Baby for the Brute_A Fake Boyfriend Romance Read online

  She arches her back at my touch.

  I’m surprised when I feel her hand grope for my cock and then find it, wrapping around it instantly and starting to stroke me. Just like with the way she seems to reflexively talk dirty, her body has a mind of its own, an instinctual drive to do exactly what I crave and when I crave it.

  I kiss her. Grope her. Maul her.

  She strokes me back, her hand rough and firm against my cock, our mouths pressed together and tongues swirling. Neither of us have a care for the city surrounding us or the high rise windows that could have a clear view of what we’re doing if anyone happened to look our way. All that matters is the ever-escalating intensity, the growing flame of ecstasy spiraling between us, threatening to engulf us—body and mind, heart and soul.

  I turn her around, unable to wait any longer for the warm, wet grip of her pussy on my cock. I take her panties and tug them to the side, not even wanting to wait long enough to slip them off.

  Once again, she surprises me.

  She puts a hand to my chest, pulls the corner of her lip under her front teeth, and levels her eyes at me in a look that’s both shy and excited in the most exquisitely sexy way. “I know you wanted to be on top, but I want to feel you beneath me.” She doesn’t talk in some kind of husky, over-practiced voice like so many women would. She half-whispers the words, voice soaked through with equal parts embarrassment and determination in the sexiest blend I’ve ever heard.

  Jesus Christ. My cock pulses against her hand, feeling like it might explode if she manages to turn me on anymore. “You want a ride?” I ask.

  She nods. “Please.”

  I’d like to say I get to the ground gracefully, but it’s more like a controlled fall in my hurry to give her what she wants. The rooftop is cold against my bare back and legs, but I don’t care. She shimmies out of her red panties, leaving them on the ground as she steps over me to straddle my legs. She eases herself down, pussy warm and wet against my upper thigh.

  “This would not be a wise time to tease me,” I say. I can see the temptation in her eyes to drag this out, to torment me.

  She pulls her face into a pout that only makes my desperation to be inside her more intense. “You say that like I’m a notorious tease.”

  “More than you realize. Now give me that tight little pussy before I have to bend you over and take it for myself.”

  She smirks, but the expression quickly fades to something more animalistic when she positions herself above my hard cock and grips it, easing herself down on me. She gasps, eyes squeezing shut and eyebrows knitting together. “God,” she moans.

  I normally need to be in control. I have to be the one behind the wheel, calling the shots and dictating the pace. But for once in my life, I want nothing more than to lay back and let my little pet grind herself against me, fucking my cock like she needs to cum more than anything else in the world. She’s self-conscious for only a few seconds before all self-awareness drains away and I’m left with a flawless show of carnal desire, of unrestrained lust and the most pure fucking I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of.

  She runs her hands over my abs, gripping whatever she can get a hold of on my body to give herself better leverage. The only sound is the steady rhythm of her breath and the slap of her body against mine with the gradually increasing pace of her movements.

  “Oh my God,” she gasps. “I’m going to cum.”

  “Fuck,” I groan. I try to ease her off me before I cum, knowing I already tempted fate once when I came inside her at the club. But my attempts to get her to move off only seem to drive her into more of a frenzy. She presses down into me, increasing her pace and fucking me like her life depends on it until I lose all willpower to stop her.

  She cries out so loudly that people probably can hear from the street below as she cums, and all I can do is grip her hips and let my orgasm rip through me, filling her with my seed.

  She goes limp against me, leaning forward while my cock is still buried inside her. She runs her fingertips across my chest idly, then tilts her head to smile up at me. “You make me do so many stupid things,” she laughs softly.

  I grin. “Is that your way of insulting my intelligence?”

  She works her lips to the side. “It’s my way of saying I get so stupidly horny that letting you cum inside me seems like a good idea in the moment, and then…”

  “Then you realize my baby in your belly would probably start some kind of war?” I ask, feeling my own share of guilt. I should be capable of stopping myself, too, but I feel the same thing she does. In the moment, I can’t make myself think of anyone else. Then again, mafia families have fought wars over much dumber things than children.

