Model for the Mob: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance Read online

  I push down the nonsensical thoughts. We don’t know each other.

  “Lucy?” he growls.

  “I’m here,” I call, my voice trembling. “How do you know my name?”

  “Vito told me. I’m coming in.”

  I almost tell him not to. As crazy as it is, part of me wants to fix my hair, free it from the clumsy bun I’ve tied it into. Strands have come loose and they spiral around my forehead. I can feel them whispering against my skin.

  Part of me wants to feel sexy for him, this man I’ve never met, this six and a half foot tall giant who probably started a freaking mafia war over me.

  Why, Luca? Why the heck did you do that?

  The door opens and Luca strides in.

  I stare at him, my mouth falling open, even as I feel like an idiot for the gesture.

  In the morning sunlight that shafts through the tall wide windows, he makes my heart pound crazily, up my throat, closing it so I feel like I can barely breathe.

  His silver hair shines in the sun. His large body looks huge in the steel-colored suit, and he wears an enigmatic smirk on his clean shaven face. His dark brown eyes, almost black, intense and dreamy and possessive and angry all at once.

  He closes the door behind him. The click of the lock sends a shiver through me.

  Why does he want us to be alone?

  I have to scream at the sensations rioting through me, the misplaced lust quivering across my sex and into my belly. My skin breaks out in goosebumps and a tingle strokes up my spine, making me want to shiver it away, but somehow I remain still.

  Except for my hands.

  I can’t stop squeezing and pressing and fidgeting.

  He strides across the room, bringing his musky scent with him, cologne and manliness mixed together.

  He’d never be interested in me. He’d laugh if I told him about the confusing feelings rushing through me and captivate me with more and more certainty with each step he takes.

  “Why did you come to my defense at the function hall?” I murmur, when he pauses, glaring down as though he’s furious for making him defend me. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”

  “Why do you think?” he says, the corner of his lips twitching.

  Is he teasing me?

  “I don’t know,” I say, almost snapping at him. “I can’t even guess. This whole thing is just insane. One minute I’m at the diner. The next that man – Franco – is bullying me into that horrible show. And then you, Mr. Lioni, you defend me. It doesn’t make sense.”

  He nods to the place on the bed beside me.

  “May I?”

  I laugh drily. “It’s your house.”

  “Call me Luca, Lucy,” he growls as he drops down next to me, the mattress whining under his hard muscled body.

  Luca and Lucy, it has a nice ring to it.

  I push that thought deep down where it belongs, where it can’t rise up and hurt me.

  I wonder how hard he’d laugh if I told him about the madness that was swirling through my mind right now, that part of me – and not a small part – was fantasizing about how it’d feel to have his rock hard body pressed up against mine.

  His shoulder brushes against me and I almost whimper, my clit giving a hot pulse of need.

  I need to get control of myself.

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy if I tell you,” he says after a pause, his voice husky.

  “Is it something to do with my parents?” I blurt.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “My parents died before I was born. Not my mom, obviously.”

  I’m talking too fast, my cheeks flushing and burning.

  His intense eyes gaze down at me as though I’m the only woman alive.

  “But she died a few months after. They were both drug addicts and I was wondering if maybe you knew them. In your work, I guess. I’m not saying they were your colleagues.”

  My words are not coming out how I want them to. Everything is a jumbled mess and lack-of-sleep disordered.

  “We don’t deal drugs, Lucy,” he snarls, so close to me I’m sure I can feel his hot breath whisper over my skin. “I’ve never done that. I never would. It takes a real low piece of shit to make his living from OD’ing junkies. But thank you for telling me about your parents. Thank you for feeling comfortable enough.”

  He leans down and looks even more closely at me, which should be impossible considering he’s already pinning me in place with his dominating gaze. “I want you to be able to talk to me.”

  “I never talk about it,” I say in wonder. “I think that might be the first time… Ever.”

  I laugh, shaking my head.

  “Yeah, ever. How crazy is that?”

