Going After Heaven (Mafia Romance)

Chapter Seventeen

HEAVEN:

Sound of gunshots.
Striding feet on a mission with precision.

Screams cut short by shots. Three more shots pumped into her.

His feet standing firm on the floor. Three shots pumped into his skull to make his feet bow.

Silence.

Ears deafening, heart-piercing, stomach upsetting silence.

My gasp is caught in my throat as I inhale the suffocating metallic smell of blood. I shiver from my heart-pumping pants as the smell of iron sneaks through my nostrils to ruffle the coil in my stomach.

Lifeless bodies hit hard against the floor.

Puddles of crimson, their blood mixed, slowly lick up the gray marble tiles.

My tears prick my eyes. My vision blur as I peer at—

Gabriele. His eyes are lifeless and his head is bent tilting to the side. Blood drips from bullet holes in his forehead.

Gabriele?

Gabriele!

No no no no no!

I dash out from under the table. Screaming and living behind the order of my father to stay hidden.

My body crashes into something firm. Something towering.

"Easy Heaven" I hear a familiar deep drawling voice whisper into my ears. Warm whiff brushes softly against my ear funnel.

Then my senses pick up. I feel my bare breast against bare skin. Taut and warm. My heaving chest from panting and terror pressed into the rhythmic steady rise and fall of the chest against me. His chest.

My eyes fly open, my breath hitch from that horrible reinvention of my life-altering moment, and from what I know this is.

Me with nothing but my thong on, in the arms of Gabriele.

He's crouched down in front of the chair by my window and I'm on his lap. My legs slightly on the floor, breast slammed into his chest, and my hands around his body, clinging onto him like he's some wall of defense against the ambush of my nightmare.

I haven't had that dream in twelve years. I found a way to shut it out from my subconscious.

But somehow, twelve years fucking later, after escaping death by a measly chance, fucking myself like a sexually depraved teenager while I watch my bodyguard jerk himself off, then falling asleep by my window because I was too ashamed to walk back to my bed after hearing the son of a bitch call my name, I had the dream and landed in his arms with nothing but my fucking thong on.

"You are okay now" he exhales into my ear, the effect of his voice like feathers brushing around my ear making my skin tingle.

Goosebumps lick me up and those words travel down to upset the bees in my stomach.

I hastily unclasp my hands around him.

Two ways to go about this, one comes with not being able to look him in the face and remembering my status as a wife. The other is the one I want to deploy. To stand firm and not let this madman know I find this scenario awkward.

He's checking all the boxes of a "first time" in my weak and awkward moments for a fucking stranger. An eyes burning, scent cascading, painfully handsome stranger.

I stand gently and he does the same. If he is aware that I am with just my thong, he doesn't show it. Those fiery eyes stay fixed on mine.

"What are you doing in my room" stupid question. I already know. I don't want him to answer.

His job is to protect me and I guess I was screaming at some point. I was fucking screaming at some point. I was screaming when I saw your lifeless body. I turn my eyes to the door separating both our rooms.

"It's damaged" he moves closer, "I'll pay for the repair"

He's in my room, had my bare breast against his chest and he feels sorry for the broken handle of a door?

"You're out of line," I say through clenched teeth.

"How is that?" He keeps those stupid eyes on my face.

"Seeing me like this isn't part of your job description"

"I'll do it in between a heartbeat if I have to again, my job is to protect you, clothes on or off" he moves closer and I stand on my toes. "And you're not the first naked woman I've had to save Heaven, and I don't think you'll be the last"

I hate how comfortably my name roll out of his lips. I hate his voice. His accent. His confidence.  His job.

And I know his job description is to protect me, I understand that. But what I don't understand is the pinch somewhere just below my chest when he said the last part of me not being the last. That part or maybe how he said the thing in general. That part evoke Images of naked women in his arms, and they dart through my mind like lightning through foggy clouds on a stormy night.

"Noted" I gulp the disturbing bile in my throat from insane thoughts. My eyes move to his lips, then back to his eyes. It's a long night already. "You should leave" I gesture with my head to the door.

I can't tell what I'm more upset about. All the weaknesses he's seen in a short while or that he's seeing me like this. No, rephrase that. He's not seeing me. That I am like this and he doesn't flinch to look, not even for a quick second.

I clear my throat, feeling like a child caught shoplifting. I feel more embarrassed by my thoughts than I do about the actual thing happening here.

"Gabrielle you can leave, I'm fine now, it was just a dream" he nods but doesn't move. "Gabrielle I said I'm..." he takes a calculative step towards me, closing the very little distance between us.

I take in a silent sharp breath as I feel my nipples graze his torso lightly. His height is all the more intimidating.

A few seconds pass by.  My nipples pinching and for the life of me needy.

I can move back. I can move away. It's the right thing to do. In every sense, it's the right thing to do.

I am married. He's a stranger. I'm Steel. He's... only the devil knows what he is. But hell is damned as I take a step forward so my feet are halfway on his and my stiff nipples are pressing firmly into his bare upper torso.

Wrong move.

Of all the moves I've taken as the Acero and a dominating force in the underworld, this one feels like a tragic flaw.

He closes his eyes quickly. "Heaven," he says in a whisper. Not my name, more like a description of what this hell is.

He dips his head to look at where my nipples meet his skin and I feel the heat from those embers he has for eyes travel at a speed of light to my lower stomach, spark something long dead, and explode in my core.

Whatever emotion was in the air has been replaced with carnality. His jaw stiffen. He swallows a dry gulp. And like a beast devouring a prey, he plunges for my breast with his mouth. Warm and wet against the hardness of nipple.

I gasp. My stomach burns. My toes coil. Every single cell in my body goes berserk as he starts to suck teasingly, his tongue gently playing with my nipple.

This is foreign to me. This sliminess I now feel in my core soaking up my thong. Not even Javier could... Javier.

I quickly move away. His teeth grazing as I stumble backward from that thought.

I bolt into my bathroom, never meeting his eyes and turn my shower on with trembling fingers.

I'm damned.