The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (7 page)

Part of me wanted to tell her, but I stopped myself. It wasn’t the time. We were married; I had plenty of time, literally until one of us died to tell her that I
sort
of liked her, a little bit.

“I’m not going to risk your safety, Sophia,” I told her. The thought occurred to me and was scarier than I wanted to admit. I felt protective of her. She wasn’t any kind of target before we had become involved. The reason someone was after her was directly because of our marriage. It was my fault. If she wasn’t a part of my life, if she didn’t have my last name, she wouldn’t be in this position.

“What are you going to do? Tie me to the bed in the master bedroom so I can’t leave the house? Like a dog outside a store?”

She was angry. I had made her that way. I spared her the sarcastic answer I had planned because—again—it wasn’t the time. I had to think. Neither of us was safe. Where was a safe place for us to go where we wouldn’t be traced by whoever thought they were going to kill Sophia? The various homes we had in the city and its surrounding suburbs came to mind, but that was too obvious. You don’t go from your house to hide out in another one of your houses. Why did you even leave the first one in the first place? If it was your house, they obviously were going to anticipate you being there.

This was more pressure than I thought it would be. Where could we
go
? I couldn’t afford to pick somewhere and have it infiltrated. Not when I had Sophia with me. If I was alone, that would have been another story, but this was serious.

Sophia

We sat in silence in the car.

I shot a couple of texts to Elena so she wouldn’t call the cops on Marcelo. I should have been madder when she slapped him, but I was mostly just stunned that she had bucked up enough to do it. He deserved it. He was being unreasonable. He deserved a few more slaps. If she wanted to dole them out to him, I wasn’t going to stop her. If anything, she was just peeling back the curtain a little more. Most people got to know their partners through dates…Marcelo and I were doing it through public altercation.

With the nature of our family business, maybe it was in our blood? Who could blame us?

Elena had been staunchly against the two of us getting together, and this little incident was not going to do anything to get her on his team. If anything, she likely hated him even more. For a horrible split second, I thought he would hit her back.

Our marriage would have ended the
second
he laid a hand on her. For real. At least, if nothing else, I knew he wasn’t violent towards women. I supposed I could look forward to him
not
victimizing me in the future. God. Were all the things I thought about him so grim?

Buildings, cars, and trees whooshed by as I looked out the window, Marcelo in the driver’s seat. The neighborhood wasn’t familiar. We weren’t going home.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“Somewhere safe,” he said vaguely.

“Ooh. Guess that contract to kill me is a really big deal, huh?” I said.

“Don’t make jokes, Sophia. This is serious. I don’t want you in the first place someone would look if they wanted to find you. If they want to get to you, they are going to have to go through me.”

I sighed and looked out of the window.

“How long will I have to stay there?”

“
You
won’t have to stay there;
we
will be staying together. We’ll stay until it is safe to go back home.”

“I don’t have any of my things with me,” I said.

“You have your phone on you. There is nothing in the house that you can’t replace while we are away.”

Marcelo. What would he do when he finally met a problem he couldn’t solve by throwing money at it? Marcelo’s wealth was definitely something he led with. A terribly unattractive trait if you asked me, but it was just one on the list of hundreds. Up until I had moved in, he had lived in that enormous townhouse on his own. Every single room was expertly furnished like he had people over all the time, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t. Did he own a single piece of clothing that didn’t have a European designer’s name on it? All that stuff he kept getting for me…as if when he finally broke a certain dollar amount on the things he had bought for me, I would magically transform into the woman of his dreams, stop complaining, and never be cross with him.

There was nothing wrong with being wealthy. My family wasn’t exactly innocent in that respect, but it sort of got to me where all that money had come from over the years to get to its current amount. As a couple, he controlled the finances because he was the one making money since I was no longer working. Even though that was the case, he never begrudged me a single dollar. Sometimes I thought he wanted me to spend
more
money. It was like he thought that maybe then I would be able to desensitize myself from the numbing boredom of being home all day.

I didn’t know the extent of the Orsini fortune, but what I did know was that Marcelo Orsini was in no way worried about his funds. To my surprise, he hadn’t made me sign a prenuptial agreement. I was certain that—given the fact that our marriage was fake—he, or at the very least his family, would have drawn up some sort of legal document to protect him from my dirty, money-grubbing little hands. Maybe the fact that it was fake was something he could plead in court so I would not receive any sort of settlement in the event of divorce.

He either was prepared and didn’t care about parting with half of his wealth when we finally got a divorce, or he was just certain that there was no way I was ever going to leave him. I admired his confidence, but he was lucky he was married to me—and not some other girl who was intending to be kept at the level of wealth she had become accustomed to after the divorce papers were signed.

Heaven forbid if we had any children. He was really much too reckless. What if I was a cold-hearted opportunist and completely sucked him dry once we split?

“You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” I told him.

He smiled then and glanced over at me.

“Don’t worry, you’ll love it.”

Half an hour later I was in the shower in our suite. We had gone to a hotel, a
really
nice hotel, and we had checked in as Mr. and Mrs. Orsini. It was only the late afternoon, but I wanted to take a shower to wash the smell of the kitchen out of my hair. The deep fryers had been going—and I didn’t want to smell like a county fair. I wrapped myself in a fluffy dressing gown and took my time drying my hair. I didn’t have any clothes besides the ones that I had been wearing. I had some makeup in my bag, but I didn’t bother.

