Mercenary (Gangsters of New York Book 3) Read online

He stormed off, the smell of medicine following him. I would always associate that smell with him.

  “What the fuck is wrong with Dr. Salad—I mean, Sala?” Adriano stared after him. “I wonder if he can get me some watermelon?”

  I picked my winning piece up, holding it in my hand, studying it. The pieces were crystal, the board black and white. The light of the moon went straight through it. When I looked up, Nicodemo was staring in the direction the good doctor had taken. Even though his attention was focused elsewhere, I knew he’d hear me when I spoke.

  “If I had decided the information worth my death was worth sacrificing her life—”

  “—this would be a one-player game,” he said, turning his eyes to mine. There was no emotion there, only the reality of the life we chose to live. Cugini or not, it would have been a war between us, and one of us would be dead. We chose our paths, and that was that. It was what it was, however it ended.

  I nodded, agreeing. I’d kill any motherfucker who came after mine now—Alcina Parisi. Including him, if he made the wrong move.

  His grin came slow—some said it was the grin of a man who had just gotten vengeance. “What can I say? I like the ones who come out to play when the moon is full.”

  Yeah, he would. Crazy motherfucker.

  Emilia once told me that when I couldn’t sleep, it meant that I was awake in someone else’s dreams. But Emilia had wild ways, and she told me more than once that Luna had been wilder than her.

  I wondered if that was why, when the moon was full, madness seem to run through my blood at a quicker speed. I would concede to that one thing, because usually when the moon was full, something more than blood seemed to draw me out, but no more.

  My grandfather was practical. Businesslike. Rooted in reality. He had created the bigger parts of me, and Emilia hated to admit it.

  And the other one?

  Corrado Palermo.

  Fuck. Him.

  He never claimed me. I’d be damned if I ever claimed a piece of him. He was lower than whale shit, and there was no going any lower than that.

  I refused to even think of him, or anything else belonging to that world, letting a familiar path direct my quiet footsteps. I had only been in Bronte a short time, and already this direction had burned itself into my memory. Even without the moon, I didn’t need light to see by. I could find my ending destination in my sleep.

  Her.

  Her tiny casa was hidden deep in the property. Nothing else was around but cats, trees and shrubs. Mount Etna stood directly across, and it made the stone casa seem so little in comparison. The moon hung over the mount, perfectly round and golden.

  More cats seemed to be out tonight, probably sensing the insanity in the air caused by the full moon. I would have blamed my madness on it, but I’d done this before, many times since I’d arrived—found her casa and sat on an overturned bucket outside of it.

  Her casa was hidden in the trees, but there was a straight path to her place from where I sat.

  The first night I’d debated on whether or not I was going to take her back with me.

  I never claimed to have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Both were devils, but an angel had opened her wide eyes, stuck her hands on her hips, and then started arguing with the both of them—in Sicilian.

  I grinned, thinking about her snapping those shears at me.

  After that, leaving her unprotected made me think harder about who else was out there. Silvio salivated for the chance at vengeance, and he had no idea if I’d been looking for her or not, since communication between that world and mine had been slim. So it would make sense that he would still have other men looking for her, even though he knew I never let the enemy go.

  This woman was no enemy to me, though. She was a fucking weapon. Something that made me even stronger as a man.

  The closer I came to la casa dei gatti—the house of cats—I could smell her in the air. Lemon. Chocolate. And something else tonight—something I hadn’t smelled before. Sandalwood. Maybe cedar. It smelled like a fucking man.

  Music drifted out into the night, probably from a little radio that ran on batteries and still played cassettes. I’d seen it sitting outside once on a different night. The sound of female laughter melted in with the song.

  From my place on the overturned bucket, I couldn’t see a fucking thing because freshly washed laundry hung on the lines. It cut off my view.

  The shadows of two women danced behind the curtains. The moon dyed the clothes golden-silver, but the shadows were black. With each reach of an arm, twirl of a body with a basket, bump of a hip, a cat circling a leg, or doubling over of a woman’s body to laugh, shadow puppets formed. Only two pairs of dirty, bare feet were visible from underneath.

  Alcina’s laugh rang out, and it seemed to echo in the recesses of my memories, like she’d been with me my entire life. I just had to find my way back home, follow the sound of her laughter.

  A cat moved around me, circling my legs, and I bent down to scratch her on the head. She had a mark there like a lightning bolt. I remembered Alcina called her Arista.

  The cat purred for a second before she lay down next to me in a bunch of flowers that grew wild around the casa. During the day, they curled in on themselves to hide from the sun. They only opened at night.

  Alcina called them moonflowers, and against the darkness and in the light of the moon, they were neon white.

  I grinned again. The song was in English, but they were singing in Italian—one of them trying to. Anna could sing. Her sister couldn’t. That didn’t stop her from trying, though.

  The show behind the curtains went on for about an hour, and when I heard footsteps coming toward me, I opened my eyes to find Anna standing in front of me, holding a basket against her hip.

  She took her pointer and middle finger and pointed them at her eyes, and then stabbed them at me. “We watch you, too,” she said. “You watch her. We watch you. My sister is not the only one who knows how to use shears.”

