Chapter 23– By Fate I Conquer Cora Reilly Read Online Free
“Of course, didn’t you see them?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not for fun, or pass-arounds. I mean as members.”
“No, it’s against the rules.”
“So if you had an older sister, she couldn’t get involved with the club?”
He frowned. “Okay, both the club and the mob don’t allow women. But you seem like a girl who’s used to getting what she wants. It must be hard to be in second place, and not even that. Your word will never mean anything in the Famiglia. If you marry some pompous Italian mobster, he’ll rise in rank in the Famiglia and you can raise his kids and give him blowies if he returns home from a hard day at work.”
“Blowies?” I repeated with a disgusted twist of my lips while heat traveled up my throat in a very embarrassing way.
Maddox used his tongue to tent his cheek in a very obvious way.
“That’s disgusting.”
“A blowy or my interpretation of it?”
“Both,” I muttered.
“Don’t tell me you never gave that poor asshole a blowy in two years of relationship. No wonder he always looked so pinched. I would too if I didn’t have a nice long blowy in years.”
“Stop saying that word,” I muttered. I’d never wanted to give Giovanni oral, and he would have never dreamed of asking me. He’d never even allowed me near his fly in our relationship. “This discussion is over.”
“Do I make you feel uncomfortable?” Maddox asked, obviously enjoying himself.
He made me uncomfortable for various reasons, none of which I’d discuss with him, especially not while sharing a bed.
Flirt with him.
That had been the plan but following through was more difficult.
Maddox watched me and my palms became sweaty. My body had never reacted to someone’s presence like that. I made others nervous, not the other way around.
“Why would anyone pierce his genitals?” I blurted, wanting to break through the silence.
Maddox’s answering smile only made me feel hotter. “To receive more lust, and even more importantly, to give more lust.”
My mind went into overdrive. Maddox and I stared into each other’s eyes, then he shook his head with a chuckle and rolled over on his back. “Go to sleep before we both do something we might regret.”
“I doubt you’d regret me,” I said.
Maddox closed his eyes with a sardonic smile. “I wouldn’t.”
His confirmation stunned me. My eyes traced his chest, which wasn’t covered by the sheets.
“And you, would you regret me?” he asked eventually.
“Definitely,” I said. I didn’t even want to consider the social media shitstorm I’d be submitted to if word got out that I’d slept with a biker, even if it was to save me. In our circles, women were condemned in the blink of an eye. And my family? Dad would lose it.
Maddox nodded, his eyes still closed. “Yeah. You’d definitely regret me.”
Marcella had spent the last three nights in my bed, and every night had been more torturous than the last. I felt her presence everywhere. When I lay awake beside her at night, and I hardly slept anymore, I was driven almost insane by her scent and by the images of her body replaying before my closed eyes.
I’d half hoped, half dreaded Marcella would make a move at me, even if only to save herself, but so far she’d held back. Despite her killer body, she wasn’t used to making advances on men. I wasn’t sure if it was due to her conservative upbringing or because she was used to men throwing themselves at her feet.
I had half a mind to do the same.
Some women dressed in expensive dresses and put on tons of makeup to look presentable, but Marcella in my clothes and no makeup was an apparition that put them all to shame.
“What are you thinking?” she asked out of the blue.
“Isn’t that a question you ask your fiancé when he spends the night?”
She shrugged. “Giovanni never spent the night.”
Douchy name for a douchebag, then my brain registered her words.
“Why?”
“We hold on to our old values,” Snow White said matter-of-factly. “And I live with my parents.”
I couldn’t stop staring at her blue eyes, glowing against the dark coal of her hair.
“Let me guess, your fiancé pissed his pants because of your ol’ man.”
She smirked. “Most people do.”
“Not me.”
“No,” she agreed in a soft voice. “Not you, Maddox.”
F*ck. I wished she’d stop saying my name in that gentle lilt. Yet, I’d never ask her because the moment the last syllable died on her lips, I longed to hear it again. She was like a drug I couldn’t resist, and I hadn’t even tried it yet. She’d be like crack, without a doubt. One taste and you’d be addicted, and ultimately, she’d ruin you.
