“Touch her without permission again,” Tristan Caine stated so quietly the impact hit her harder, that voice of whiskey and sin sending shivers of a completely different kind over her spine, “and I will break you.”
The room went utterly silent. Morana looked at the other goons to see most of them with their hands on their guns, then at Maroni who was watching Tristan Caine with rapt attention.
“Interesting,” he murmured, a smile coming on to his face she did not like one bit.
Tristan Caine let the wrestler guy go and turned to face her, giving Maroni and his goons his back in a move that showed both his complete confidence in their inability to harm him and his trust in Dante to watch his back. This was unexpected. She hadn’t thought he would come anywhere near her where Maroni could watch, for obvious reasons. That he was not only close but was almost flaunting it in the older man’s face caught her unaware.
Morana swallowed, tilting her head back, caught by those blue, blue eyes. He raised his hands in silent question and she nodded, granting him permission. Without removing his eyes from hers, he settled his hands on her shoulders, touching her for the first time. Her chest heaved with an inhale. He kept his touch light as he slid his hand around to her back, running it down her spine. Her body arched, breasts brushing against his torso before she could control the reaction, aware of the many eyes on them.
Once done with her torso, he went down on one knee. Biting the inside of her cheek, she looked down. His large hands traced over her hips, making her heart hammer everywhere in her body. His hands went down and touched her ankle under the hem of her long skirt. Her breath hitched as she fisted her hands to keep them from touching his scruff, her mouth tingling with the remembered sensation of it burning her skin as he kissed her. She saw the responding heat in his eyes as his hands traveled up her calves, his rough fingers caressing her skin for the first time in a room full of mobsters. But it fit given their first time had been in a mob restaurant with mobsters outside the door.
His hands paused on her knee, his eyes molten. She took a deep breath in. He knew exactly where her knives were, had known since he had entered the room. He could have checked her from over her skirt. Yet, he had gotten on a knee and placed his hands directly on her skin without once raising the hem of her skirt from the floor. It wasn’t lost on her what he was doing. It was a statement to all the men in the room, to the woman who had tried to claim him, and to Morana herself. It was a statement loud and clear. She was his.
Her chest tight, she watched him, his eyes, aware of every man in the room but completely unaware of any other man, feeling his hand slowly drift up to the inside of her thighs in a move so intimate like they had done it a thousand times before. She felt his hands find her blades and felt him remove them with adept skill, the same knife she had held to his back in this very house that first night.
The air between them thickened. Her core pulsed.
An inch higher and he would feel how wet she was, right in the middle of this room, just for him. He could do it too. No one would see or notice.
Her thighs started to tremble even as she tried to keep her face blank, the ache in her belly growing heavier, clawing lower and lower towards his hands. She could feel her muscles naturally straining towards those fingers, her walls clenching with the need to be filled, to be filled by him. He had never touched her there, not with that gentleness with which he was holding her flesh now. She craved it. She craved those fingers inside her, moving as his lips kissed her neck and his scent filled her nose and his breaths deepened in her ears. She wanted her senses to be filled by him. She ached for it.
And he read all that in her eyes, saw the naked desire painting her eyes. His fingers tightened infinitesimally on her skin. Just a few inches. Just a little.
Her chest heaved. His hand flexed.
She shivered. His jaw tightened.
Swiftly, he got up, the knives in his hands, and turned to face the room, leaving tremors in her body. Besides Dante, everyone was staring. Morana breathed deeply to keep the flush from her cheeks. Tristan Caine took his position beside her, pocketing her blades and pointing his even stare at Maroni.
“I do believe I will enjoy having Morana for a guest, Tristan,” Maroni said with the smile that quickly simmered her heat down. Dante had been right. She would have to be careful, very careful with this man. Tristan Caine did not react. Not outwardly at least. She knew enough about the man to discern there was a lot more going on inside than anyone realized.
“How did you meet my son and Tristan, Morana?” Maroni demanded rather than asked. “Tell me, I am curious.”
Morana tamped down her emotions and imitated Maroni’s smile. “It’s a long story.”
Maroni’s lips pursed. Then, he turned to one of the goons. “Have Antria prepare the guest room.”
“No need,” Tristan Caine spoke for the first time in a while. “She stays with me.”
Maroni shook his head, crossing one leg o
ver the other, settling in. “No, she doesn’t.”
Tristan Caine didn’t say a word, just stared the man down. Maroni stared back. Now she knew what Dante had been talking about.
“Tristan, honey,” Chiara spoke up from the back, making Morana’s jaw clench at the sudden need to do something violent. “Until Lorenzo has spoken to the right people, he cannot allow her to live that far off the main compound. She has to earn his trust. Till then, she will be a welcome guest at the main house, won’t she, Lorenzo?”
“Of course,” Maroni agreed, never taking his eyes off the younger man.
Morana looked up at Tristan Caine to see his face completely void of any tell - no clenching of the jaw, no expression in his eyes, no tic in his cheek. Nothing. Seeing him like that suddenly made her realize she hadn’t been the only one letting her guards down. He did that too, only when she was watching or with Dante and Amara.
“She stays with me,” he stated again.
“Not possible,” Maroni refuted immediately.
Just as he opened his mouth to speak, Dante took over. “If she stays at the main house, you give your word no harm would come to her?”
Tristan Caine cut a sharp look at Dante; Dante just shook his head, silent communication between the two men.