We were hiding out. He hadn’t told me anything else and had been on his phone on the balcony since we had gotten there. I came out of the bathroom and found basically an entire buffet on room service trolleys filling the room. There were tons of dishes with cloches over them. I uncovered one and saw racks of lamb covered in a sauce over polenta. Under another was two servings of crème brûlée. Under yet another was lobster with a buttery sauce.

I reached for the crèm
e
brûlée and a spoon, cracking its crispy top and scooping out its creamy insides. It was delicious. I kept peering under a few more of the silver domes, wondering how much all the food had possibly cost. There wasn’t anyone joining us, was there? How the hell would we eat it all?

“I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got some of everything,” Marcelo said, walking back into the room.

“Who were you talking to?” I asked.

“A few of my father’s guys. I want to know who’s after you. You like that dessert?” he asked. I nodded, digging into my crème brûlée.

“How did you know I liked crème brûlée?”

“Everyone likes crème brûlée,” he said, picking up the other dessert and cracking the top. There was a knock at the door.

“More food?” I asked, incredulous.

“Nope,” he said, walking over to answer the door. He rolled in a trolley with four bottles of wine on it.

“When’s the rest of the party getting here?” I asked.

I saw him try to conceal the smile that broke across his face.

“Red or white?” he asked simply.

There were times when Marcelo Orsini didn’t completely drive me insane, and this was one of them. I could take care of myself. I had been doing that all my adult life. I wasn’t going to lie though…it felt nice to feel protected by him. It felt good to have him make the effort to make me feel comfortable and safe in our new state of exile from our home. What had he ordered? Everything off the menu? There was no way we’d be able to get through all that, but it was the thought that counted, and I appreciated it.

There was also the little fact that this side of him was very,
very
sexy. I liked a man who could take control of a situation—and that was what my husband was. Did he have his faults? More than I could count. Had I been more stressed out these two past weeks with him than I had been at any other point in my life?
Yes…
but something he said earlier came to me.

I didn’t know him.

It was true.

We didn’t know each other. We had gone from strangers to spouses in the blink of an eye, and we hadn’t gotten to know each other yet. What I could say so far was I liked this side of him. We ate off of all the plates that he had ordered for us, him disappearing from time to time to talk on his phone, but overall, us speaking to each other civilly. I actually learned a few facts about the man to whom I was married. We were this far into our marriage and we were just finding out when each other’s birthdays were.

The wine was going to my head then, and I felt warm and happy. Whomever Marcelo had been speaking to must have said something to annoy him because when he came back into the room, his whole mood had darkened.

“Why do you keep leaving the room to talk on your phone?” I asked him, my tongue loosened by the alcohol.

“I don’t want to involve you in this… this stuff,” he said. He began taking his clothes off. He had already ditched the jacket and vest earlier, but he was unbuttoning his shirt. The pants stayed on. I feasted my eyes on him—shamelessly. Gorgeous.
Blindingly
gorgeous.

“If someone’s after me, doesn’t that mean I’m involved already?” I asked.

He smiled wryly.

“Sometimes you can be a part of something without it threatening your life. You lived your whole life without knowing what your father did,” he pointed out.

I nodded silently.

He sat on the bed with his back to me. He was shirtless, so I could see the hard, bronzed planes of his back. I sat up and reached for him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders from the back.

“Are you scared?” I whispered.

He sighed. I felt his body swell then relax.

“No… nobody’s coming near you,” he said, his voice hard. I gently kissed his neck and ran my fingers through his thick, black hair.

“Thank you,” I said into his ear. “Thank you for taking care of me.” I tightened my grasp on him, hugging him. He took my hand and kissed it gently. I felt warm from the wine I had been drinking, but I knew I wasn’t
that
far gone. Maybe I was a bit drunk, but right then, with my arms around my handsome, protective husband, I
wanted
him. I wanted to give myself to him.

I slid into his lap, straddling his hips. He looked at me quizzically, obviously surprised. Hell,
I
was surprised, too. We had only slept together twice before. Granted the alcohol had definitely gotten the ball rolling between us a little, but it was more than that. We were both each other’s physical
types
, if our previous encounters were any sort of reference point. Sitting there in that hotel room with him, I wanted him near me. He was so sexy and capable. I wanted to show him that I didn’t hate him as much as I seemed to all the time. His hands went around my waist.

“What’s this?” he asked flirtatiously. He pulled me into him so our bodies were flush.

“You’re my husband,” I said. “This is what husbands and wives do.” I ground my hips into him, and he smiled. I kissed him before I lost my nerve. His arms went around me as he kissed me back. I opened my mouth and let him inside. His tongue explored the inside of my mouth. He tasted like the wine we had both had that night. I broke the kiss and pushed him down onto the bed.

Laying down on his back, he looked up at me with an expectant smile on his face.

“Move up,” I said, giggling. He scooted up the bed and propped himself up on his elbows to watch me. I undid his belt and made quick work of his zipper and button. A large erection was pressing against the fabric of his underwear. I pulled it down revealing his thick, veiny dick. Holding it by the base, I ran my hand slowly up and down its length. He lay back on the bed, sighing in satisfaction.

The two times that we had been together I had never used my mouth on him, but that was about to change. I knew he wanted me to. I sucked on the rounded mushroom tip before easing him inch by inch into my mouth. His hands found their way into my hair, and he fisted a handful, gently guiding my movements. He hissed, guiding himself deeper into my mouth, the tip pressing into my throat.