Chapter 19: Domenico - Marrying the Mafia Daddy

Kira lifts her head from where she’s sprawled on the bed. “Did you ask me to lie down just so you can watch me?” she quips, pursing her lips.

Reaching for her, I remove a few damp tendrils that she didn’t manage to keep dry during our shower. “Do you really think I’d make up an excuse if all I wanted was to admire my handiwork?”

Unable to help myself, I admire her ass that’s still the prettiest shade of red. The ridges of my handprints overlap across both cheeks, darker in the spots where I landed harder.

While she grumbles slightly and buries her head in the pillow again, I get the ointment from the bedside drawer. I squeeze a dollop onto my palm and rub my hands together to warm it.

The first touch makes her flinch. “Jesus!” She lifts her head from the pillow and glares at me over her shoulder. “That stings, Domenico.”

I don’t apologize. “It’s supposed to. The ointment burns before it numbs.”

“Could you at least try not to look so pleased with yourself?” Her eyes narrow. “Your mouth’s doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“The corner-twitch thing. The thing you do when you’re trying not to smile but you’re secretly enjoying every second of my suffering.”

I can’t argue with that because I am enjoying this. Not the stinging part—I don’t want her in pain—but the aftermath. The sight of my marks on her skin. The fact that she’s lying here, letting me touch her like this.

“I won’t deny that I enjoyed spanking you, baby.” I work my thumb into a particularly dark patch on her right cheek, and she hisses through her teeth. I ease up immediately. “But I’m not going to let you sit here sore for the rest of the day either.”

“Could’ve thought of that before you turned my ass into a sunset,” she mutters into the pillow.

I bite back a laugh. Apparently, my wife has a mouth on her when she’s in pain.

My hands move slowly across her skin, working the ointment into each mark with a pressure that shifts from firm to gentle whenever she tenses. I check the places that make her hiss and spend more time there, circling my thumb over the edges of the bruising until her muscles loosen under my touch.

“You’re being careful,” she says after a minute. Her voice has lost the edge. “Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why are you being so gentle now when you’re the one who made me sore?”

The question hangs between us. I keep my hands moving, focusing on the heat of her skin under my palms, the way her breathing is now matching the rhythm of my strokes.

“Hurting you because I choose to is different from leaving you hurting afterward.” I say it simply because it is simple. It’s the most basic rule I know.

She goes quiet. The kind of quiet that tells me something landed.

I give her space to sit with it. My hands keep working, smoothing the ointment over her ass and down to the curve of her thighs.

“I liked it more than I expected,” she admits. Her voice is soft, muffled by the pillow. “The punishment.”

Pride moves through me before I can stop it. Not because she liked the punishment, although I’d be lying if I said that didn’t please the fuck out of me. Because she said it. No embarrassment. No trying to give me the answer she thinks I want.

She’s getting better at that—telling me what she wants, what she likes, what she doesn’t. Even earlier, when she finally admitted she wanted my cock but wasn’t ready for all of it, she didn’t hide from the truth just because it complicated what she wanted.

Fuck, I like watching her find her voice.

“I know you did.” I let my thumb trace the crease where her ass meets her thigh, and she doesn’t pull away. “I could tell by how quickly your indignation turned into begging.”

“Don’t you dare,” she snips, but there’s no heat in it.

“Begging me not to stop.” I lean down, my mouth close to her ear. “Begging me to make you come on my fingers while I kept your ass burning.”

She lifts her head and shoots me a look that would melt steel. “Don’t forget I almost made you come with my hand. You had to stop me.”

Fuck. She’s not wrong. And judging by the smug look on her face, she’s damn proud of herself. Good. She should be.

“You did,” I admit. “And it won’t happen again.”

“Wait, what? Are you saying you won’t let me touch you again?”

I chuckle. “No, baby. That’s not what I’m saying.” My voice drops lower. “I’m saying that next time, I won’t stop you.”

She holds my gaze for a beat, and I watch the flush spread from her cheeks down her neck before she buries her face in the pillow again, but I catch the smile she’s trying to hide.

The conversation shifts after that. The teasing softens, becoming something easier. She stays sprawled beneath my hands, and I keep working the ointment into her skin long after the redness has started to fade, because I like the way her body sinks into the mattress when I touch her. Like she trusts the weight of my hands.

“Do you ever sleep?” she asks after a while. “Like, actually sleep? Because I’ve woken up at least five times in the middle of the night and you were gone.”

