Page 81 of Sinfully Savage Mafia

The bliss.

I’ve never felt anything like it in my life.

She collapses on top of me, her hair splayed across my chest, her arm slung across my torso. “Holy shit,” she murmurs. “Is it always like that?”

I let out a dry chuckle as I smooth her damp hair from her face, a strange peace coming over me. “No. Wasn’t it a good surprise, though?”

“OhGod.” She sighs. “And I’m not normally a fan of surprises. So…where does this leave us now?”

It can’t be that easy, fucking her into showing some softness toward me, but I’ll take it. It’s a beginning, something to build on. For my plan. Always for that. She’s collateral damage.

Maybe she won’t die in all this. She’s smart and…

That’s not something to think about now. My eye’s still on my ultimate goal, the prize, and it’s enough. And this…if I play it right, I’ll be able to use that softness. The fact I feel it, too, means it’s easier to manipulate her.

“I don’t know,amore mio. Where do you want it to leave us?”

“I don’t…” She sighs again, her hand slipping down over my abs. “A wise woman told me to take this and make it work. We’re getting married. You made a business deal with my father and I’m the pinnacle of that. You’re protecting us all.”

“Yes,” I say quietly. “I am.”

Until I end that protection, of course.

“I don’t know if this changes anything. It was just sex,” she says.

“No, it wasn’t.”

I stop. I don’t know where those words came from, but they weren’t what I planned to say to her. I wanted to offer lofty sentiment, emptiness dressed in pretty baubles, but instead, they came up.

The truth.

I have no idea what the fuck just happened between us, but it wasn’t just sex. There was something else there. Not love. That’s bullshit. But something more. A deep connection.

Something I can ride, use, manipulate.

“Let’s…we’re stuck with each other. Let’s take it day by day.”

I raise her chin and look into her green eyes. “I chose you, Heaven.” This is the truth. But not for the conclusions I’m going to let her come to. “There are other ways I could have done this. But I chose you.”

“What do you mean by that? I know what it means, but not what you mean.”

“It means what it means,” I say. “And you need to work that out on your own.”

“Okay. In the meantime…” She stretches and yawns and throws a leg over me, snuggling down against me.

Women do this. And I hate it. But Heaven…like this she’s soft and vulnerable and kitten sweet, and shockingly, I find myself wanting more of these moments when everything is just calm and comfortable.

“We can’t sleep.” The words are out before I can stop them, before I realize I’m going to say them. It’s not really a place made for sleeping with a woman. More like crashing because I’m so fucking tired I don’t want to make that short trek home. Or spending time in here because I’m fucking some woman I don’t give a damn about. But sleeping? All night? With Heaven?

No, I don’t want that. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to sully the place with stupid memories once she’s gone from my life, but that’s a lie because when I’m in the position to move on and up and take over the Mulligan territory, I’ll probably hand off the running of the sex clubs to my brothers.

But home, our home, mine and Heaven’s, is the place to sleep, to do all the fucking stupid shit women want to do. A place to lie in bed and hold her, which right now seems pretty sweet as lethargy sweeps over me.

It’ll deepen that connection to me I need her to feel.

After all, this marriage won’t be done in a week or a month. I’m fast-tracking my plans, playing different games with the same end result, so it’s going to be a while. But the deeper I hook her, the faster I get what I want, and the more time I’ll have test-running the territory, strengthening future relationships that are built from that.

“So what? We go?” she asks, trailing her fingers lazily down the front of my chest. I squirm away from her, that touch almost too much, and she laughs. “Wow, Matteo. Is the big, badass gangsterticklish?”

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