“YOU HAVE no respect for sleeping in,” Camilla mumbled.
God, she tried so damn hard to sound irritated, but really, her voice just came off high and airless. Not whiney, but close. Still just a little bit too needy for her liking.
It probably didn’t help that Tommaso’s lips were kissing a tantalizing path down her stomach. He’d started at her cheek, then her throat, and focused on her breasts for a while. He teased and flicked the small hoops in her nipples until they were taut, and her back arched off the bed.
Then, he moved lower.
And lower.
“How can I respect sleeping in when I have you in my bed?” Tommaso asked. “Besides, I don’t know how to sleep in. I wake up before dawn. Get used to it.”
Get used to it.
Words like those might have scared Camilla before. They kind of implied something long-term was on the horizon. Something beyond a one-time deal. The first thing she would have done after getting her fill was bolt, and stay gone.
Not this time.
Those words teased.
They made her anticipate.
They promised.
His lips touched down just below her navel, and his tongue flicked out to lap at her skin. He went lower still, kissing her pubic bone, and hooking one of her legs around his shoulder. Camilla knew what was coming, and couldn’t find a single part of her that wanted to stop him.
No matter how much she pretended to like sleep.
This would always be better.
Again, his tongue flicked out to lap at her skin when he kissed just above the hood of her clit. Camilla let out a slow exhale, and steeled herself. She wasn’t going to show a damn thing to Tommaso.
It didn’t matter how good his blue gaze looked as he stared up from between her thighs with a sexy little grin, his eyebrow cocked in challenge, and …
“Why do you have to be like this?” she asked him.
Tommaso’s grin deepened. “Like what?”
“I don’t know … sweet, patient, sexy as hell, gorgeous, and there’s more but my brain is really just focused on how close your mouth is to my pussy right now. So, it’s basically fucking useless at the moment.”
His chuckle rocked them both on the bed.
“I mean, do you want to pretend like it’s a bad thing where my mouth is right now?” he asked.
Camilla glanced up at the ceiling, and sent a silent prayer to the God she had been taught to revere and trust. A deity she gave all her faith to because everyone needed something to believe in—something good and beautiful.
Tommaso was kind of like that for her, too.
Finally, she peered back at Tommaso, and waved a hand at him. “Who do I have to blame for all of this, huh? Your mother, or father? Some person who took you under their wing and taught you how to be this amazing, perfect man, or what?”
“Uh.”
That was all she got.
Uh.
Camilla stared at Tommaso, and waited for a response. “Well?”
“I’m confused, Cam. You act as though it’s a bad thing I’m a decent guy.”
He dropped his upper body down, rested between her legs, and set his chin to her stomach. Like that, the two looked at one another until she felt like she was capable of making full sentences that made sense.
“It’s not a bad thing—it’s just not something I’m used to. Yeah, that works.”
She mentally patted herself on the back.
Tommaso shook his head. “Yeah, well, that’s a shame.”
“Maybe you’re not perfect at all.”
“Ouch.”
Camilla laughed, and reached down to stroke his unshaven cheek with her palm. “No, I mean … maybe you’re just perfect for me. Every little thing about you seems to break down my walls, right? Things about you that would usually send me running for the hills actually draws me back in. I don’t know. I’m rambling.”
Wordlessly, Tommaso pushed up from the bed, and rested on his hands. He hovered over Camilla with a smile that was still sexy, but also soft and knowing.
Like he knew exactly what she was scared to say.
Tommaso bent down, and grazed his nose along Camilla’s cheek. She tipped her head back, and answered his soft touch with a kiss. A sweet, slow kiss that burned through her body. From her toes, to her fingertips, she was on fire.
It wasn’t so devastating, though.
It wasn’t frightening.
It soothed and reassured and protected. It wrapped around her like invisible tendrils holding tight, and refusing to let go.
It was just a kiss, but it was everything else, too.
