Fool's Gold: A Kisses and Crimes Novel (13 page)

Splattered bits of murky water splash near her feet. From her head to her red-painted toes, under the cover of the worst weather I can think of and with a deadly weapon directed at my chest, my Dani is still fucking
perfection
.

Every strand. Every part.

Every soft and sexy inch.

I walk towards her, not even thinking twice about what I’m doing.

“
Kill me, Dani
.” I move in. “Take whatever money I have and start over. You don’t need me. You never fucking needed me… Don’t you see, kitten?
Isn’t it goddamned obvious
?”

I take another step.

“It’s
me
who needs you.”

Her lightly colored aqua green eyes grow as wide as saucers. Her red lips part.

It is all I can do not to want to slip my tongue between them.

Soaked to the bone, rain pouring off my every edge, I back the woman who would kill me in a second into the corner of the Jaguar’s front passenger window, ignoring her threats.

Wanting her to listen to me. Needing to show her
what
trust really is.

I’m almost there.

Her back to the hood of the car, Dani glares up at me, through the rain, and I approach nearly within arm’s reach.

I can almost touch her. I can almost…

With a small grunt, I lash out.

I grab her throat, listening to a tiny squeak escape her lips. One hand at her neck, the other on her gun, I incapacitate Dani completely.

I wrench the weapon from her grasp, throwing it.

The second I do, I pull her body into mine… and then I crush my lips on hers with all the force and lust and longing I can manage into a single kiss.

I want her to trust me with her body. I want her to trust me with her everything.

And right now—at this moment—I don’t know any other way.

I break the kiss.

“Don’t you know I would kill for you?” I kiss her again.
Harder.

“Don’t you know that I’d fucking
die
for you?” I join my mouth with hers again.

Resistant at first, Dani’s lips, her body and her resolve melt between my palms. Running my fingers up her neck and through her wet hair, I place my body in the nook between Dani’s beautiful thighs.

I nudge her knees further apart with my own. And when she separates them, I lift her into my hands.

I palm her ass underneath of her skirt with every inch of my fingers and then I sit her naked skin on the hood of the wet car.

Touching. Teasing.
Exploring
.

In the middle of the fucking pouring rain.

And I don’t give a goddamned shit.

Panting, huffing, letting our breaths surge through the air like London fog, we play the most exquisite game of “give-and-take.”

Give me pleasure. Take my pleasure.
Make
my pleasure.

I want to do it all.

I place a hand on her lower back. I stroke the other underneath her skirt. Half soaked from the downpour, half-wet from Dani’s center, my fingers pull at the lace and cotton just below the hem of Dani’s outfit.

Ripping at the hanging remnants of the panties beneath, I push them to the side completely.

Mouth still on hers, my fingers fumbling with my own zipper, I release an erection harder than gunmetal steel.

I place it at the lips between Dani’s thighs, and as I swallow her loudest of moans, I plunge myself into her, reveling in the tightest fit I have ever felt.

Letting my cock be swallowed whole by her wet, pulsating slit… and all the ecstasy it has to offer.

And in that moment, I know I will
never
love anyone the way I love this woman.

I never realized that I’ve loved her from the moment we met.

It wasn’t just that night that changed the trajectory of my life…

It was
her
.

The second I held her in my arms, I knew I’d lay down my life and limb for this girl.

I want to move slowly (
God help me, I even try
), but it is impossible. Standing there, with her knees grazing my hips, I stroke Dani with long, powerful thrusts, sliding out of her body on beat, pounding my cock inside her on the second.

Until we build up a rhythm.

Mouths apart, her teeth gnashed into the skin at my shoulder, I feel the building of a wave, a verifiable crest that rises and rises and rises.

With a pull of her long, beautiful blonde mane, I
make
Dani reconnect her gaze with mine. And as soon as I do, I touch the crest.

She comes with my name on her lips.

And I stare into her sea-green eyes the entire way through.

My explosion comes shortly after, and with each pulse of my still steeled dick, I ride the wave down, supporting Dani’s sapped limbs with my hands, making sure to never let her go.

The rain finally lets up, turning to drizzle, and there are so many things I could say.

So many things I
want
to say to the woman in my arms.

And in the midst of us catching our breath and sinking down from this incredible high, I, somehow, can only think of one.

I stare at the hood of the Jaguar on which Dani sits.

“Where…” I huff with one long breath, “did you even get this god damned car?”

For the first time, Dani looks down. She glances back up at me… and smiles.

“
I told you I was my father’s daughter…”

She shrugs.

“
I’m a motherfucking Gafanelli.”

BISHOP

And a Gafanelli, she was.

In true Gafanelli style, Dani doesn’t let me off the hook so easily.

Our night of passion is nothing but an intermission in our mission, and though she remembers her self-identity again, her memory is still full of holes.

It’s as if the gunshot that almost killed her has literally shattered the pieces of her memory away.

The return of information to her psyche is like a traffic rush, and throughout the day, I can almost sense the thoughts that race back to her mind.

I can also sense the memories that remain at a stand-still.

Like me, for instance
… and definitely my relationship with Robert Fletcher.

Skeptical, hungry for answers, she insists that I bring her with me when I tell her the plan that Jax and I concocted to confront Robert Fletcher’s ex-campaign manager Isaac Duvall.

She insists that she be a force in helping me bring that bastard down.

She insists that she be allowed to confront her shooter head-on.

I compromise by carefully filling in the holes she’s lost since she was shot six weeks ago.