  “It’s not crazy,” he says, a note of passion thrumming in his voice. “It makes complete goddamn sense. It’s exactly what I would expect.”

  “Why?” I whimper. “I don’t understand.”

  He reaches over and grabs onto my thigh.

  I gasp as a warm sensations dance up my leg, moving over my sex, making my clit even hotter and needier than it was before. My lips sizzle and my hole quivers and I don’t know what the heck is happening.

  I’ve got no idea. Part of me thinks this must be a dream.

  I like it. It feels so freaking good.

  “Fuck, you’re already horny, aren’t you? It’s like your body knows.”

  “Knows what?” I whisper as he glides his hand higher and higher up my leg, toward my sex.

  My legs twitch and I almost leap to my feet and spin on him.

  I hear myself screaming, This isn’t fair. Why would you save me from one bully only to turn into a bully yourself?

  This has to be some sort of twisted trick.

  “Your sexy-as-fuck curvy body knows how badly I need to put a baby inside of you. It knows how badly your womb needs to taste my seed. It’s making you wet and horny and needy and… And mine, Lucy.”

  This time I do leap to my feet and pace to the other end of the room, to the window, a shudder moving through me.

  “Why would you say that?” I snap, tears pricking my eyes as I stare over his long estate, taking in the lush greenery of the surrounding countryside. “What sort of messed-up game is this, Luca? Were you and Franco in on this from the start?”

  The mattress creaks as he climbs to his feet, but I don’t turn to face him. I stare stubbornly at the garden.

  I don’t even turn when I hear his powerful body moving across the room toward me.

  I’m afraid I’ll cry if I stare into those deep night-sky eyes and find a mocking glint there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Luca

  My manhood pulses in my pants as I stop just short of her. If I took that final few steps toward her, I know I wouldn’t be able to fight my irrepressible urges.

  I’d shove her up against the glass and slide my hands up her legs, palming that round beautiful ass.

  She’s so much sexier now that she’s not dolled-up ridiculously, with her natural voluptuousness showing through the baggy clothes. Her wild hair makes me think about her on her back, writhing and crying out for more as I drive up inside of her over and over again.

  She even smells like my woman, as though her womb is sending hungry signals through the pores of her skin.

  My fingers twitch with the primal need to drag her back to the bed and throw her on her back, tearing off her pants and exposing her wet pussy.

  I know she’s soaked too. I could tell when I grabbed onto her thick luscious thigh and she let out that captivating moan.

  She wants it.

  But she thinks this is a trick.

  “I’m not playing games,” I snarl. “That’s why I defended you against that piece of shit. The second you walked onto that catwalk, fuck, Lucy… I don’t know what happened. It was like nothing I’d ever dreamed of. I knew I had to have you. I knew I’d die – I’d kill – before I let anyone else touch you.”

  She looks at me over her shoulder, mak
ing my balls throb, my seed swell, and the hot animal urgency grind up the rock solid shaft of my manhood. My helm presses against my zipper, trying to break free and slip up those grab-me-hard thighs.

  “What the heck is this?” she whimpers.

  I can read her.

  She wants to believe this is true.

  She wants to believe I’m claiming her.

  But she can’t let herself.

  Maybe she’s been hurt in the past.

  Whatever this is, it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than her not wanting it.

  “It’s exactly what I say it is,” I growl, taking another step forward, so close to her now I could drive my engorged cock onto the fleshy landscape of her ass.

  That ass…

  I could spend countless hours with her bent over, sticking it out for me, palming it, grabbing it, spanking it so her young fresh skin turns a gorgeous shade of red. I could lose whole weeks on her ass.

  She wheels on me, fieriness coming into her bright green eyes. I was too far away on the balcony to realize how stark and captivating her eyes are, glimmering emeralds, filled with suspicion and resentment… and need, the same need that flares brighter and brighter within me each moment.

  “So you saw me and—what? And two seconds later you wanted to be with me forever and have children?”

