Filed to story: The Mafia Boss’s Regret (Ava & Dante)
Her gaze narrowed. “Christian.”
“It’s none of your business who I invite to my apartment, Gianna.”
I wouldn’t have invited him if I’d had a legitimate reason to do so-and more than Ava practically drooling over him yesterday. The asshole had a pretty face, and it annoyed me more than I cared to admit that it had interested Ava.
“I don’t want him here, Ace.” She watched Christian talk to my uncle Jimmy with a sour expression.
“Ask me if I care,” I answered dryly.
Gianna had hated Christian since the moment she met him. The FBI part was at the top of the list of reasons why, but she was also the agent’s opposite in every way. She scoffed at his perfectionism, while Christian grimaced at her lack of decorum.
Ava’s soft laughter filtered through the room, hitting me in the chest.
My jaw tightened.
Lorenzo was not that fucking funny.
“That’s the wrong sister you’re staring at. The right one is over there.” Gianna pointed a white-painted fingernail at Lydia, who sat on the couch next to Benito with her legs pulled up beside her. “She’s probably recovering from your threat of rape.”
I let out a dry breath when Lydia giggled at something on Benito’s phone. “She looks real traumatized.” There was something cold and fearless about her, but apparently the idea of sex with me was unappealing enough she believed she would die from it. Maybe it was a good threat I could keep in mind, because I thought I might need a strong one with her.
Truthfully, I’d thought about sleeping with Lydia a complete total of zero times. All thoughts of sex had been about her sister, especially after she’d arched her ass against me yesterday in the universal way all men understood as a go-ahead.
She hadn’t been shy about letting me know she’d let me touch her, but I couldn’t help an inkling of awareness from settling in when she’d placed her hand on mine and I’d felt that ring of hers. She loved some man. Wore his cheap ring on her finger like it was a diamond.
Bitterness had run through me. She wanted to get off and she was going to use me to do it. When I realized that, I’d felt something I had never felt in my life: like I was expendable. And that pissed me off.
Nonetheless, Do you respect me? had followed me around all day and night in that soft, sweet voice of hers. Everywhere I fucking went.
There was always some vice that eventually killed a Moretti.
Irrationality. Idiocy. A penchant for unprotected sex with cheap hookers. My father’s was monetary greed.
I was beginning to think mine was Ava Voss.
I wanted to fuck her and ruin her for anyone else. I wanted to crush her wings and then put them back together again so she’d become dependent on me. I wanted her to need me. That dark, possessive, and dangerous feeling crawled through me every time she crossed my path.
Ava Voss was my vice, and fuck if I’d let it kill me.
However, the urge to try to fuck her out of my system was consuming me, regardless if she wanted me to be someone else. It was an itch I needed to scratch. And when I was done with her, she’d never remember another.
Gianna shook her head while looking down on me, although she was a foot shorter, even in her heels. “That’s an awful idea,” she said.
“What?”
“Sleeping with Ava.”
Jesus.
Ava’s papà stood three feet away, though he was too deep in conversation to have heard.
“Gianna,” I warned.
“What? It’s what you were thinking.”
“And what am I thinking right now?” Gianna thought she was clairvoyant when she was high, which was a lot of the time.
She pursed her lips. “That you want to strangle me.”
My brows rose in accord as I took a drink of whiskey.
“I don’t understand how I had sex with you,” she said, observing the party with a sigh.
I didn’t either, though I could only feel relieved that she’d been the one to start it. Truthfully, we’d been so drunk, there was hardly a memory to go with the deed.
My gaze landed on Tony, who appeared to be getting talked down to by his mamma. It was only a diverting amusement that he’d brought Jenny, who was currently trying to sell my aunt Mary Kay.
Gianna began to drift away, but before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed her arm and asked, “And why would it be such a bad idea?”
I didn’t look at her, but I felt her sad smile.
“Because you’ll fall in love with her,” she said. “And she won’t love you back.”
The chatter was low, Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling In Love a little quieter. The soft lighting sparkled off the glass view of the city, and Dante’s black-suited form only highlighted it as he stood near the bar.
I didn’t know how it had happened, but I was drunk. Lolled into a sense of warmth and complacency, and I couldn’t stop myself from heading toward what had to be a gentleman. The problem was, if I stopped to ask this one for help, he’d most likely take advantage of me. Or maybe that was only wishful thinking… He’d probably only give me a rude stare.
“I didn’t expect you to like Elvis Presley.”
I was assuming just because I could.
Dante glanced at me with a half-lidded amber gaze that always sent my pulse racing. “Every time you’ve assumed, you’ve been wrong.”
I took the remaining steps toward him, eating up the electricity that spanned between us with each click of my heels. “That’s not true.”
I stood by his side, perusing the liquor decanters. Close enough my shoulder brushed his chest. Close enough my skin danced with awareness.
“Yeah? Then what have you gotten right?”
I reached across him for the gin, pretending that my arm grazing his didn’t affect me at all, when in reality it sent a rush of warmth low in my stomach. “I assumed from day one that you were an asshole, and I was right.” I paused with my hand on the decanter, not believing that had come out of my mouth.
A hint of a sly smile pulled at his lips, almost as if he was thinking about something inappropriate. “Is that the first time you’ve said asshole?”
“Yeah. Did I use it right?” I tugged off the lid and poured some liquor into my glass.
“Could’ve been better.”