Page 25 of Sacred Blood

Business.

In that order. Love never made the list.

Not because our father didn't love our mother. He did. Fiercely. Anyone with eyes could see it. But he also understood something that every man in our world eventually learned.

Love was dangerous.

The moment someone became important enough to hurt you, they became a vulnerability your enemies could exploit.

A weakness.

A target.

Growing up, I'd watched my brothers learn that lesson in different ways. Romeo embraced responsibility until it became part of his skin. Gio hid behind laughter and charm. The younger boys still carried enough optimism to believe they might somehow escape the burdens waiting for them.

As for me, I chose distance. It was safe, with no promises. No expectations or heartbreak, at least until Vittoria arrived.

Romeo had fought the marriage from the moment it was arranged. Now he watched her the way a starving man watched a feast.

Protective.

Possessive.

Hopelessly attached.

If you'd told me a year ago that Romeo Vitale would willingly smile at a woman in public, I'd have questioned your sanity.

Yet Vittoria had done the impossible.

She'd made my brother human again.

The unsettling part wasn't that Romeo had changed. It was that, for the first time in my life, I found myself wondering what I might be missing.

I thought about it. Not just picking up a woman at the club for a few hours of stress relief, but loving and caring for a woman. I was intrigued, if only by the novelty of it, but even in my fantasies, I couldn’t quite believe in it. We’d see how Romeo made out first, and I for one would be watching to see if guys like us really could have a life beyond blood and duty.

“Mmm.” Gaby sighed in her sleep. She rolled onto her back and cocked one leg out to the side, giving me a view of her swollen pink pussy. We’d had sex long into the early morning light until she’d passed out after her last orgasm. She didn’t wake up even while I’d cleaned her and tucked her in.

But I didn’t join her, despite the exhaustion nibbling away at me. I was used to long work hours and often found it difficult to sleep. Rolling onto my back, I considered my options. I could keep her here for a while for her own protection, or at least until I decided what to do with her. Should I allow her to take back her job at the hospital?

If I did, there would be no going back to the way things were before I tasted her, no way in hell I’d be able to keep my hands off her. She’d be spending her breaks in my office getting her ass tanned and her pussy fucked until her legs turned to rubber.

She’d be a huge distraction, too much so. However, I reasoned, if she wasn’t there, then how would I keep her safe, and worse, away from other men? Bloody women! This was exactly what I didn’t want, complications!

Her knee slid higher, her slick lips parting like a coy invitation I could not help but accept. Sliding down onto my belly, I slipped my arms around her thighs. Keeping her legs spread, I drove my tongue inside her delicious pussy.

“Oh!” Gaby lifted her head, gazing down at me through her lashes, her face still flushed with sleep and now glazed with pleasure. She rose up onto her elbows, getting a better view of me eating her out. I was laser-focused on all the telltale signs of her excitement. The increased pulse at her neck, the way her lidded eyes dropped to slits, but by far my favorite tell was her nipples. They darkened when she was excited, the tips becoming so hard and pointed, as if straining for my mouth.

I had never known a woman so responsive. Watching her moan and writhe as I teased her was better than any porn I’d witnessed, and even her taste was sweeter than anyone I’d fucked before. She was special, and one day, she’d make some other lucky bastard happy and whole. That thought hit hard.

I told myself as a reminder not to get too attached, but it backfired on me. The idea of her being with some other purely hypothetical man spurred me to a fury of jealousy I could hardly imagine, much less contain. Flipping her over and pressing her chest down into the bed, I shoved my cock deep inside of her.

I knew what this was, me owning her, marking her as mine like an animal marking his territory, and far from protesting the rough handling, Gaby gripped the sheets in her tiny fists and let me take her however I wished.

As I pumped my seed deep inside of her, I considered setting her up in her own apartment by the club and letting her work for my brother. That way, he and his goons could keep an eye on her, and I could go back to work without her being a distraction.

It was a sensible plan. Practical. The realization that I was planning her future like she already belonged in it should have alarmed me.

Decided, I pulled out and slapped her ass hard.