  She averts her eyes, features falling into sadness. “Yeah, I think it would.”

  “By the way,” I ask a while later while she rests her head against my chest. “When you were a kid and you got that pogo stick you wanted so badly, was it everything you’d hoped?”

  She laughs. “It was amazing. At least until I landed in a pothole and broke my leg and knocked out my front tooth.”

  I can’t help grimacing a little, and not just from imagining some version of Ana in so much pain, no matter how distant. The part that unsettles me more is that we may end up with a hell of a lot worse than broken legs and teeth if we keep going after what we want together. A hell of a lot worse.

  9

  Ana

  Angelo pulls up outside a huge house just outside downtown. There are already several cars parked outside, and the assortment of cars is so extravagant it’s almost comical. I don’t know much about cars, but I’m pretty sure two of them are Lamborghinis, and the other look so exotic and sleek that I’m fairly sure they cost more than most people’s houses.

  “This is your house?” I ask.

  “My brother’s,” he says. “Enzo.”

  “The one who stepped down and handed everything over to you?”

  He nods.

  “So… What are we doing here?” I had been expecting Angelo to take me home. After all, it already feels like I’ve had more than my share of fun for the night. Yet at the same time, I greedily want more. Learning who he was has me feeling like I’m walking on a frozen lake with cracks sprouting out around my every footstep. I can practically hear the ground shuddering beneath me, threatening to give out and plunge me into an icy end, but instead of heading back to safety, all I want to do is run faster and harder—pointlessly trying to outrun the inevitable.

  “I want you to meet my family. The enemy,” he adds with a playfully dramatic grit to his voice.

  “Not my enemy,” I correct. “I’ve never been involved in the family politics. Not as any more than a pawn for my father to move around and protect, at least.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think he’ll be too happy if he realizes his pawn is currently on the wrong side of the board, will he?”

  I shudder involuntarily at the thought. I can already imagine the veins at his temples standing out. His gray eyes bulging with barely checked rage… “No. I don’t think he’d like that.”

  “Then let’s make sure he doesn’t find out. Right?”

  I laugh, but the sound is forced. “Right.”

  He takes me inside the massive house. I’ve been around money before. My father takes care of his people well, and even after giving them their cut, there has never been a shortage of money in our family. But my parents’ style of luxury is more classical and understated. They prefer nice things to big things. To my father, it’s more fun to have a priceless painting that might look like a piece of junk than it would be to have a pool or a bigger house.

  Here though…

  It’s a style of luxury I’m not accustomed to. The decor is modern, with a huge moving art piece of geometric shapes dominating the entry area. The house feels more like a resort, with seemingly endless branching hallways and colossal gathering spaces, chief of which is the main living area Angelo leads me into once we’re inside. The far wal
l is completely open to the patio and the pool outside, giving me a confusing sense of being both inside and outside at the same time.

  It doesn’t take long before my attention is dragged from the house to the company.

  Wow.

  I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that Angelo’s family and friends are all drop-dead gorgeous, but seeing them all gathered here under the bright lights of Enzo’s living room really hammers it home. I vaguely recognize two of the men from the club from that first night with Angelo. Normally, either of them would’ve immediately burned a permanent and fond place in my memory for how gorgeous they are, but Angelo has a way of dimming everything around him so that it doesn’t seem quite as impressive or important.

  Still, I find myself a little overwhelmed to have all of them looking at us.

  The first to approach is the one I haven’t met before. He’s older than Angelo, maybe by five or ten years, with flecks of gray at his temples and shockingly intense green eyes. He wears a dark suit with his shirt unbuttoned enough to reveal his tattooed chest. He reaches to shake my hand.

  I take his hand and smile.

