Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
He grabbed her waist tightly. It had to sting a little.
“The two feel a lot a like,” she told him, unbothered, and gazes locked, “we both know that. But one is not the same as the other, and you’ve lived enough of a life to know the difference.”
Salvatore kissed Carina hard enough that she bit him in response. Only three times in their marriage had she bitten him during intimacy, drawing blood, and each time led to the same thing. Just like now.
One of his hands flew up to catch her throat, stopping the second nip of her teeth against bleeding flesh that would surely come. She only laughed a breathless gasp at the roughness, otherwise unconcerned.
She said it, after all. He was a monster. Just not hers.
Her back found the top of his desk with enough force to rattle the items on top. As her silk robe opened, falling away to expose the smooth expanse of perfect breasts and silken skin, bare all the way down to between her legs, he remembered. His fingers flexed into her thigh he’d shoved open; she already shook, and he could smell how much she wanted it.
Hell, he could see it.
He hadn’t forgotten, he just—
“Don’t you dare,” Carina breathed out heavily on the desk below him. “Not now.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Her fingernails bit into both his wrists, urging pain as much as she begged for it. It wouldn’t be the first time he fucked her on his desk, but he usually didn’t do it with the door unlocked and wide open. Even if it was nearly three in the morning.
The desk became a victim to the two finding what they needed in one another, yet again. Carina just wanted to sleep, and Salvatore needed the distraction. He never once looked at the clock while he had his wife spread apart and trembling through her first orgasm of three. He’d given her that one with two fingers in her cunt and a thumb rolling circles into her clit. It gave him time to shove down the lounge pants he’d changed into shortly after the party ended.
He’d forgone a shirt entirely.
That meant his chest took the brunt of her fingernails when he fucked her so hard that the side of the desk left bruises along his thighs. Words became an unnecessary thing between them when he found everything he wanted to say reflecting in her teary, blissed gaze.
I hate you sometimes. I want you always. I love you forever.
He held her down against the desk, making her take it how he knew she wanted it. She came that last time gagging on those same fingers he’d fucked her with earlier, those tears in her eyes finally spilling when he came, too.
His hand splayed out across her stomach. The gentlest he’d been, somehow.
“Jesus Christ,” Carina panted the first moment she could.
His fingers left a trail of her saliva down her jaw. His forehead found a place to rest against her heaving chest while he tried to breathe.
“It’s past three,” Carina informed as her legs untangled from around his middle. He didn’t straighten, or step back from her and the desk, simply checked the clock. “You can sleep.”
•••
Salvatore woke sometime around noon. He only knew the time because the windows in Carina’s bedroom allowed light to spill across her fluffy, white duvet at that point in the day. It shocked him that he’d slept so long, but he also struggled to take in his surroundings.
He never slept in her bed. That was hers.
“Hey,” came Carina’s soft voice.
Salvatore blinked through the sunlight and pillows. Carina’s figure, contrasting through the rays, blocked his vision momentarily. She leaned down, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He tried to remember what happened after their moment together in the study, but flashes of the same thing, only in her bed, confirmed his reason for waking up where he did.
“There’s food downstairs when you want it.”
“Okay,” he mumbled.
Her arms wrapped her waist. “And your phone has been going off for a while.”
At that news, Salvatore pushed himself up to sit. He outstretched his arm and flexed his hand open and closed repeatedly while his wife grumbled under her breath. Eventually, the phone met his palm.
Salvatore had to blink several times to read the notifications on the screen. He chose to pull up the one right on top.
Larkin.
Got these, boss man.
Attached were two images. Phone records from the phone Nico had been given by Big Mike to do business. It took more than a few hours to gain access to some information.
The other attachment?
Flight confirmations for two people. Nico and Frankie, according to the information. Paid for through a credit card Salvatore didn’t recognize. Although, he figured Nico might also have moved his money into a new account, and opened others in the process, just to keep fingers and noses out of his business.