“Sometimes.” I move my hands to her lower back, digging my thumbs into the muscles on either side of her spine. She groans, and the sound goes straight to my cock. “Not often, though.”

“What do you do when you’re not working?”

I consider deflecting. I always deflect. But she’s lying here with my marks on her skin, and something about the way she asked—casual, curious, not digging—makes the wall harder to maintain.

“I read. Old books. History, mostly.” My thumbs press deeper, and she makes that sound again. “Sometimes I sit on the balcony and drink whiskey until the sun comes up.”

“Alone?”

“Always.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “That sounds lonely.”

“It’s not.” But the word comes out sharper than I mean it to, and I feel her tense under my hands. I ease my grip. “It’s peaceful. A different kind of quiet.”

“Mmm.” Her voice is fading, words starting to slur. “I’d sit with you. If you wanted company.”

She’s nearly asleep. I can hear it in the drag of her syllables, the way her breathing has gone deep and even between sentences. I finish with the ointment, wiping the excess on a corner of the sheet, and slide my hand up to cup the back of her neck.

“Turn over, baby.”

She mumbles something unintelligible but complies, rolling onto her side with the sluggish movements of someone three seconds from unconsciousness. I lie down behind her, fitting my body against hers, one arm beneath the pillow and the other draped over her waist.

Kira makes a small, satisfied noise and presses back against me. Her ass fits against my hips, warm and smooth under my palm where the ointment has soaked in. I can feel every breath she takes, the rise and fall of her ribs against my forearm.

Apart from my beautiful wife, it’s been years since I’ve held someone like this. I’d forgotten how it feels—the weight of another person trusting you enough to fall asleep in your arms.

She’s asleep within minutes. I’m not. My mind is too loud, too busy cataloging the newness of this. The way my chest tightens when she sighs in her sleep. The possessive ache that lives somewhere behind my sternum and has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the woman currently using my bicep as a pillow.

Taking care of her felt good. Not in the way punishment feels good, or control, or even the blinding pleasure of watching her come apart. This was quieter. Deeper. The kind of good that settles into your bones and makes you wonder what the fuck you’ve been doing with your life until now.

I press my lips to the back of her neck and close my eyes, even though I don’t expect to sleep. Usually, closing my eyes is nothing more than an invitation for my mind to start running crazy. Until I eventually get irritated enough to leave the bed, pour a whiskey, and find something productive to do.

Tonight, I listen to Kira breathe. At some point, without realizing it, I fall asleep.

When I open my eyes again, pale morning light is cutting through the curtains. For several seconds, I just stare at it.

Morning.

I fucking slept through the night.

Kira is still tucked against me, one of her hands curled beneath her cheek, my arm heavy across her waist. I haven’t moved. Neither has she. Well, fuck me. This isn’t the first night I’ve slept beside her, yet this time my wife did what whiskey, exhaustion, and years of shitty sleep never managed.

Night after night, I’m lulled into restful sleep tucked against the soft curves of my wife. This continues for days, and I don’t think I’ve been this rested since before Paolo was born. And speaking of my son, he’s finally back in Boston.

“I’m ready,” he says, turning toward me.

We’re standing at one of the warehouses, checking the shipment for the Albanians is ready.

“I know you are,” I tell him in a rough voice. “Take the team with you, and let me know if there are any problems.”

He nods and reaches for the briefcase resting against his leg. “I’ve kept an eye on Harry Adams as you requested, and he’s had some meetings with NovaGen Pharmaceuticals.”

I run a hand down my face and let out a sigh. “I suspected as much,” I state.

“Want to tell me what all this is about? Isn’t he your father-in-law?” Paolo smirks at the last part.

While he double-checks he has everything, I quickly fill him in on Paige Adams’ situation. I still don’t know everything since Dr. Morgan’s being very tightlipped. Every time I probe she feeds me the line of wanting all the facts before saying anything.

But I know enough. I’ve seen some of the papers from NovaGen Pharmaceuticals, and when I confronted one of Paige’s regular nurses, she admitted she was hired by the pharmaceutical company and not the hospital.

Paolo whistles. “Damn. So the old man kept his wife sick on purpose?”

“That’s one possibility.”

“What’s the other?”

“That he got paid to put her into medical trials,” I growl, anger stirring inside me at the thought.

My son looks genuinely sick at the thought, which is exactly how I feel. Fighting over territory and settling blood feuds is one thing. But if Harry put his own wife through medical experiments for money, that’s another thing altogether.