And that’s when she knew for sure …
That’s when all the things she had been wondering and waiting for slipped into place. All the answers she thought needed words and explanations actually only needed a kiss.
Because that was when she knew.
Camilla loved this man.
She almost wished she could stay like that—forever lost to the moment when she fell in love with Tommaso. She knew she would love him until the end of time, but this would be the one and only time when she first really knew it.
Tommaso smiled against her lips when Camilla stroked his cheek.
He knew.
She could see it in his eyes.
Camilla still told him.
“I love you, Tom.”
“I know—I love you.”
“It’s not so hard to say, I guess. Not so scary.”
“See,” he told her, “love is effortless, Cam.”
It was.
That, and perfect.
Like him.
The ruckus of laughter by men inside the warehouse quieted damn near the second Camilla stepped foot inside the building. A dozen pairs of eyes turned on her, and she let out a little laugh.
“What, have they never seen a girl before?”
Tommaso chuckled at her side. “Not in here, babe. Ignore them.”
Camilla followed behind Tommaso as he headed for the far end of the warehouse. There, an office door was open, and inside were two more men. One, Camilla recognized as Adriano—apparently, Tommaso’s uncle. He had been at the dinner the evening before.
“Camilla.”
She smiled at Adriano’s greeting.
The other guy pushed off the desk, and shot Tommaso a questioning look. “Camilla?”
Tommaso shrugged. “Yeah, Camilla.”
“This is … a little weird. Mostly because I don’t understand what’s happening.”
Adriano waved the other two men’s conversation off as he stood from the chair behind the desk. “Don’t mind them. I hope my nephew is showing you around Chicago properly.”
Camilla cocked an eyebrow at Tommaso. “Not yet.”
“Working on it, actually.”
“You better,” Adriano said, grinning. “It’s hard to sell a New Yorker on Chicago.”
“Let’s not get into that old conversation,” Tommaso said, shaking his head. “It’s not worth the effort.”
“Because New York is—”
“Not the best,” Tommaso interjected fast.
Camilla rolled her eyes, saying under her breath, “Says you.”
“And me,” the unknown guy added.
“Me, too,” Adriano said, shrugging. “It’s a little dirty, Camilla. That’s all.”
“Yeah, well, fuck all of you, too.”
Laughter rumbled through the room. Their teasing didn’t really bother her. If anything, it made her feel more welcome. She certainly didn’t want Tommaso’s family and friends tiptoeing around her.
“Are you going to introduce us, or what?” the unknown guy asked.
Tommaso waved between Camilla and the man. “Cam, this is Lou. We’ve been friends for years. Lou, this is Cam. She’s none of your business.”
Camilla smacked Tommaso on his arm, and then held a hand out to Lou. “Nice to meet you, and ignore him.”
Lou flipped Tommaso the middle finger after he shook Camilla’s hand. “You could have mentioned …” The guy trailed off, and nodded in Camilla’s direction. “You know.”
“None of your business.”
“Tommaso,” Camilla said.
Tommaso only shrugged, but said nothing.
Adriano sighed heavily, and came around the desk. “Someone—not saying who, but it’s Tommaso—doesn’t like to share things. We blame it on the age difference between him and his sisters. He was spoiled rotten for too long by his mother and father, and it shows every day of his life.”
“It is not pick on Tom day,” Tommaso muttered. “Give me the paperwork you wanted me to drop off to Tommas.”
“Every day is pick on you day when you bring a girl to work,” Lou said, smirking.
Camilla hid her smile by looking away. Apparently, she didn’t need to worry about a damn thing, or feeling out of place. It was … good.
Easy.
“Seriously, get me the paperwork before I leave without it,” Tommaso said. “I’m not staying here for longer than I have to, if I have to listen to this shit.”
Adriano pointed a single finger at Tommaso, but started digging in the desk. “Watch it, nipote.”
Tommaso wasn’t even paying attention to his uncle. He had already moved onto his friend again.
“Pick on me, huh?” Tommaso asked.