  “Or worse,” I said, trying not to laugh at her. She was cute. “Those clothespins might take my eyes out.”

  It took her a second, but a slow smile came to her face. That’s when I realized her cheeks were wet with tears. She sniffed. “I have not seen my sister so happy in her life. Can you believe it? Her entire life. You have given her a glimpse of real light in the darkness. Do not drag her further into it. Or…”

  “Or,” I said. Hesitation was deadly. It was like hesitating when pulling into oncoming traffic. Either fucking go or stay put, but don’t brake.

  “You will not see me coming, scorpione. I will kill you in your sleep.”

  A few cats ran after her when she left. I could hear her talking to them, telling them to go back home, until her voice faded and I knew I was alone with Alcina.

  The radio turned lower, almost off, and I knew she was doing it so she could hear. I put my head back against the tree, closing my eyes, thinking about what Nicodemo had said to me, about the ones who came out to play in the moonlight.

  I wondered if he had ever watched them dance.

  An unfamiliar feeling burned me deep, and I thought about getting up and finding him—to take his eyes out with his memories. Even in those plain dresses, Alcina’s body made them seem indecent.

  It didn’t take a man with a creative brain to imagine what was underneath. Her body was a fucking gun. Her eyes the trigger. Her love the killer.

  A woman like Alcina Maria Parisi was the strongest weapon known to man, and she belonged to me.

  “Judge a man by what he’s willing to die for, not by what he’s willing to kill for,” my grandfather said to me often. “What a man dies for makes the man.”

  She made me.

  It was fucking insane, I never saw it, or her, coming, but so was the moon, and it still took over the sky when the time was right. I was a mere man.

  I must have drifted for a minute or two, comfortable in my spot, but her voice had me straightening up.<
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  She was bent over, petting Arista, telling her how bad she was for pulling down a quilt that had been blocking my view. It was on the ground, and the cat was sitting right next to it.

  That cat was getting the best fucking tuna from me. I’d been planning on moving it once Alcina fell asleep. A candle next to her bed went out when she did. Her room would glow and then go dark.

  My eyes narrowed when Alcina picked the quilt up and laid it on top of one she must’ve brought out when my eyes were closed. She’d put it down between a patch of moonflowers. Her hair was up, as usual, and she was in the same dress she had on earlier. Her feet were dirty from going barefoot, and I could smell candle wax and fresh laundry when the wind blew.

  She turned to the side, facing the moon and Mount Etna, but she was more outlined by the darkness than brightened by the moon. She was caught in the middle of the contrast.

  Her mouth moved to the music playing in the background—I’ve always been in love with you— before she released her hair from the scarf. It fell down her back like dark waves.

  I’d never seen her hair down. It became a sacred thing to me then, something for me only—to admire, to touch, to pull when my cock was buried deep inside of her and she was screaming out my name.

  She swayed a little, still mouthing the song, and then started to unbutton her dress with slow moving fingers.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  She slid one shoulder out, then another, and then she let the dress fall to the ground. She stepped out of it and then threw the dress in a basket that had been left outside. Left in only plain cotton, she became as stark as the flowers at her feet.

  Her hand came up, and she placed it in the crook of her neck, moving it from one side to another, something she did to ease the strain. Her neck was graceful, and the cross that hung around it glinted gold against her skin.

  The wind blew again, and she seemed to close her eyes even tighter, as I opened mine even wider. I could taste her on my tongue. Her scent was something I’d kill to keep—to claim.

  She unhooked the plain bra, throwing it toward the basket. Her throw wasn’t long enough. It hung on the side, halfway in, half-way out. Then she hooked a finger in each side of her underwear, just as plain as the bra, and shimmied the fabric down until she was naked. This time when she aimed for the basket, she made the shot.

  A decent man would have closed his eyes. Would have walked away.

  I wasn’t a decent man, and I never would be. And where this woman was concerned, what she had, who she was, every breath she took, was mine. Even if she hadn’t grasped the enormity of that fact yet, and what it meant.

  It meant that if any man even dared to look at her wrong, they would answer to me.

  Right now. She was answering to me. A call that went deeper than the sound of a voice.

  Every one of my deepest desires was playing out like a fantasy in real time, and my eyes feasted on her naked body like they were gluttons.

  She swayed a bit to the music, moving her hips from side to side, before her fingers made a slow trail from her neck, between her breasts, back up to her mouth. She traced her lips with a finger, smiling after. It wasn’t full, but there was something rebellious about it that I recognized right away.

  She lowered down to the ground after, getting comfortable on the quilt, and then lay down, like she was at the beach and the moon was the sun. The light fell on her body, and I could make out every bone highlighted by the dark shadows. Her breastbones. Her hipbones. They created the shape of her flesh.

  Her fingertips stroked the sides of her body, until one hand rose up higher, circling her nipple. The other hand went lower, between her thighs, until it disappeared between her legs.

  Her mouth parted as she started to move her fingers between her legs and tease her nipple even harder. Her legs parted even wider, and I could see every move she made.

  How high she was becoming. How fucking turned on she was.

  The inside of her thighs was coated, soaked. My dick was so hard that it was painful.

