Being a pain in the ass was a job requirement of younger siblings. I had gotten used to it years before.
Besides, I realized as I ran until my legs felt shaky, my entire body drenched in sweat, they weren't exactly wrong, were they?
I was into Romy.
She was just a little bit in distress.
And I did like helping to fix problems.
And last, but certainly not least, one could absolutely make an argument that I was beginning to get just a bit obsessed with her.
Fuck.
That was a complication I didn't need in my life right then.
Chapter Eight
Romy
That happened.
Completely unexpected.
And, well, completely delicious too.
Yes, delicious.
That was the best word I could come up with.
I'd never been someone who was into arguing as foreplay, who liked things like make-up sex. Namely, because arguing with men brought back childhood memories of what came along with those shouts.
Pain and blood and bruises.
Scars of both the literal and figurative sort.
It wasn't sexy to me to see men angry.
That said, what was sexy was the fact that Luca seemed like he had been overcome with his desire for me, had been struggling to control it.
Then he finally snapped.
I'd been kissed a lot of ways in my life. Each kiss was different in its own way.
But I wasn't sure I'd ever been kissed with such uncontrolled need before.
If Matteo hadn't shown up, I was pretty sure Luca's hands would have been roving, roaming, grabbing, claiming, owning.
And, what's more, I would have leaned into it, would have begged for more, for everything.
Everything fell away in that moment. The men upstairs who would have heard if things got more heated. The strangeness of our circumstances. The fact that this man was an underboss in the mob. Even, yes, the reality of my missing sister.
That was how powerful desire could be.
It could wipe your mind blank.
It could replace everything with a clawing, aching, uncontrollable, undeniable need.
Even an hour later, tucked away in my room while Luca went off on a run to blow off some steam, I couldn't seem to get the unyielding pressure on my lower stomach, the throbbing emptiness between my thighs to ease, to let me think rationally through it.