Lou nodded. “Yeah, sorry, man.”
“I’ll remember not to give you a call when we all head to Joe and Cory’s club opening up tonight, then.”
“The new one downtown?” Lou asked.
Tommaso shrugged. “Not for you.”
Camilla knew Tommaso was just bothering his friend, but she decided to step in. After all, she might need the guy on her side someday. She pulled out her phone, and turned the screen on.
Handing it over to Lou, she said, “Plug your contact in. I’ll call you when we’re leaving.”
“Cam,” Tommaso said, looking like she’d just punched him in the gut. “What the hell, donna?”
“Hey, I’m making friends,” she replied.
Lou grinned, and punched his number into the phone. “I like her, Tom. You should bring her around more often.”
“Yes,” Adriano agreed as he handed over a red file to Tommaso. “I agree.”
“He’s been up there a while,” Camilla said, glancing upward at the high ceiling.
“Business,” Tommaso’s mother replied.
Camilla nodded, and went back to the bread she had rolled. Using a knife, she cut a cross-cross pattern along the top part of the loaf.
“I don’t usually cut it like that,” Abriella said.
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“I can roll it up again, if you want.”
Abriella laughed, and patted Camilla’s cheek with a floury hand. “I just meant to say, that’s a new way to cut the loaf.”
“Oh.” Camila set the knife aside, and brushed her hands off on her jeans. It left flour handprints behind, but she didn’t mind. Abriella had asked her to help with the bread she had been baking, and Camilla didn’t want to refuse. “Well, my mom does it like that because it makes it look like a cushion after it’s done.”
“Huh.” Abriella picked up a bit of flour, and sprinkled it over her rolled dough, and the countertop. She went about rolling the dough again. “I like it. How are you liking Chicago?”
“It’s all right. I mean, it’s not New York or anything.”
Abriella smiled. “I feel the same way when I leave this city. It takes some getting used to.”
“But I like it here. Tom took me around today, and showed me different places.”
“Met some people, too, didn’t you?”
Camilla nodded. “A lot of them were at dinner, but yeah. It was nice to meet everyone again—one on one.”
“We are a large family.”
“Not like mine,” she admitted. “It’s just my mom and dad, brother, and a couple of aunts that moved away years ago.”
“No grandparents?”
Camilla shrugged. “My mom’s parents, but I’ve never even met them.”
She could see the question lingering in Abriella’s gaze, but the woman didn’t ask for more. She was grateful because honestly, she didn’t even know what to say about her mother’s parents. All she knew was that they were not nice people.
“We’ve made our family big over the years,” Abriella said quietly, still working away at the bread. “Tommas’s mother and father are dead, and so are mine. What we had left were relations made by marriage and friendships.”
“Makes for peaceful business, I bet.”
At least, Camilla assumed it would. She knew the closer a family was, the less likely they were to fight on the mafia side of things. Or, that’s what her father liked to say.
Abriella glanced up from the dough with a sly smile. “And just how much do you know about business, Camilla?”
She laughed. “Enough to know my place.”
“That’s a start. What about my son?”
Camilla cleared her throat. “I … never really asked Tommaso, to be honest.”
“Why?”
“Because it didn’t matter to me if he was connected, or not. It didn’t make a difference to how he treated me, or the things he did for me. I knew he was a good man, and the rest were just details.”
Abriella’s hands slowed in her work. “What made you come to that conclusion?”
“I was raised by a good man who lives in shades of gray. To people who only see his name come up on the news, he’s a criminal. He sells drugs, evades taxes, and puts guns on the streets. But to me, he is just my dad. It was the way he treated me that mattered. Not the rest.”
As she spoke, Camilla kept her gaze focused on the next dough she was rolling into a perfect loaf just the way her mother had taught her. It was easier to be honest that way, as then she could simply speak and not worry about how her words might sound to Abriella.
“You didn’t consider at all that Tommaso is the son of a boss—the only son? That someday, he might sit where his father does because those expectations have followed him around for his entire life?”