  I grab her by the shoulders and push her up against the glass. I don’t do it hard, but with enough firmness to let her know I own her, to let her feel the power she provokes in me.

  The glass is bulletproof, solid, and I know it won’t shatter. It’d never risk my woman.

  “Yes,” I snarl. “That’s exactly what fucking happened. And don’t try to act like you don’t want it, Lucy. I saw the way you were twitching when I grabbed that beautiful leg of yours. You’re as hungry for this as I am.”

  Her eyes widen a fraction and then she lets out a peal of crazed laughter, her high-pitched voice shimmering in the air.

  Sliding away from me, she paces back toward the bed, standing with her back to me.

  “You need to stop doing that,” I snarl.

  “Doing what?”

  “Walking away from me. Turning your back. It’s disrespectful as fuck and it makes it damn hard not to spank those big round ass cheeks of yours. I’ve got half a mind to spank you raw right now for calling me a liar to my face.”

  She makes a whimpering noise that goes right to the base of my manhood, making me harder. I thought that would be impossible, but somehow my body finds a way to engorge my throbbing massive length, even more, blood pumping hotly through me.

  She turns to me, her eyes glimmering as though she’s going to burst into tears any second.

  “Why are you saying this, Luca? I don’t understand.”

  “Why are you so convinced I’m lying?” I demand.

  I stride across the room and grab onto her hips, pulling her right up against me so she can’t escape this time. She lets out a breathy moan and it takes everything I have, every ounce of self-control, not to throw her onto the bed and maul her right here.

  She needs to know first, really know how I feel about her.

  “Answer me,” I snap.

  “I’ve been bullied all my life,” she hisses, her voice cracking with tears. “In the orphanage, in high school… even members of the staff, adults who were supposed to know better bullied me. I’ve been tricked and called horrible names and I’m sick of it. I can’t risk it happening again. It hurts too much.”

  “That isn’t what’s happening here,” I tell her firmly. “I’d never trick you, Lucy. I care about you too much for that.”

  “How can you say that?” she whispers. “You don’t know me.”

  “I can’t fucking explain it,” I growl. “This has never happened to me before. I stopped believing I’d ever find a woman, that I’d ever feel… feel anything. And then I saw you, and I knew. I can’t give you some goddamn equation about how or why I feel this way. But I do. And you need to stop questioning it. Because you belong to me now.”

  That noise she makes, all shivering breath, nearly drives me feral.

  “Do you understand? You’re mine. I own you. Your body, your heart, your womb, your big gorgeous tits, your curvy hips, your round beautiful ass. Everything you are, for the rest of our lives, belongs to me. I started a war for you, Lucy. I don’t care. I’d start a hundred, a thousand wars to claim you. If this was a different time I’d lead my army across whole continents and leave a trail of bloody corpses behind me to claim you. I’d keep you safe in our cave as I went out hunting for our family. I’d bash in the heads of my rivals with stone clubs to make you mine.

  “Mine.”

  I squeeze her hips pull her close, driving my manhood against her. My tip pulses and sizzles as though my body knows how close I am to my prize, to the womb I so desperately need to claim.

  “Look me in the eye and tell me I’m lying.”

  She gazes at me, searching my face. “I don’t think you are. But I don’t know you.”

  I laugh gruffly, shaking my head. “That doesn’t matter. Your body knows what you need. Your soul – if such a thing exists – knows who you belong to.”

  I lean down and claim her lips, kissing her hard as she gasps and freezes for a moment.

  But then her pleasure takes over and she opens her shy mouth and I claim her tongue with mine, both of us sinking deeper and deeper into the kiss, our lips rubbing together with hot friction.

  She grabs onto my shoulders, softly at first, as though part of her is afraid I’m going to pull away.

  I press my hand down on her back, feeling the heat of her sweat-flecked skin through her T-shirt. The heat of her blazes through me, igniting primal pieces of me I thought would lie dormant and ignored forever.