My escape from New York. The shooting. Her family.
Our potential demise.

It was bad enough that some unknown player had entered into our game and tried to take Dani out. But what made matters worse was that after the attempt on her life, the Gafanelli family had decided to
change the rules
.

The way they saw it… either I had conspired with someone (namely that scumbag of a senator, Robert Fletcher) to kill Daniela, or as her bodyguard and the one and only “Crow” in the organization, I had committed the one act I was never supposed to.

I had failed
.

Either way, they wanted me dead.

Yesterday
. Not today nor tomorrow.

The Gafanellis didn’t deal in any uncertainties, and as far as they were concerned, there was a big question mark over the head of Donny B, “the Crow”—AKA Donovan “Dead Man Walking” Bishop.

The “cunning one,”
the Crow
, was my traditional name. “Dead Man Walking” was my new one.

They’d murder me just as soon as look at me.

And when Dani went missing… all bets were off.

The Gafanellis just assumed I’d taken her. What they didn’t realize… was that Dani had offered to go with me.

She’d run with me, stuck by me so that we could buy the time to clear my name… and somehow, somewhere along the “ride,”
she had fallen for me
.

Fallen for me in the same way that I’d fallen for her without knowing it.

The old Dani
knew
I could never hurt her. The new Dani didn’t.
And it hurt me like hell to keep the secret of who she really was.

But I didn’t want a bullet in my head while I’d slept.

Because Dani, after all,
was
still a Gafanelli.

I’d assumed part of her would
always
be a Gafanelli

But she isn’t… because now she is a
Bishop
.

And the new Daniela Bishop is even better than the fucking original.

Despite my dreams of doing so, I’d
never
touched the old Dani.

I couldn’t
.

And when we decided to marry to be able to walk around the other side of the world without garnering too much suspicion, we’d never even consummated the union.

I was still nothing but her bodyguard. And she was nothing more than my ward.

But now that’s all been shot to hell.

And I’m thankful for every fucking minute of it.

I touch her hair as she lays gloriously naked in the bed of this new Parisian apartment, scarcely hiding my desire to do more.

I have to stop myself from taking her again ‘cause if I begin, I’ll never quit. She’s inserted herself into my DNA. I’d literally have to lose every drop of my blood to get her out.

And even then, I don’t know if the feat would be possible.

I kiss her swollen lips.

“We need to get out of this damned bed before we become permanently attached to it.”

“Why?” she replies muzzily. She reaches for the handcuffs. “Don’t you want to play another round of ‘Hostage’?

“Not if it involves me having my own gun pointed at my chest.”

“But look at how well it ended up the last time!”

She laughs, showing full white teeth for the first time in days. I’m tempted to kiss her again.

This new Dani 2.0 has all the trimmings of the first Dani. Except this time, it’s now combined with the fact that she’s
mine
.

She’s everything I never knew I needed.

My cock grows harder just acknowledging the simple thought.

She rolls away from me.

“What are we going to do now?” she asks.

“
We
…” I slap her bare ass, “aren’t going to do anything.
I
am going to meet up with Penelope. Figure out how we can get to Duvall.”

I swing my legs out of bed, naked, and I stroll over towards my suitcase. I start putting on a new set of clothes, and as I do, Dani watches me.

She sits bare-assed on the heels of her tiny feet. Her gorgeous tits seem to point in my direction.

When I finally slip my shirt overhead, I glance at her face. Hard determination gleams back from her heavily lashed eyes, and she frowns.

Shit. I underestimated how easy my exit would be.

The look on Dani’s face is one I’ve seen before, and if I want to make it out of the room alive, I’d better listen to what she has to say.

Like any other Gafanelli, she knows her way around the handle of a gun. And she has the meanest right hook I’ve ever seen.

I wait for her to speak.

“Why don’t you let
me
interrogate Duvall?” she asks.

I blink, feeling stunned. I don’t want her to know it.

“I knew you wanted to help, but
this
? I didn’t think you’d want to.”

“You didn’t
think
I wanted to… or you
hoped
I didn’t?”

“Dani, I…”

“No ‘Dani’s,” please… I need control of my life back. It’s all starting to come back to me. Almost everything right up until the accident…”

“I don’t think your shooting was an
accident
,” I interrupt harshly.

Dani nods. “Yes. I know it wasn’t.
That’s
why it’s important that I figure things out for myself now. I don’t want to live in fear anymore. Not of you. Not of my family. Not of
anyone
.”

Dani stands up out of bed, walking towards me.

“Let me do this, Donovan.”

It’s the first time she’s said my name.
Ever
.

I’d been “Donny B” to all of the Gafanelli’s since I met them ten years ago. I’d been the face of the Grim Reaper to all of their enemies since they named me “the Crow.”

I’d
never
been Donovan.

Not to Don Gafanelli. Not to Jax…

Least of all, to Dani.

I’d been her guard, her glorified babysitter. She was the beauty…
and I had to be a beast.

Now I was her fellow escapee, her partner-in-crime, and
her lover.

I’d never looked at myself as Donovan. Never wanted to. But I had to admit: I
fucking
loved the sound of it on her pretty lips.

But to add insult to injury, she reaches a hand up to rub underneath my jaw, and it is a touch I feel all the way down to my lengthening dick.

Saying no to Dani was never an easy feat.

Saying no to a naked Dani with a convincing argument and a body that won’t quit is
un-fucking-fathomable
.