Page 26 of The Mafia King's Acquisition
He slides out of the bed, pulling on his boxer briefs in the process. I look up when I hear footsteps heading toward me.
“Do not come near me!”
He exhales a soft breath. “Lindsay.”
I see pity in his eyes and it makes me feel even worse.
“Get out! You need to leave. Right now,” I insist.
For a second, he hesitates. I see it in his eyes, the only part of him I’m ever able to read. And then the look disappears and theice comes back. He steels his expression, wiping away any trace of emotion.
Wiping away every trace of the man I saw while he was inside of me.
He takes his sweet time putting on his clothes. I resist the urge to throw something at him in order to spur him into action. But I don’t. I stand there, waiting for him to finish, uncaring that I’m still naked.
“It’s not the end of the world, Beaumont,” he says once he’s done knotting his tie, the picture of ease and control once again. “It was just sex.”
“It was a mistake,” I retort. “And it never happened.”
“Oh, but it did. And I guarantee you won’t be forgetting about it anytime soon, princess.”
With those words, he turns around and leaves the room. I fall back into the bed that still smells so much like him and what we just did. I can still feel him inside me. I can still feel the trickle of him pooling between my thighs.
And then, like cold water thrown over a lit match, a single thought cuts through the haze.
We didn’t use a condom.
I lie back down, staring at the ceiling.
It’s fine, I tell myself again.
The ceiling offers no opinion.
That was the best sex of my entire life, and it was with the worst possible person. And now I’m lying here running fertility statistics in my head at two in the morning like a woman who has officially, completely, lost her mind.
I need to sleep. I need to forget this happened.
CHAPTER 5
Matteo
“Daddy, look!”
My son runs over to me, clutching something in his hand. Leo hasn’t stopped running since he learned how to walk two years ago. I sit up on the lawn chair, removing my sunglasses as he reaches me. Whatever it is he wants to show me, I’m sure it’ll be absolutely fascinating.
However, nothing prepares me for the sight of a tiny dead toad when he opens his palm.
“It’s dead,” he informs me excitedly.
I choose my next words carefully. “Yes. I can see that. Where did you find it?”
“On the floor next to my fish tank.”
“And what was it doing there?” I ask my five-year-old who never fails to surprise me.
“How should I know, Dad?” He giggles.
“Good point,” I murmur. “And what do you plan to do with it?”
