What we shared now had been learned through months of us making love and getting to know what each other liked. We moved together like we’d been made for each other, and maybe we had. Perhaps the romantic notion that soulmates existed was real, and that’s what we were.
Dropping down on top of her, I caught my weight at the last moment, leaving me in a push-up position over her.
“There’s no way to remove you from my soul, Penelope Hamilton. You’re wrapped around it, and keep my heart beating inside my chest.”
Her eyes widened momentarily, but then she pushed my hair off my forehead. “I thought you didn’t like nonsensical romantic sentiments?”
That was something I’d said to her at the beginning while we’d been watching a corny romance movie, but it was still valid.
“I don’t. But I promised never to lie to you, so I’m telling you what’s on my mind.”
Her thighs tightened where they were wrapped around my own, like they were hugging me, but she looked conflicted, and like she wanted to say something back. She just didn’t want to give too much of herself away by doing it.
Giving her the out she needed, I looked at my watch and sighed. “The boys will be up for their feeding soon, so we better clean up and get ready.”
I hated pulling out of her as much as I hated leaving her altogether, but sadly for both, it had to happen. I also knew to move away quickly so she could run to the bathroom, so that’s what I did, giving her time to clean up before joining her.
As she wrapped a robe around her body, she looked at me in the mirror. “Do you still have to go to that meeting?”
I was just pulling a hoodie over my t-shirt, foregoing my regular business suit for something that’d make me blend in more. I met her eyes in the mirror and nodded, before pulling the bulk of it down over my head. “I do, but it won’t take long.”
“Say hi to Ben for me, and make sure you get the recipe from him for his mom’s arrabbiata sauce. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Yes, the head of the Chicago Cosa Nostra had made my woman his mom’s tomato sauce, and she was asking him for the recipe. If she knew what his hands had done, she probably wouldn’t have been able to eat anything he touched.
But maybe she would?
Nell was proving to be far more resilient than I’d ever given her credit for. When I’d mentioned it to her, she’d said that if she could learn what her family did and still love them, then she could cope with what other families had in their closets, too.
Kissing her goodbye, I bussed her nose with my own. “Of course I will. If he doesn’t give it to me, I’ll call Signora De Luca up myself. I might even fuck around and send her more photos of the boys, and point out it was time Benito had some of his own.”
“Leave that poor man alone,” she snickered, making me shake my head. If only she knew.
With one last peck, I walked to the open door. “I’ll go and get the boys, and leave once they're finished and down for their nap. It shouldn’t go on long tonight, so I’ll do my best to be back for their next meal.”
I’d only just cleared the door when I heard her say, “If I had to trust anyone in the world’s words, I’d trust yours. Just like I trust you with my soul.”
I don’t think she intended for me to hear it, and it wasn’t until I was picking the boys up from the spare travel cot in the room next to ours that it hit me. She was talking about what I’d said not long ago about my soul.
“Well, Fedorov,” Ben muttered as we sat in the seedy strip club, watching a waif of a woman, strung out on fuck knows what, doing something to the pole. “I’ll get permission from my mother first. She can be… feisty about her recipes.”
Pulling my phone out, I typed a contact in, and attached as many photos as I could of Walker and Hendrix. “I’ll just send her this, then.”
Looking over my shoulder, he pulled it out of my hand, deleting the message, before tossing it back at me. “Fuck off, stronzo. She’s still giving me grief about the last ones you sent her.”
“I’d say I was sorry,” I drawled, “but I’d be lying.”
He was about to reply when two men I’d only ever seen impeccably dressed, but who were now dressed worse than I was, sat down in front of us.
I wouldn’t have recognized them if it hadn’t been for the cut on one of their jaws, and the piercing through the lip of the other.