“Not really,” Camilla said.
She knew, of course. She wasn’t a stupid girl.
Camilla just didn’t think it mattered.
“Do you think that’s because you’re a bit naive, or perhaps you grew up in this world of … business?”
“Definitely not naive,” Camilla replied.
“And the other one?”
Well …
Camilla didn’t think it was entirely because she grew up inside the suffocating world of Mafiosi, either.
It was something else entirely.
“As long as he loves me, then I don’t care about the rest,” Camilla said, finally looking up to meet Abriella’s gaze. “I never went looking for a man who lives his life on the right side of the law. I never went looking for a man at all. A good man found me and something about me was good enough for him. That’s all I want to know. It’s all I needed to know about Tommaso.”
Camilla sighed. “That doesn’t mean I went into this blind, or that I’m moving forward with blinders on, either. It just means I know what I signed up for here.”
“Do you? Do you know how hard it is to love a man who can be taken away with one misstep—in a single second? Do you know how difficult it is to build a life around a man whose very nature could leave you entirely without because he is not an easy man?”
“I do now,” Camilla said.
It was scary.
It was also their life.
“And?” Abriella asked.
“And I still love him.”
Once more, Abriella reached across the counter, and patted a floury hand against Camilla’s cheek. “I like you, Camilla Donati.”
“Do you?”
“It’s hard not to.”
Tommaso’s mother smiled in a way that said she knew something Camilla didn’t.
“I can see why he found you,” Abriella murmured. Then, louder, she added, “You can stop hiding around the corner, Tommaso. I know you’re out there, son.”
Sure enough, Tommaso stepped into the entryway of the kitchen. His striking blue gaze fell on Camilla, but his face was blank. No emotion—nothing to give away he had been listening in to their conversation.
She didn’t need to see it in his face.
She found it in his eyes.
Questions he had answers to now. Things he hadn’t asked her.
Abriella gave Camilla a wink, and a smile. She understood what the woman had known that she didn’t. Even men like Tommaso needed reassurance—they simply didn’t ask for it. His mother had known he needed something he wasn’t going to say he wanted, and so she gave it to him.
Camilla took that as a lesson to learn, and one to keep close. A lesson from a woman who probably understood what she was talking about better than anyone knew.
Joe Rossi was built like a brick shithouse, and his younger brother Cory was just as big. That was the first thing to come to Camilla’s mind when she was introduced to Tommaso’s cousins.
She was fucking dwarfed by them.
Sure, she had to stare up at Tommaso because he was tall, but it would take three of her easily to make one of them.
“You sure she’s legal to be in this joint?” Joe asked.
Tommaso gave the older of the two a look. “Is Cory?”
Cory grinned at Camilla, dangerous in a blink. “I’m not legal to be here, either, but I own half the place. No worries.”
Joe shook his head. “Don’t let her drink, Tommaso. I don’t need an underage drinking charge or some shit. I would never get my alcohol license back.”
“Can’t drink tonight anyway,” Camilla said.
She didn’t give a reason why, though.
“Lou!” Cory shouted.
The man in question broke through a small crowd of people near the entrance with a wide grin on his face. Camilla looked up at Tommaso, and shrugged.
“Seems he didn’t need me to get him in here, huh?”
Tommaso chuckled. “He knew I was fucking with him. Cory is a good friend of his, too.”
Camilla figured that one out about five seconds ago.
Lou and Cory greeted each other with a handshake, and a smack on the shoulder. Cory pointed at something across the floor—a secondary bar of some sort, and then gave the rest of them a nod.
“Nice to meet you, Cam,” he said. “And Joe, don’t be an ass to everyone tonight. The whole point of this business is to keep people in the club.”
Joe made a noise under his breath, but didn’t fully respond. Cory was gone with Lou a couple of seconds later.
