Page 20 of The Don

“No more. I can’t,” she groans. “I’ll burst.”

“Are you sure? Just a few bites more?”

“I’m full,” she whines. “There’s no more room. The baby takes up so much space.”

I sit back in my chair and frown at her. She smiles wearily at me.

“Now who is the liar?”

“I’m not lying!” she cries adorably. “The baby is like this big.” She holds her hands in the air, her palms far enough apart to fit a melon in the space between.

I squint at her and shake my head. I wipe my hands on the dishtowel I threw over the back of the chair on the other side of me and then reach into my back pocket. I open the pregnancy app that I downloaded while she was asleep on the plane and turn the screen to face her.

Her eyes widen in shock, and she looks from the phone to me. “Avocado. The baby is much smaller than you want me to believe. You can eat more.”

“I—” she starts before shaking her head. “You.”

“Si. I think our avocado needs more food.”

I’m shocked into speechlessness when she bursts into tears.

I’ve been shot more times than I can count. I’ve been stabbed even more times than that, I assume; I stopped keeping count long ago. Once, maybe two decades ago, I awoke to a rope around my throat. I killed the man holding it, but I couldn’t speak for days, the skin around my neck was tender for weeks, and for months after, I couldn’t bear to wear anything close around my neck. It was agony.

Still, nothing shreds me quite as neatly as Shae’s watery eyes and trembling lower lip. I assume this is the hormones and exhaustion, but the particulars don’t matter. I pull her from her seat and cradle her in my arms. “Va bene, amore mio,” I whisper, rubbing her back as she cries.

“I’m sorry,” Shae sobs into my neck.

“Why?”

“I don’t know why I’m crying. You’re just so sweet,” she wails.

I laugh into her soft hair. “No one has ever used that word to describe me, not even when I was a child.”

She shakes her head and presses her body closer to me. “You’ve always been sweet to me,” she breathes against my neck, her soft breath rustling the very bottom of my beard, threatening to make me hard in an instant.

“No, bella. I have been anything butsweetto you.”

My voice is rough as I admit this, but I can picture her now, bent over the table in my office, her sex wet and open, waiting for me to push inside of her. I can remember the sharp gasp when I did. The taste of sweat on her skin. The feeling of her cries when I wrapped my hand around her throat to keep her firmly in place so I could fuck her until my old wound was a stinging line of fire. A sharp pain that barely registered because nothing was more important than pulling one more orgasm from her by sheer desperate will.

Right from the beginning, I have been anything but sweet, and I don’t think that will change because now I’m hard, and her firm ass is sitting right on my dick.

And I think she follows the train of my thoughts when she shivers in my arms, and her soft lips move over the skin she’s wet with her tears.

I still, waiting for whatever she will say to that admission, but her only response is to lick a path up the side of my neck and suck my earlobe into her mouth.

“Fuck,” I hiss, wrapping my arms fully around her now.

“Salvatore,” she moans.

I shake my head wearily, even as my body has begun to harden. “You need to sleep.” I squeeze her side, not for any other reason than to revel in her softness.

She licks up the shell of my ear. “I know,” she moans. “I want you to fuck me to sleep.”

How can I say no to that? “I should clean the kitchen.” A pathetic attempt.

“Tomorrow,” she says, her lips and tongue moving lightly over my skin.

“Bella,” I groan, my patience wearing dangerously thin. I’m tired as well.