Maid for the Italian Mafia Read online

  “And how do you know that?”

  “The way you carry yourself. The fact that you’re alone in this world, just like me. Not anymore.”

  “How do I carry myself? And who says I’m alone? I’m not,” I lie, trying to act like I’m tougher than I am.

  “You’re tough. You’re resilient. I see these characteristics in you because I see the same ones in me. You put up a wall to keep others out, just as I do. You just do it in a different way. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve worked hard, and it’s allowed me to put up the actual physical walls that surround my property in addition to the metaphoric ones I constructed years ago. You clean houses by choice. It’s a way to look into the lives of others without having to speak, or deal with people as you would if you worked in an office or in, for example, retail. It gives you just enough human interaction time, even though it doesn’t really count as that, to get you out of the house and feel human. If not, you’d lock yourself in a room and pursue something like being an author, which would alienate you even more…and you don’t want that. You took this job because you still have hope there’s someone out there who understands you. Well I more than understand you, because I’m just like you.”

  “What makes you so sure about that?” I counter, latching onto his last words.

  “It’s as plain as day to someone who’s the same…someone who went through what you’ve gone through and recognizes all the signs. You don’t have to live life alone like I did, first and foremost because I won’t allow it.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me, that’s fucking who.”

  The idea that I questioned him shocks him as much as it does me, but he doesn’t get aggressive about it. Again, it’s just like he’s stating facts. Does the man even understand how to ask a question, at least one that’s not a statement in disguise?

  “And what If I don’t want…this,” I say, my eyes looking around. Well, if he could read me before then he can surely read me now because I don’t need a mirror to know my pupils are dilating at the idea that I could live here, be a part of all this.

  “Oh you do, just as much as I want you… need you.”

  “Coming on a bit strong, are we?” I’m feeling confident for some reason that I can’t put my finger on. And just like that his two fingers drop from my chin.

  “Always,” he growls. “I’m a man who knows what he wants and I don’t stop until I get it. And I won’t stop until I have you as mine…always.”

  I don’t say anything, just taking in the look of someone so serious, so possessed, so out of his mind that it’s beyond comprehension. There’s no need to even try and process it. All I can do is feel, and boy does it ever feel right.

  And even if I wanted to reply, I can’t, because as a self-described man who knows what he wants, Matteo leans right back in and without wasting a second his lips claim mine for the first time…hard.

  CHAPTER 7

  Matteo

  The taste of her lips is the sweetest thing in the world, and I can only imagine how sweet that flower between her legs is.

  Slow down, Matteo.

  Her plump lips are overwhelming and my dick thumps against the fabric of my pants, demanding to be freed.

  But I’m lost in her taste, and the way her body melts into mine so much that I feel her knees give out.

  I easily catch her by the hips and scoop her up in my arms and for a moment we’re both at a loss for words.

  Me staring into her baby blue eyes as deep as the Mediterranean, and her staring into my hazel eyes which hold many secrets, but none when it comes to her.

  Looking at her makes me feel so damn honest, open, and makes me want to be a better man…the best man I can be, not only for her but for our unborn children.

  Soon. We’ll have a family soon. I grit my teeth at the thought, but she misreads my body language.

  “You can put me down. I know I’m heavy.”

  “Light as a feather.”

  “Right,” she says sarcastically. “Then why are you gritting your teeth?”

  “Because I’m trying to hold back everything I feel for you right now. Trying to contain just how badly I want you. Trying to bite my tongue so I don’t scare you off with my words any more than I probably already have. On the one hand I don’t care and I want to tell you everything in a single second. That’s not possible of course, not to mention my mind is racing at the possibilities of everything we could do together today. Everything we will do together today.”

  “I have a feeling you’re not talking about my evaluation,” she smirks.

  “All this and a great sense of humor too?”

  “You bring it out in me.”

  “And it’s time for me to show you what you bring out in me, and bring it out so you can see first hand.”

  “Would that be…” Her hand reaches down and grabs my shaft. “Oh my, god. Where are we going to fit all of that?”

  “Where it belongs. Inside you.”

  “I…I have to tell you something.”

  “Whatever it is it doesn’t matter. Whatever’s in your past I don’t care. I only care about us, our future, our life together.”

  Her soft curves pressing against my rock hard body feel so natural, just as she does in my arms. She’s soft, as a woman should be. But she’s not a woman. She’s my woman.

