As she sat up in the bed, her head tilted to the side. “Your eye.” She reached her hand out towards the cut Pascal had given me. I jerked my head away and quickly retreated back to the other side of the room, to reconvene with my bottle of vodka. “After all of this, why would you jerk away from me like that? I just wanted to check the cut on your eye.”
Something about that was equal parts encouraging and endearing, but I knew I couldn’t get sloppy with the way my day had gone. “I can’t allow you to touch me in the state of mind I’m currently in. I’m sorry.”
Sadie sat up to the edge of the bed, and I was praying she didn’t approach me. My resolve wouldn’t hold out. “What state of mind is that?”
Something I was learning very quickly was, when it came to her curiosity, Sadie was like a dog to a bone. “Bloodthirsty,” I replied, stopping her in her tracks, “and more dangerous for you, horny. If you were to touch me, I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions. I’d have you pinned to that bed and fucking you within seconds, and that’s just where I’d start.”
Sadie stopped her advance, and instead slid back on the bed, pulling her knees up to her chest. It gave me a bit of relief. I did take Sadie to make her see that I was serious about having her, but I had no intention of hurting her. If I made a move on her against her will, especially in my current state of mind, and given that she was a virgin, I would do irreversible damage.
“Is what Apollo told me true?” she asked finally.
“Apollo isn’t one to lie, so I would say so,” I responded. “What did he tell you?”
Sadie shifted with discomfort. “That you share everything. That you share women.”
I took a deep breath. I was hoping to work that information in a bit more slowly, but I didn’t tell anyone not to tell her, so I had only myself to blame. “You’ll learn in time here, that we do things a special way, but it works for us. Things don’t happen normally when the mob has been in your family as long as it has been in mine.”
“Were you exposed to it as a child?” Sadie asked.
“It was hidden from me for a long time, but when I found out about it, I was less than thrilled with my father’s backbone. I took it over as soon as I could and got to work reforming the old dinosaur ways my uncles had kept in place for way too long. I took in my cousins Apollo and Asher as my second-in-commands, as they were the only ones for miles with the aptitude to do so.”
“What a family man,” Sadie commented, but it wasn’t snide, it almost sounded envious.
“I never had any siblings and things weren’t solid with my parents, so I never felt like I had a family,” I explained. “When I started to surround myself with people to help me run my business, I also wanted them to be people that could feel like my family.”
“Didn’t have one, so you made one?” she said.
I took a sip of my drink. “Does it surprise you that if I don’t have something, I just go and get it?”
Sadie actually cracked a small chuckle, and I was relieved she picked up on my dry sense of humor. “No, I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.” Her expression went back to a curious one. “They work for you, but do you take care of them?”
“Kane has saved my life more times than I can count, I yearn for the opportunity to do the same for him, but the bastard never slips up,” I explained. “Brix keeps me humble, and because he never had anything as a kid, I try to make sure he wants for nothing as an adult.”
Sadie’s eyes widened. “Wow.”
“Apollo and Asher have the added benefits of actually being my blood. I consider them extensions of myself. When you’re dealing with Apollo or Asher, you’re dealing with me, and if you fuck over Apollo or Asher, you fuck over me,” I continued. “All they have to do is tell me that someone has interfered with their lives or business and I’m on my way with a loaded gun. I look after them with everything in my being.”
“I can relate,” Sadie said. “I’d do anything for my family.”
“Everyone has a family, but this one is mine.” I looked directly into her eyes. “And I would do anything for those who I consider mine.”
Kane
For as tough a guy as I counted myself, I couldn’t survive without my coffee. I slept pretty well through the night after taking out Pascal the night before, but I still woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept in a month. I sat impatiently watching the drip of the, oddly archaic coffee pot for how much Dante liked to keep only the nicest things around, but he wasn’t a coffee drinker himself, and kept it around mostly for myself and the twins. It was taking a while to brew when someone else wandered into the kitchen. I looked over my shoulder, expecting Apollo or Asher, and instead was met with Sadie. She looked sexy with her hair up in a bun, and a set of more loungy clothes that she no doubt received from Dante. Briefly, I wondered if that meant Dante had taken his fill of her, but she didn’t look like a woman who’d just survived a night with the beast.