  “I’m Enzo,” he says, patting my hand with his free hand and clasping it for a second. It’s a warm gesture and makes me somehow feel immediately welcome in his home. “Angelo’s taking good care of you, I hope?”

  “You kidding?” asks one of the men I recognized from the club. I can’t remember their names, but I can tell from the look of him that he’s related to Angelo. Enzo doesn’t carry a strong resemblance to his brothers, but Angelo and the man who is walking up look similar enough that I can tell they’re related at a glance. “Angelo is parading her around like some prize. We all know how Angelo gets when he has his hands on something he wants. I doubt he has even let a fucking mosquito get a taste of her since he claimed her.”

  Claimed me. He says it so casually, so offhandedly, but the words ring true. Almost too true. He really has, hasn’t he? Since the moment I asked him to pretend to be my boyfriend, Angelo has been laying some sort of claim over me. A guilty rush of warmth pulses through me at the thought.

  “Actually, I stubbed my toe a little on the way in,” I joke.

  To my amusement, Angelo actually looks down at my foot with a concerned expression. His brothers grin at eachother, and the younger of the two lightly slaps Enzo on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “He’s losing his touch, I guess.”

  “You remember Gino and Damian from the club?” asks Angelo, who doesn’t look as amused as his brothers.

  I nod my head, pretending I remembered their names.

  Damian doesn’t approach to shake my hand. He only gives me a faint tip of his finger in acknowledgment before turning to grab his drink from the table. His dirty blond hair is shaved at the sides but long on top and he has tattoos up most of his chiseled arms. He’s wearing a simple black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and some buttons undone at the top. His blue eyes are just as hard as the other men, but somehow I can sense that he’s not part of the same world as them. Maybe not even mafia.

  I finally notice the women in the room. From the looks of them, they might be sisters. One is standing close enough to Enzo and wearing a wedding band, so I venture to guess she’s his wife. The other is hanging back a little bit and giving Angelo a kind of hurt look I can’t quite figure out. A former girlfriend maybe? God. Please don’t let that be the case. I’d feel terrible being here in front of her.

  Girlfriend… I wonder if that’s what Angelo would call me yet. I wonder if it’s what I would call me, for that matter. Giving whatever is between us a name feels terrifying. Like it’d make something physical that my father could latch onto and destroy. As long as it’s just some unidentifiable feeling or series of experiences though, as long as I don’t let myself really start to believe this is more than just pretend, then he can’t take it away. Except I think we both left behind the idea of this being pretend already, especially now that I know I definitely can’t have Angelo meet my father to convince him I’m dating someone.

  It’s only a matter of time before reality comes crashing down on me. I know it. Everything that happened tonight is still so fresh, though. I can hold off the consequences for a little while longer. For tonight, I can just be here and ride the current. I can let it take me where it may and pretend I don’t know there’s a waterfall and a rocky bottom ahead.

  I hug the women—Neela and Jamie. Neela is apparently Enzo’s wife and Jamie is her sister. I make some stiff small talk with the men for a few minutes, all while Angelo hovers protectively beside me. I notice he never lets his touch leave me for long, whether it’s a hand against the small of my back, around my shoulder, a touch of his fingers against mine. His body seeks mine out like there’s gravity constantly pulling him back to me.

  It makes me feel important, and not in the way my father’s attention always does. The kind of obsession my father has with protecting me is a selfish kind. He sees any harm or insult to me as one to him. I’m just an extension of his pride, and it’s easier for him to try to lock me away than it is to risk letting me live my life and possibly bring shame to his name.

  Angelo though… His attention is sweet and filled with a kind of steamy intensity that never quite leaves him. He can let his guard down, smile carelessly, and even joke with his brothers or Damian, but there’s always something more just behind it, something so strong and unwavering that it must always be there. There’s a purpose to him. He’s not just drinking and laughing with no care for tomorrow or any aspirations. He has something he’s striving toward, and it only takes one look at him to see that he never loses focus of that.