  It’s taking every ounce of willpower I’ve got not to carry her into my bedroom right now and go complete caveman on her. Hell, something primal inside me wants to drag her by her hair and beat my chest while I do it. She hits that deep of a cord within me.

  But I can tell by the look on her face something’s wrong.

  “It’s not so much about what’s in my past, as what isn’t,” she says through pursed, apologetic looking, lips.

  I pause, and that look of concern on her face is one I want to wipe away for the rest of time. I only ever want to see her smiling for the rest of her life. And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that happens…exactly.

  “You’re a…?”

  She nods.

  “Say it.” I have to hear the word from her lips.

  “A…a virgin.”

  I suck in a deep breath of air through clenched teeth, the sound clearly audible.

  “Say the other words.”

  “What words?” She looks confused.

  “What does that make you?”

  I can see the gears of her mind cranking as she solves my riddle, but she nails it quickly. “Yours. Yours and only yours.”

  My head falls back and I exhale hard before breathing in again.

  Lucky I don’t have plants already in my house or else the extra oxygen alone would be enough for me to pass out right now.

  I’m lightheaded at her confession, in the best of ways. Even so, I would never do anything that allows her to feel harm…most certainly not drop her. She weighs next to nothing anyway. Hell, I curl barbells to one hundred reps every morning the second I get out of bed…and those weigh twice as much as she does. It pisses me off that the media, and corporations, have spent years telling women to starve themselves to please a man. Yeah, sure, maybe that works for some, but not me.

  I’m a real man, and I need nothing less than a real woman.

  “Damn right you’re mine. Mine and mine alone.”

  “Just like you’re mine,” she agrees.

  “It’s time to show you just how much you belong to me, how you’ve always belonged to me.”

  “Can we…slow things down a bit?”

  “I’m not sure if I can when it comes to you,” I confess.

  “Boss, sorry to interrupt, but we’ve got a problem.”

  “What was that?”

  “My phone. It’s set so that if something urgent happens, that specific member of my security detail goes on speaker phone.”

  “Maybe it’s a sign.”

  “A sign that someone is about to feel my full wrath for making me wait to have you.”

  She smiles, bu
t I’m not playing around.

  Gently I place her feet back on the ground. “If you go in the kitchen I’ll send someone in to prepare something or you can order delivery, anything you want.”

  “Someone to prepare something?”

  “A chef.”

  “A chef? You say it like you have more than one.”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “You do!”

  “I like to eat, and I’m a big boy.”

  “Oh, you’re not a boy at all. I know what boys are and I have no use for them. You’re a man…all man.”

  “And you’re going to see exactly what that entails, as soon as I put out this fire.” I pause, “And then we can tend to this one,” I say fisting my cock through my trousers.

  “Promise?” she teases.

  “You’re a naughty little girl, Mandy.”

  “Good, because I know what happens to naughty girls.”

  “They get…”

  “Spanked,” we say in unison, our faces breaking out into smiles.

  I grab her face with both hands and claim her mouth again, just so she remembers who she belongs to, before I turn and take off for the other room so I can find out what the hell is going on.

  As a real man I’m not going to burden her with any troubles from my life, no matter how big or small.

  And this problem is going to be solved fast, because I don’t have time to be kept waiting.

  Not now, and not ever…when it comes to having her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Mandy

  How in the world is this happening?

  Matteo is expertly navigating his new Range Rover through traffic after dropping off a package, or “making a quick delivery” as he called it, and now we’re headed to I don’t know where.

  My entire body feels tight, and it feels like a shark is biting into my neck and upper back the tension is so thick.

  As I sit in the passenger seat it’s apparent just how large Matteo really is. Watching his thick fingers on his big mitt maneuver the stick shift is like watching art being made…in the most masculine of ways.

  I could practically curl up in a ball and take a nap in my seat, like a puppy in a basket, yet his head practically scrapes the roof. He towers over me, and I’ve never felt smaller, or more petite, next to anyone in my entire life.

  My palms grip my knees as he stares ahead, not saying a word, until finally we pull up to what looks like a luxury apartment building.

  “Another quick delivery?” I ask.

  “Not this time.”

  Almost instantaneously a young man comes running around and stands at attention like he’s a uniformed soldier as Matteo steps out of the car and tosses him the key before moving to my side and opening my door.

