His Mafia Queen

Possession

RILEY

I'm so stunned that I drop the bacon. It glances off the side of the coffee table and onto the floor, but I don't move to pick it up. It would be almost comical if I wasn't so shocked. I think my heart is skipping a beat or three.

"Excuse me. What did you just say?"

Gabriel shakes his head and rests his elbows on his knees, covering his face with his hands. "I was going to wait to tell you. Figured it would be too intense. I'm sorry."

I sit back, against the sofa cushion, and take a few deep breaths. "You do? You love me?"

He straightens his spine and twists to look at me. "Of course. Riley, the way I feel about you scares me sometimes. I've never felt this intensely for someone. I've told you that. I've told you everything except these three words, and it's time you hear them."

We gape at each other for a beat. Everything else falls away. My dismal apartment, the bacon on the floor, the fact that he is an actual criminal. Right now this is a man and a woman sitting on a sofa on a foggy Sunday morning, trying to speak aloud the secrets that normally live inside the heart.

"I feel the same." The words come out as barely a whisper.

He shuts his eyes and his body relaxes, as if I've pardoned him on death row.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Catherine. I'm sorry that I make money in unusual and not entirely legal ways. I'm sorry that I am a flawed and imperfect man, but I will love you perfectly."

I don't let him finish. Instead, I crawl into his lap to straddle him, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. All I want is to press my body into his, soak up his warmth and his love and his caring.

Because that's what I truly adore about him. Oh, sure, the sex is amazing and the fact that he's rich is a nice perk. I won't deny either of those facts.

But I genuinely love how Gabriel cares for me like I'm a precious object. He doesn't act like I'm dispensable or malleable — like my father does, like every other man I've ever met does. Gabriel accepts and loves me for who I am, even when I'm goofy or snarky or barfy.

That one quality overrides all the other bad things he brings to my table.

As if he knows this precise need of mine, he holds me tight, like he's defending me from some invisible attacker. We sit like this for minutes, me breathing the scent of his skin into my nose.

"I wasn't looking for a relationship," he says in a gravelly voice.

"I wasn't either."

"I want to reassure you. Don't want you to doubt my feelings. I'm yours, and you're mine. I'll go through walls for you. Kill people. Anything you want, I'll do."

Wide-eyed and overwhelmed, I peel myself away from him and sit up, staring into his face. "What are we going to do?"

He smiles. "What do you mean?"

"Now that we feel like this? Now that we've put it out in the open. That you, ah," I falter.

"Now that I love you and you..."

"Love you. I love you." My eyes fill with tears. It's the first time I've ever said that to any man.

Gabriel sweeps a lock of my hair out of my face. "Now that we love each other, the world is ours."

I giggle, suddenly elated. "The world? Wow."

"I'm going to give you the world. Hell. The universe."

I lean in and press my mouth to his. "Can we start with something a little more modest?"