Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 60550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 303(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 303(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
“Sophie.”
I search Joey’s face, hoping he can lend some insight to this secret I buried inside me for all these years.
“Your dad was a good man.”
My belly quakes with a swallowed sob. I guess I never reconciled what I’d seen that day with the loving man I called my father. “He was good to me,” I manage to say.
“Right. Made Men are soldiers, Sophie. They do what they have to do to protect the Family. Just like any soldier, there’s a code they live by. They follow a chain of command. They don’t harm the innocent. I’m not saying there’s not some blackness on all our souls. There is. But don’t let it blotch your memory of your dad.”
I study Joey’s profile as he drives. The curl of his lashes. The strong planes of his face. “How much blackness is on your soul, Joey?”
His head swivels, and he regards me with an unfathomable gaze. “More than I’d like.”
My heart thunders in my chest. I want to weep and run away at the same time I want to throw my arms around him and see if he can’t somehow help me find my home with all this.
“What if I can’t live with that?” I breathe.
He blinks. The street lights illuminate the shadows of his face in flashes as he drives under them. “You can’t deny who you are, Sophie. Where you came from. The people who loved, love, you. Loving a soldier doesn’t taint your soul. It strengthens it.”
I want to ask him how, but it’s all too much for me. I turn my face away, look out the window. Try to breathe.
After a long stretch of silence, I ask, “Why were you so nice to me at my dad’s funeral?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I felt a connection with you. I recognized something similar in you. The pain of our existence. The toll of La Cosa Nostra on a kid who never asked to be a part of it. I hadn’t lost my dad yet, but I always had that feeling I was born to the wrong family. That I didn’t belong in this life.”
I peer at him through the darkness. A band of light shines across his eyes, giving him the look of a reverse mask. A man who lives in the shadows but still carries light.
There’s something blindingly heroic about Joey despite what he is. Or perhaps because of it.
“Do you remember you gave me a pack of gum when my dad died?” he asks.
“Oh, God.” I flash a smile. “I’m kind of embarrassed about that. I had a crush on you after my dad’s funeral, and you’d given me a stick of gum. I don’t know why I thought–”
“It was the nicest thing anyone did for me that day.” The corners of his lips turn up. “Literally the only thing about my father’s funeral that didn’t make me feel like I was drowning in cement.”
The patch of light slides across his face like a caress as he turns onto my street. Something about it makes me ache with love for him. It’s probably the remembered ache of being a teen with a crush. Of wanting something I couldn’t have.
Now I can have him. He’s here, interested in me.
Wouldn’t I be crazy not to just let myself enjoy the experience?
He parks his car, and I hesitate. Am I letting him stay the night again?
As if he reads my mind, he says, “I won’t stay the night. But I am gonna walk you in.”
Ten minutes later, he has me pinned against the living room wall, his hands roaming up inside my shirt. My body comes alive every time he touches me. Every time I’m near him. I may think I don’t want to get involved with Joey LaTorre, but my body has an entirely different idea. And I know from massage therapy that the body doesn’t lie. What I don’t know is what exactly mine is saying to me.
I try to draw a line in the sand as he kisses up the side of my neck. “Joey…I don’t want a relationship, okay?”
His teeth clamp over my earlobe, and his thumb dips in my mouth, and I find it hard to remember why.
“Okay, so no relationship,” he purrs in my ear. “I can live with just sex.”
I squirm, but it’s to grind my pelvis against his leg, rather than to pull away. “I didn’t say I wanted sex,” I pant.
“Really? Because I think we have mad chemistry.” His lips move down my neck, the flick of his tongue in my ear sending zings of electricity straight to my core. “I promise I’ll make it worth it. No strings.”
“So you do just want sex?” I’m breathless, my body not matching my words as I rub my thigh up and down his leg, arching into the palm he molded over my breast. “We can scratch the third date?”