Remo nodded and released me. For him, it was settled. He knew I was still there for him. “Now that I know you can take care of Vegas while I’m gone, I’ll have to focus on kidnapping the lucky bride.”
I shook my head. Remo was obsessed. I should have been the voice of reason in this and made sure our plan actually worked. Emotions wouldn’t change the fact that I was the voice of logic between the two of us. That I would always be better at controlling my emotions, but Remo would follow his plan no matter what I said.
Kiara had freed me from the shackles of my past, and I wished the same for Remo. But Remo was Remo, and he would never allow a woman to see any side of him that didn’t evoke terror and fear.
When I returned home early in the evening, Kiara was outside in the garden and practicing how to shoot a gun. She had improved greatly since she’d first held a gun in her hand. Adamo was beside her, adjusting her arms every now and then. He’d be inducted in three weeks, on his fourteenth birthday, and now he’d pulled back even further from Remo, Savio, and myself. The only person he still spoke to on a daily basis was Kiara. She shot again, hitting bull’s-eye. Adamo smiled. Then he spotted me and stiffened. After saying something to Kiara, he walked off.
Kiara headed my way, the gun still in her hand. She was beaming, looking fucking proud, and my heart did that strange flip again. It always startled me.
“Did you see that?” she asked as she stopped in front of me.
“You’re a good shot.”
Her brows drew together. “Everything all right? You have a strange look on your face again.”
I took her hand and led her inside the mansion. She followed without hesitation but chanced the occasional confused look at me. When we arrived in our bedroom, I took the gun from her and set it down on the nightstand. Then I pulled her against me and kissed her. Her hands came up to my chest, stroking and tugging, as her mouth moved against mine. She tasted like peppermint and chocolate, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
Lifting her up, I laid her down on the bed then climbed on top of her, pressing my hard cock against her center. She moaned into my mouth and wrenched my shirt out of my pants. I sat up and quickly discarded my shirt before lowering myself back onto Kiara’s soft body.
Her hands roamed over my back up to my neck, pulling me closer, and I kissed her harder and rocked my hips against her pelvis. She gasped. “Nino. I need you.”
I pushed her shirt over her head then sucked her breast into my mouth through her lace bra as my hand traveled down to her shorts. I opened them and slipped my hand into her panties, over her soft hair and between her folds, finding her hot and wet and ready.
Fuck. I ripped her shorts down her legs then made quick work of her panties as well and pushed down my own pants and briefs before I moved back between her legs and thrust into her in one deep, hard move. We groaned and Kiara’s nails raked over my back. I growled as my balls twitched. I guided one of her legs up then began fucking her in slow, hard thrusts. Her eyes remained on mine as I elicited from her lips one moan after another. There was trust and love in her eyes. I could see it now. I wasn’t sure why I ever had trouble reading those emotions in her gaze. My own chest tightened, and my dead heart swelled with fucking emotion.
Fuck, it was painful, but it was the best pain I’d ever felt. I wrapped my arms around Kiara, bringing our bodies even closer, needing her fucking closer because only she filled the hole in my chest. Only she could look down into the black abyss that was my soul and find something lovable in it.
My throat became tight, but I forced the words out that I’d wanted to say for days now. “I love you.” My thrusts faltered when I heard those three words aloud, heard them spill from my lips.
Kiara tensed under me, her eyes widening, and I fucking pulled myself together and thrust into her again. “You do?” she whispered.
“I do, with my fucking dead heart. With every fucking fiber of my being.”
She gasped as I angled my thrusts higher, and her eyes still showed incomprehension, like she couldn’t believe it. I reached between us, touching her clit, and claimed her lips. She arched up, shuddering, and I let loose as well. I kept my eyes open, kept watching Kiara’s gorgeous face contort with pleasure. I’d always enjoyed sex. It was the closest I could come to feel, but sex with emotion was something else entirely. It was fucking perfection.