  “Will you be needing your car washed today, Mr. Milano?”

  “No thank you, Jack,” he replies and leads me to the front where another man opens the door as we approach.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Taking in the view,” he says nonchalantly.

  “But…doesn’t someone live here?”

  “I live here…we live here.”

  “We?”

  “Wait to make decisions until you see the view.”

  But the reality is I don’t know if I have any decision making power in this process. First and foremost because Matteo’s already got his mind set on me, and my body, and my mind is screaming this is absolutely the one for me.

  We take the elevator up, which shoots up like a rocket from Cape Canaveral the moment he taps his keycard against the pad, and when we hit the top floor labeled “P” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know we’re at the penthouse.

  Stepping out right onto his floor, my mouth hits the floor. “You live here?” I ask, as if his first confirmation wasn’t enough.

  “We, not me.”

  “It’s unbelievable and a little over the top.”

  I move around the big living room practically spinning like Julie Andrews in The Sounds of Music. As I look up I see glass ceilings, which partially explains why I’m in such a good mood. The sun just radiates warmth and happiness.

  There are sculptures of strong warriors throughout the house yet strangely enough none of them are as chiseled as the man standing not far from me, taking in the sight of me getting used to my surroundings with a smirk planted firmly on his face.

  If this was a hotel I couldn’t even afford one night with a year of my salary, yet Matteo is telling me he lives here? That we live here?

  There’s floor to ceiling glass windows, a glass ceiling, but the most important piece of glass is the imaginary slipper that feels so real.

  The last time I got carried away with feelings about a guy it resulted in an absolutely horrible situation that left me questioning humanity after the trick that was played on me.

  Not this time. As much as I’m waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me I know this is real. Matteo is a man, not some high school jerk.

  “How do you feel about your new place?”

  “I have this weird anxiety that tells me to get to work.”

  “To get to work?” His eyebrow shoots up.

  “I am your maid, after all, and this is one of your properties. I should be cleaning it.

  “What you should be doing is spending the rest of the day with your feet up in a bubble bath getting pampered and massaged.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “For both of us,” he says, as his hands find my shoulders. I hadn’t even realized he’d covered the distance between us as I’d turned just a couple seconds earlier to take in the view of the skyline. “Are you…nervous?” he continues, probably noticing the tension in my neck and shoulders, which is quickly melting away.

  “I’m just…this is just a lot to take in, but I’m ok.”

  The fact of the matter is that I’m far from ok. As his fingers knead the knots out of my shoulders like a baker kneads dough, I feel my panties dampen and wonder if he’s interested in adding a swimming pool to his penthouse condo. I’m nervous at just how wet I’m getting and how fast it’s happening.

  “You’re a lot more than okay,” his deep baritone words promise in a suddenly thick Italian accent. “You’re perfect, and you’re mine.”

  I try to pivot in his grip, and realize I can’t until he eases up on the pressure.

  “You really do have it all, Matteo.”

  “I thought I did until I met you, and now I realize I never had anything, and now…I have everything.”

  I want to melt into his arms right here, and my knees are already feeling weak, but I try and just go with his words as if they’re not the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard…and from a man from Rome no less. At least that’s what the Internet says. He’s still very much a mystery to me and I need to get some questions answered.

  “What happened back there?”

  “Back where?”

  “When we made that delivery.”

  He continues massaging my shoulders as he faces me, his eyes locked on mine, but he narrows his gaze, apparently to let me know how serious the words he’s about to speak are, and how much weight they carry.

  “Look, I am who I am. I’ve been this way for all of my thirty-seven years. It started out as a way to survive, but now it’s a way to thrive.”

  “So you are…you know?”

  “Mafia? Yes, but it’s a lot different these days than The Godfather, Goodfellas, and even The Sopranos. Technology has changed the world so drastically these last ten years.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say, thinking about all the girls my age who are losing their virginity so young through apps like Tinder. How can you just give away something like that to a guy who just swiped on your picture and snuck you a beer or two while you were underage, only never to see him again? I don’t get it.

  “The way things work these days is like this…your accounts get frozen, you get put on restricted travel lists or they just shut down your
passport all together. Everything is done by the press of a button, not the squeezing of a trigger. You don’t have to look a man in the eye anymore when you’re about to end his business, or his life.”