Page 63 of Masked Don

He laughs, low and dark, and brings his palm down on the curve of my ass. One sharp crack, and I feel it all the way to my toes. I gasp into the cushions. He soothes the sting with slow circles of his hand, then does it again, and this time the sound that comes out of me is one I’ve never heard myself make.

One arm bands around my waist. His other hand slides under me again, fingers working my swollen clit in tight, fast circles in time with his thrusts. I’m sobbing into the fabric, overwhelmed, overstimulated, and he leans over my back, mouth at my ear.

“You feel that, mia?” he pants, voice wrecked. “This is mine. All of it. This body, the way you come for me. Sei mia. And I’m going to fill you up, tesoro. Going to come so deep, you’ll feel me for days. Vieni per me.”

I don’t have time to brace for it. It builds brutal and fast. I’m shaking, pushing back to meet each of his thrusts. And when the climax hits, I practically black out.

“Dio,” he groans.

He follows me over the edge, burying himself deep, pulsing hot and thick inside me. We collapse in a tangle of limbs and sweat and ragged breathing. He pulls me against his chest, still inside me, and presses a kiss to my damp temple. For one minute, the world is small and warm and possible.

This could actually work.

I let myself think it, dangerous and sweet.

We dress slowly. The green dress slides back into place. He tucks in his shirt, fixes his cuff links with steady fingers. I’m reaching for my clutch when the first crack splits the air downstairs.

Then another. And another, fast, overlapping.

My instinct knows what it is before my mind does.

Gunshots. A lot of them, coming from the party below.

Enzo’s already moving, the lover vanishing and the Don, the killer, taking his place. He puts himself between me and the door before I’ve even finished processing the fact that I’m scared. His hand clamps around my arm, and this time his touch is like iron bracing me.

There’s a hard bang on the door.

“Enzo, we need to move. Now.” It’s Carmine, his voice urgent.

Enzo’s already got me behind him, a gun in his hand. I see his face and his eyes are terrifying, flat and lethal. The man who worshiped me is gone like he was never there.

And only the killer remains.

CHAPTER 22

STEVIE

Enzo opens the door, and all I hear is screaming.

The hallway outside the private room is full of smoke and noise and people running the wrong way. More gunfire sounds out from the main room, closer than it was just a short time ago.

It’s here. It’s rolling up the stairwell toward us in flat, ugly cracks.

Carmine’s at the door. “Four shooters on the floor, maybe more,” he says, low and clipped, to Enzo, like he’s reporting the weather. “They came in through the service entrance. They’re not spraying the room. They’re working it. They’re looking for someone.”

“So it’s not random,” Enzo confirms.

“Not as far as I can tell. Mostly warning shots. But that could change at any second, like when they find whoever they’re looking for.” His eyes cut to me for half a second. “We move now, while they’re still downstairs. Back stairwell. Go.”

Enzo changes. I’ve seen him controlled and I’ve seen him dangerous. But that was a different sort of dangerous, the implied kind, the kind that silences men with just a look.

Now I’m seeing why just a look from him is enough to silence someone. He moves with a gun in his hand that I have no doubt he’d use without a moment’s hesitation. Readiness for violence is woven into him, into his movements. There’s no softness to him at all.

He moves to the end of the hall, checks, and then hurries back to me.

“Behind me,” he says. “Hand on my back. Don’t let go, don’t stop moving, and if I tell you to get down, you don’t ask why, you just do it. Understood?”

“Understood.” My voice doesn’t shake. An old survival instinct has taken the wheel, the same thing that gets me through everything, an instinct I don’t understand but that is on my side all the same.