  Her cheeks were red, almost like she was ashamed of the pleasure her touch gave her. This was forbidden for a woman like her. A woman who was told self-pleasure was a sin.

  “Forbidden” seemed to dare her—turn her on. It was buried down deep with that wild spirit she could never set free.

  I recognized it right away. It was the reason she’d fallen so hard for me.

  I was all of those things and fucking more.

  It wasn’t the madness from the full moon in my blood. It was this woman running through my veins.

  Her breath started to hitch, quiet moans coming from her full lips, and her back arched while she pushed against her hand, fighting for the release.

  I could smell her desire and her frustration in the air, like chocolate and lemon. She needed more.

  The craving was there, as concentrated and as hot as the air, but not the satisfaction.

  My name escaped her lips, once, twice, like a call from the wild, and I stood.

  I had been playing a game all night, so I decided to play one more. One Bugsy called Italian Roulette.

  13

  Alcina

  I had never done this before. Explored my body with my hands—not in this way. I had thought about it, craving the feeling, the release, but nothing had ever turned me on enough to give myself over to it.

  I knew it was wrong, forbidden, just like the man I fell in love with, and I couldn't stop that either. So I gave myself over to it...the ache, the unyielding want. The desire.

  To be touched...

  His face so close in my mind. His eyes staring into mine. The fantasies of him touching me. Doing things to me that I knew were...

  Arrgh…! A frustrated sound came from my lips as my fingers worked faster, trying to reach the highest point, but it was no substitute for the real thing.

  For him.

  I needed his touch more than food, more than drink, more than the breath in my lungs, which came out of my mouth in pants.

  “Where are you, scorpione?” My voice came out breathy, almost begging. My eyes slowly opened and I blinked a few times, staring at the man watching me. My fingers stilled, but the ache continued to claw at me. I should have been embarrassed, mortified, but all I felt was great relief.

  A fantasy had come to life in my darkest hour.

  The golden light made him glow. The moon was the biggest candle of all.

  I opened my mouth, ready to speak, when he removed his t-shirt, so bright against the darkness of his skin, and his boots and pants. A second later, he was fully naked, the moon at his back.

  The breath left my mouth, and I shook my head, sitting up. “Please, il mio amante. I need you. Your touch. I—”

  “You want me to touch you.”

  “Sì.”

  “You want me to taste you.”

  “Sì.” The word trembled out.

  I got to my knees when he was close enough, soaking in the rugged beauty of him—the only man I had ever called mine. If he claimed me tonight as his, I wondered if I was going to be able to walk in September. He was as hard as stone, and as hot as the lava that poured from the mountain. His skin radiated heat, and it circulated between the space between our bodies. A cool bead of sweat ran down my neck, and his finger came out and reversed its trail, all the way up to my mouth.

  His finger tasted of salt, of me, of him, and I sucked even harder. He made a guttural noise in his throat and then pushed my head closer, until I took him into my mouth.

  He was as salty as the finger, but much, much better. I swirled my tongue around, taking him even deeper, but I did not think I could take him all the way. He was too long, too wide, but the more I tasted, the more I wanted.

  He hissed and I stopped, looking up. “Teeth,” he said.

  My fingers cradled his balls. “I want to keep these,” I breathed, taking him inside of my mouth again.
He placed his hands on my head, starting to move with me, making me take him even deeper, touching the back of my throat. When I moaned around him, he took himself completely out.

  My patatina had a pulse that matched my heart, and so sensitive that one touch from him, and there would be nothing left for me to hold on to. I would take the fall from heaven.

  He knelt in front of me, and taking me around the waist, pulled my body against his. His hands slid down my arms, taking my wrists, pulling them behind my back. His grip was painful, but it made me breathless—the strength.

  “You know why hands on this body is forbidden, angel eyes? Because this body belongs to me. No one fucking touches it but me.”

  His mouth came against mine, and our tongues thrashed, the sounds of raw pleasure echoing around us in the night. His cazzo was hot and hard against the softness of my stomach, until he positioned it between my legs. One hand fisted in my hair, and the other slid between my cheeks, pushing me forward, directing me to move against him.

  His hardness slid against me, my desire coating my trembling thighs and him, and it was a gorgeous rhythm. A melody between two bodies that had no words, even if the noises were raw and ugly. This was something I had craved, needed, and it did not take long for the pleasure to rise up in me at a manic speed and then overflow, making me come around him. I screamed out his name, my hands gripping his shoulders, every ounce of my energy draining with the release.

  “Ah,” he breathed out. “You're a screamer.”

  I screamed out again when he leaned back even further, taking me with him, his cazzo entering me fully and to the hilt. The pain made me dizzy, and my body was suddenly drenched in sweat. My nails sunk deep into his skin.

  “As tight as a virgin,” he said, his eyes like fire on mine.

  I bit into my bottom lip, my eyes meeting his. The truth passed between us, and I nodded.

  His face turned to stone.

  “My choice,” I said, my voice steadier than my trembling body. “You are my choice. Please. Do not stop now.” And even though the pain of the breach rocked me to my core, the pleasure waited in the wings. My hands fisted in his hair, my mouth coming against his, my tongue tempting and teasing his.