“Dad’s always telling me to look out for him. Like Cory has got somebody else to worry about coming after him when he’s not looking or something,” Joe muttered. “Who he’s really got to worry about is me kicking his arrogant ass.”
“You should meet my brother if you think Cory is arrogant,” Camilla said.
Joe passed her a look. “Cross Donati, right?”
Camilla laughed. “Let me guess—”
“The most arrogant fucker I have ever met.”
“Knew it.” Camilla shrugged one shoulder under her tight, black club dress. “Bet you still like him, though, don’t you?”
“Cross is … hard not to like. Or respect.”
“It’s usually one or the other with him,” Tommaso agreed. “Find us later, Joe?”
“Sure, if I have time. Seems someone is going to spend his night showing off, and that leaves me to be the boss of the place.”
“Knock it down to him being the younger one, man.”
Joe nodded. “Right, that’s what it is.”
Tommaso’s hand at Camilla’s lower back guided her through the people, and closer to the bar. His gray-blue gaze drifted over her dress, and down to the black heels on her feet. “I did tell you how nice you look tonight, didn’t I?”
Camilla scoffed. “Nice?”
“For the moment, I’m keeping this PG, Camilla. Don’t push me.”
Heat danced through her insides.
“You did tell me, Tom.”
With that, she hooked a finger around the tie he wore, and pulled him in for a kiss. The black suit he had put on earlier did everything good for his body. It showed off his leanness, gave him that tall, dark, and handsome bit to accentuate.
She loved it.
“Did you have fun with my mother today?” he asked.
“I did.”
“That’s good.” He pressed a kiss to her nose. “I knew she would like you.”
Camilla smiled softly. “You could have asked me, you know, about business and how I felt. You didn’t have to spy to find out.”
Tommaso shook his head. “There is some stuff in this life you just don’t ask. You find out one way or the other. This was one of those for me.”
“Did you think I knew?”
“Entirely,” he replied. “I figured you would have stayed the hell away had you found a problem with it.”
“I see,” she teased.
Tommaso winked, and tugged on one of her loose waves of hair. Then, he gestured at the wall-length, built-in bar for the club. Behind it, bottles on shelves seemed to dance under the lights and strobes. The bass from the music pumped through the floors, and vibrated Camilla’s feet.
“You can drink, if you want,” he told her. “Joe was just being a shit.”
“You shouldn’t encourage underage—”
His hand smacked her ass hard, quieting her. Still, a hot little squeak escaped.
“So much for PG,” she told him.
Tommaso shrugged. “I went as long as I could. I make no apologies for anything that happens next.”
Camilla’s laughter melted into the sound of the music. “No drinking for me tonight, like I said. I have an essay I have to finish when I get back to your place, and then email it in to my professor. That way, I don’t have to rush home. I can stay … a few more days.”
He glanced down at her. “Really?”
She nodded. “Yeah, Tom.”
“What’s the essay?”
“Just a correlation between preemie births and lack of prenatal care for poverty stricken women.”
“Heavy topic,” he said.
“You can help me with big words, or listen to me key it out.”
Tommaso leaned down to press a kiss to her head. “You don’t need help, but how about I feed you snacks, and make sure you’re watered every few minutes.”
“Watered?”
“Coffee?”
“Will you switch it to wine when I’m almost done?”
Tommaso patted her ass again. “Whatever you want, babe.”
“Anything I want?”
His gaze darted down to her as he gestured for the bartender at the same time. “What’s your filthy mind getting up to now? I recognize that tone, Camilla. That tone means sex.”
He was so right.
“I mean, it’s kind of good you know the owners. You probably have a way into the office.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Camilla wet her lower lip and she looked up to the row of windows on the second level that seemed to be one-way, considering she couldn’t see inside. “We could … watch the show, too. Just not give a show.”
Tommaso cleared his throat. “Let me have a drink first.”
“Whiskey does taste better on your tongue.”
“Bet it tastes divine on your pussy, too.”
Camilla smirked. “Probably. Save some to bring with you and we can test that theory out.”