Forbidden By Her Mafia Stepbrother novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Over the Bakery

The apartment over the bakery smelled of old flour and cold coffee.

It had a kitchen, a couch, one window with the blind pulled down, and a bed in the next room with a gray quilt.

Massimo locked the door, and then the second lock, and then he stood with his back to it, breathing hard.

Wynne was still shaking.

She had been shaking for forty minutes, and now that the car had stopped, it had spread from her hands into her knees.

"Sit," he said.

"I can't."

"Wynne."

"I can't sit, Massimo, I just watched you shoot at people."

"Come here, then."

He went to the sink and ran the tap and held his bleeding knuckles under it.

She crossed the kitchen, took his wrist, and turned his hand under the water.

She had never touched him before.

His skin was hot, and the tendons stood up in his forearm.

He let her.

"This is the second time you've hurt this hand for me in two days," she said.

"Third."

"Third?"

"I hit the wall." His voice was rough. "That one was for me."

She laid a clean dish towel over his knuckles and held it there.

The kitchen was very quiet.

He was looking at her mouth.

"I've forbidden every man for two years," Massimo said slowly, "so I wouldn't have to be this one."

Her heart slammed once.

"Which one?"

"The one who can't stop."

"Stop what?"

"Looking at you across a table." His throat moved. "Counting the minutes till you come down. Standing in my father's hall every night to hear if you went out. I told myself it was keeping you safe." He took a breath. "It was keeping me from you."

"Massimo."

"I broke the rule. I touched you last night, and I haven't stopped feeling it since. I'm breaking the rest now, so say go home. Say it and I'll drive you back and never say a word."

"I don't want to go home."

"Wynne."

"I want you to touch me," she said. "I've wanted it for two years. I thought it was hate."

He made a sound she had never heard from a man.

Then his hands were in her hair, and his mouth came down on hers.

It was nothing like her careful dreams.

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