Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77998 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77998 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
“Yeah, boss, of course I do,” he says on the other end of the line. “I’m on it.”
Marialena sits by the pool at our home in Tampa drinking a piña colada. She’s wearing a thin, sea-foam green bikini that barely covers her tits and ass. I can still see the red marks of my handprints at the tops of her thighs.
I blink. “Excuse me, what the fuck are you wearing?”
She looks down at the bikini. “Isn’t it adorable? Found it on clearance when I did some shopping a few days ago.”
I put down my phone and give her the full power of my glare. “You went shopping? Without telling me?”
We’ve been home a full week and have actually enjoyed this week while my mother’s traveling and Cristiano’s on his best behavior.
“Oh, a little shopping never hurt anyone,” she says innocently, batting thick eyelashes at me. She almost gets away with anything she wants when she looks at me like that.
“Who did you take with you?” I have to know whose ass I’m gonna beat before I deal with her.
“Salvatore,” she says in a gentle voice. “Relax. I shopped online. Surely that’s not unacceptable.”
I sit back down and mutter under my breath. I didn’t even realize I was standing.
“You need to work on that, honey,” she says gently.
“On what?”
She leans closer and places a delicate finger on the side of my face. “You have a vein throbbing in your temple. Eeeek!”
It’s an easy matter to grab her around the waist and have her straddle me. “Maybe I need to work on you.”
“What about me?” The demure look gets me every time.
“Always baiting me like that. Knowing full well what will happen yet doing it just the same.”
“I can’t help it,” she whispers, draping her arms around my shoulders. “I get all hot and bothered when you get adorably grumpy. Well, most of the time. When you get mad at Cristiano, I just want to smack him.”
I might love this woman. The realization hits me like a two-by-four.
“Are you okay?” she asks, as her forehead knits in concern. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“Fine,” I manage to lie. “I’m fine.”
I can’t be in love with her. Falling in love with her is the opposite of what I was supposed to do. It isn’t why I married her.
“Back to Cristiano. Why did you say that?”
The serious look on her face gets my attention. “Because he deliberately undermines you then plays like he’s a fool, when he knows exactly what he’s doing. I don’t trust him. I’ve met men like him before, and you know what men like him do?”
“What?” I love that she’s concerned. I love that she understands the world I live in as well as I do. Maybe sometimes even better.
“They betray you, Salvatore. And they’re worse than your most mortal enemies, because they earn your trust before they stab you in the back.” She frowns. “You should just fire him already.”
I sigh. “Trust me. I’d love to. It’s damn complicated.”
She heaves a sigh of her own. “Family dynamics always are. Let me guess, he’s grandfathered in or something?”
“Or something. And to answer your question,” I say, changing the subject, “there is no way in hell this is okay to wear. It’s like a scrap of thread that fell off a cheap piece of fucking furniture.”
The coquettish little smile she gives me wraps around my heart and squeezes.
“I have a surprise for you,” I tell her. “What will you do for me to find out what it is?”
I watch her bite her lip and squirm on my lap, her eyes wide with curiosity.
“Anything,” she says. I wrap my fingers around her hair and yank her head back, dragging her mouth to my ear.
“You’re the prettiest goddamn little slut I’ve ever met, you know that?”
“Mmm. I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
I know she does. I’m a fan myself. “You want to know what you can do to earn your surprise?”
“Wait, I have to earn a surprise?” she asks with an adorable little grin.
“Not really, but I don’t want to miss my chance.”
The pool area rings with her peal of laughter. “Of course you don’t. How very like you. And I already told you I’d do anything you want. Surely you can come up with a few sordid and deviant things for me?”
I imagine her lips wrapped around my cock, her tongue laving the veined length of it. I imagine her moans of pleasure while I play with her nipples and she sucks me off until I come, hard, wrapping my fingers in her hair while I—
“Hello?”
No. No way. Un-fucking-believable. I feel my whole face contort into a frown.
Marialena’s matching frown tells me she heard Cristiano, too.
“Hey, anyone home?” His oily voice rings across the patio.
“I’m here,” I say on a stifled growl. “Pool area.” I bend and grab a red and white stripped towel from a nearby table and drape it over her shoulders. If he ever saw her like this…