  She lets out a breathy moan when I grind my manhood against her belly, the tip of my length buzzing with the need to explode in her womb. My seed writhes and scorches my balls, making them feel ten times their regular weight like my entire existence is being honed down to my pulsing seed.

  “I need to feel your hot wet slit,” I tell her, a growl thrumming beneath my words. “Get on the fucking bed. Now.”

  “I can’t.”

  Her voice is low and she takes a shaky step back, biting her lip as she gazes up at me.

  “Do you have any idea how crazy that makes me?”

  “What?”

  “That.” I smooth my thumb along her lip, watching tremors of anticipation move through her, making her whole body shake with budding need. “When you bite your lip, it makes you look so damn horny and beautiful. I need to feel those lips on my cock. But more than that I need to feel your hole, your hot wet pussy. I need to feel how badly you want to give me children.”

  I’m ranting, half-mad if I’m not already all the way there. I feel unhinged, like roaring, like beating my chest to warn away any predators stupid enough to move in on my prey-eyed woman.

  I’d kill to protect what we have.

  I’d die if it came to that.

  “Feel what you’re doing to me.”

  I grab her hand and bring it to my pants, pressing her palm against my shaft. It’s so hot and nervous through the fabric of my underwear. But when I take my hand away, she keeps rubbing, nodding slowly.

  “Like that?” she moans.

  “You feel perfect. Lie down. Open those pretty thick beautiful legs for me.”

  “I can’t.”

  She turns away, throwing her hands up.

  “Why not?” I pace forward and grab her arm, turning her to face me. “I can tell you want it. Your body is screaming for it. You were gasping like the horniest naive perfect…”

  I’m about to say virgin, but her eyes widen and she nods, a small subtle nod like she thinks I’m angry. Like I could possibly be angry about this.

  “I’m a virgin, Luca.” She drops her gaze. “So you see the problem? You want this crazy sex fest. You want me to just be this instant nymphomaniac or whatever. But
that’s not me. I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.”

  I stare at her as she paces to the other end of the room, as though she’s too embarrassed to stay close to me.

  I gaze at her ass, at her hips, at the womanly shape of her perfection.

  She has no idea what she’s done.

  She thinks this is going to turn me off.

  But it’s going to make me even more savage and brutal and possessive and fucking animalistic.

  She’s turning me into a beast.

  And I’m going to claim what’s mine.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lucy

  I bow my head and take in short bolstering breaths that are supposed to protect me from Luca’s reaction.

  I know hate is going to flood into him now, and all the things he said – all the lovely crazy things – are going to be forgotten in the rage of his disappointment.

  What the heck am I going to do when he pushes me away? Can I go home or will Franco find me there, hurt me for the part I played in his humiliation?

  He walks up behind me with slow steps, moving with a weightiness that sends tingles sizzling through my body. He’s so huge, like a lion prowling up behind me.

  “So you’re not ready to get fucked like the horny thing you are. But you’re not getting away that easily. I need to taste that virgin slit. I need to feel your come all over my mouth. I need to feel how tight your hole gets when you’re coming like your life depends on it. Do what you’re told, Lucy. Get on the bed.”

  I turn, my mouth falling open. “You’re joking.”

  He smirks and lets out a growl. “Do I look like I’m joking? Get on the bed.”

  He looms over me, his body straining in the silver suit, the tendons in his neck standing out. I’ve never seen a man so flooded with tension. It’s like every single muscled part of him is trying to tear loose of his clothes, his biceps straining.

  I stand, frozen, so inexperienced I don’t know what to do.

  He snarls and grabs me by the shoulders, guiding me over to the bed and softly pushing me. I fall back with a stunned giggle – maybe he does want me after all – and stare up at him.

  “What do I do?” I ask.

  “Lie back and look gorgeous.” His smirk twitches. “That shouldn’t be too hard for you. And get ready to come for me. Do you squirt, Lucy? I know you’re a virgin, and I’m so fucking relieved about that.”