“What’s your favorite childhood memory of your father?”
I hadn’t expected that question. No one had ever asked me something like that. I racked my brain, trying to come up with an answer. Most of my memories weren’t happy. My old man hadn’t been the best father, but he had been a father.
Images of my father fighting with my mom, or sitting on the couch with a beer, or not present at all flashed through my mind.
“He died before we could make many good memories,” I said. But deep down I knew that happy memories would have been few and far between even if Vitiello hadn’t killed him. But having a bad father was better than not having one at all.
“But you miss him?”
Most of all, I missed what could have been. I missed that we never got the chance to have a good relationship. I missed that my old man never got the chance to be a good dad. “Of course,” I said, but the words sounded hollow.
Marcella tilted her head so her hair fanned out like pitch on the pillow. “What about your mom?”
“She became my uncle’s old lady a few weeks after my old man got killed.”
That should answer her question. My mom never really missed my dad. She might have missed the position as the old lady of a prez if my uncle hadn’t immediately made her his.
I motioned at her. “Your turn.”
I still couldn’t get over the fact that Marcella Vitiello was lying in bed beside me, in my black T-shirt and my boxers, and talking to me as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
“You want me to tell you my favorite childhood memory? Are you sure you want to hear any stories about my dad?”
I sure as *uck didn’t want to imagine Luca Vitiello as a good dad. I wished Marcella’s memories of him were as bleak as mine of my dad, but I wasn’t a p*ssy. I could take the truth. “Go ahead.”
Marcella’s gaze became distant, then a soft smile curled her lips, one I’d never seen on her usually so controlled and cautious face before. “When I was seven, I had a phase when I was convinced monsters were in my walk-in closet and under my bed. I could hardly sleep. So Dad made sure to check every possible hiding place in my room every evening, and even when he came home late in the night after a difficult workday, he still snuck in my room and made sure I was safe. Once he’d checked the room, I knew the monsters were gone and I always fell asleep within minutes. But seconds before I drifted off, Dad would always kiss my forehead.”
I couldn’t imagine Luca Vitiello as Marcella described him, as the loving, caring father. He had been the monster that still haunted seven-year-old me. When I thought about him, I always saw the ax and knife wielding madman who slaughtered the people who were like my family. He was the man who’d been our enemy even before I had been born. This wasn’t a new feud, but it was one to last generations.
Marcella regarded me. “You don’t believe me?”
“I believe that’s how you see him, but it doesn’t change my feelings toward him. Nothing can erase my hatred, nothing ever will.”
“Never say never.”
“You’ll rather learn to despise your ol’ man before I’ll forgive him, that’s a fact, Snow White.”
I cringed. This was the second time I called her by that name outside of my head.
Her eyebrows puckered and she regarded me as if she was trying to see right into my brain.
“Snow White?”
I shrugged and rolled over on my back, staring up at the ceiling. She kept watching me expectantly.
“Come on, don’t be surprised. I can’t believe no one’s ever called you Snow White before. Black hair, pearlescent skin, red lips.”
One dark brow twitched up, and I realized I was only digging myself a deeper grave with every word out of my stupid mouth. The ghost of a smile passed her lips, and it was all I could do not to pull her on top of me and kiss her.
Women have a certain place in motorcycle clubs, and it isn’t on equal footing with men. They were only supposed to speak when spoken to and had to please their man. I’d never just talked to a woman for more than the meaningless chitchat before and after s*x, and if possible, I’d even avoided that. The only woman I’d ever shared a halfway decent conversation with was my mom, but in recent years, I’d closed off even around her.
I wasn’t sure what it was about Marcella that made me want to talk, or at least listen. She was sophisticated and chose her words carefully. I’d never talked to a woman who was even half as educated and intelligent as her. And sometimes I just enjoyed getting a reaction out of her. “What happened with your fiancé? Did he dump you for not putting out?”
Her lips thinned. “Girls like me don’t get dumped. I broke up with him.”
“So f**king arrogant. You think you’re a gift to men that no one would dump your perky a$$?”
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