention and then turns back to the coffee machine, avoiding my gaze.