  I only wish I could pick his brain and know what it is he wants so badly.

  “Come on,” says Neela, who favors me with a warm smile while the men are all laughing hard over some joke Gino is in the middle of telling. It has the sound of a joke he’s told a hundred times, but none of the men seem to care. “This goes on a lot longer, and I’ll spare you the ending. It only gets more offensive the longer it goes.”

  Her sister stands and follows us out to the patio, still watching me with that slightly accusatory look she has been giving me since I arrived.

  We move out beside the pool, which is lit with a deep blue light that casts undulating reflections on the supports to the balcony overhead and the palm trees rustling in the night breeze. We sit at a stone table by a firepit and outdoor grill, far enough away from the men for privacy but not so far that Angelo can’t still keep glancing my way. Something tells me if we’d moved any farther, he would’ve excused himself and followed, just to avoid letting me out of his sight.

  His attention feels welcome, though. It’s like being wrapped in a warm blanket. Comforting and safe. Flattering. If my dad’s attention was a blanket, it’d be one that was scratchy and so thick that it was stifling—so heavy that it felt more like a prison than a shield.

  “So,” says Neela. “How’d you end up meeting Angelo?”

  Her sister leans in even closer, eyebrows drawing together.

  I start to wonder if maybe she knows or suspects I’m from the Torretti family. The idea makes my skin crawl. Is that why Angelo is keeping such a close eye on me here? After all, Enzo used to run the entire Luciani family. He’d surely still hold a serious grudge against my father, and why wouldn’t that extend to his wife. And her sister?

  I explain the story to them anyway, carefully editing out any details that might even possibly lead them to suspect who my father is.

  “What about you?” I ask Neela once I’ve finished telling my story. “How’d you meet Enzo?”

  She smiles, biting her lip a little and studying her hands in a way that tells me she’s replaying memories she has treasured for a long time. “It was a blind date,” she says. “We uh… had a pretty instant connection,” she adds. To my surprise, her cheeks actually redden.

  I grin. “It must run in the family with these Luciani guys,” I say. “I think Angelo and
I had a similar experience.”

  Jamie hadn’t been glaring at me as much but the angry look returns to her face at my words. Neela just frowns in surprise.

  “He told you who he is?” asks Neela.

  “He did,” I say. “I know about all the, well, you know.”

  Neela nods. “Angelo must be pretty serious about things if he told you that m—hey, Jamie, wait!” says Neela, who turns toward her sister and reaches out to grab her hand.

  Jamie walks off before Neela can stop her though.

  I cover my mouth. “I’m sorry. That was my fault somehow, wasn’t it?”

  Neela shrugs. “Jamie and Angelo dated really briefly, around the time I met Enzo. I don’t know why things didn’t work out between them, but I don’t think she has ever really gotten over him. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t matter how nice or amazing you were. I think so long as Angelo is interested in you, Jamie is probably going to have a hard time liking you.”

  “I can’t blame her for it,” I say. “I’d probably have poisoned me by now if I was in her shoes.”

  Neela laughs. “You must have it bad for him already, huh?”

  I smile, but I feel a kind of sadness and guilt and fear all swirling together in my stomach that wipe it from my face too soon. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  I stare for a while at the water in the pool, the patio, the beautiful landscaping lit by dozens and dozens of little lamplights pegged throughout the garden. I look at the men laughing inside while Gino and Damian are pantomiming some kind of ridiculous story together that looks like it involves golf and crocodiles—or sharks, it’s hard to tell from their hand gestures. Most of all, I look at Angelo, who leans against the wall and watches the men laugh and talk. He watches with those cool, unfaltering blue eyes of his like a sentinel, like something too large for life and too grand to be contained in such a small, innocent moment.

  He’s not just a man or some mafia boss. He’s a force. He’s action personified. Liquid momentum, as if even standing completely still, he’s still barreling downhill at full-speed with all the weight and momentum of his powerful frame behind him.