“Does your wife know all this?” my son asks, arching an eyebrow when I shake my head. “Right, well, far be it for me to give relationship advice. But wouldn’t it be something you should share?”

“I will,” I tell him. “Once Dr. Morgan’s done with her evaluations.”

“Why are you… oh, I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“I was going to ask why you’re being so considerate, but I get it,” my son says, wearing a shit-eating grin I’m not sure I appreciate.

“Get what?” I ask again, more exasperated this time.

“You love her,” he simply states. “That’s why you’ve turned your life upside down for her, and why you’re doing all of this without her knowing. You want to protect her for as long as you can.”

Settle in with a love story.

Head to Lokepub for more romance novels.

“Fuck off,” I snarl.

“Does she know about—”

“No,” I interrupt. “No one but you, me, and Gio know about her.”

Paolo grins as he gathers his things and strides toward the door. “Guess I should re-meet Kira, since it sounds like she’s going to stick around.”

“Focus on your job for now,” I sigh. “And once you’re done with the Albanians, see what you can find about anything connecting Harry to NovaGen Pharmaceuticals beyond the signed authorization forms.”

“Anything for my stepmom,” he chuckles.

Even though he closes the door behind him, I can still hear the echo of his laughter long after he’s gone.

As soon as I’m done at the warehouse, I drive back to the penthouse. Even though I know I should meet with Gio about next month’s sit down with the Irish Mafia, I can’t find it in me to care right now. Not when I know Kira returned earlier than usual from Saint Benedict’s.

I don’t see her when I return, so I head to my office. I barely get my ass into the chair when a soft knock sounds against the closed door. The door opens before I answer, and Kira steps into my office.

“You busy?” She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, her hair pulled into a loose knot at the base of her neck. No makeup. The freckles across her nose are visible in the afternoon light from the windows.

“Depends on what you’re selling.” I lean back in my chair. “If it’s another lecture about my communication skills, I’m booked solid until Christmas.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t bite. “Saint Benedict’s is having a potluck for the fall festival this weekend, and I wanted to cook something.”

“Tell the chef what you want. He’ll make it.”

“That’s not…” She stops and takes a breath. “I don’t want the chef to make it when it’s for so many people.”

The solution seems obvious. “That’s fine, we’ll have it catered. Whatever you want, however much you need. Just give Donna the headcount.”

Her shoulders drop. Something flickers across her face—frustration, disappointment. I’ve seen that look before.

“It’s not about the food, Domenico.” Her voice is careful. Measured. The way she talks when she’s trying not to sound like she’s accusing me of something. “It’s about contributing. Everyone else is bringing something they made. Something they chose and cooked with their own hands. I don’t want to show up with a catered platter and pretend I had anything to do with it.”

She brushes some imaginary lint from her shoulder.

“The potluck is the day before Dr. Morgan’s supposed to have answers about Mom, so I also figured it would help keep me busy.”

And now I get it: she wants to personally contribute.

I catch the next offer before it leaves my mouth. The kitchen is fully staffed, and the chef could easily supervise. But every solution I have involves someone else doing the work, and none of them are what she’s asking for.

“The kitchen is yours, baby,” I reply. “Whatever you need. Use it.”

The change in her is immediate. Her face lights up—not the careful, practiced smile she gives when she’s grateful, but something brighter. Real. She takes a step toward my desk, then stops herself, as if she’s not sure what to do with the permission now that she has it.

I solve that problem for her by reaching across the desk and catching her wrist so I can pull her around to stand between my knees. Her hips bump against the edge of the chair, and I slide my hand to the small of her back, holding her there.

“Thank you,” she says, and her voice is soft.

I kiss her, keeping it quick because if I kiss her for longer than three seconds, I’ll end up dragging her into my lap, and she’ll never make it to the kitchen.

“You’re welcome.” I let her go. “Try not to burn the place down.”

She’s laughing as she leaves, and the sound follows me back to the next phone call from Gio.

A few hours later, I find the kitchen in a state of organized chaos. Ingredients cover every surface. Lists are taped to the cabinets in Kira’s neat handwriting. Donna moves between the refrigerator and the island with the efficiency of someone who’s done this a thousand times.

The chef is actually smiling as he demonstrates a knife technique to my wife.

She’s running the show. That’s the surprise. I expected stubborn independence—Kira refusing help on principle, determined to prove she can do it alone. Instead, she’s delegating. Directing Donna to preheat the oven, asking the chef questions about temperatures and resting times, scribbling notes on her list with the focus of a general planning an invasion.

I watch her for a minute from the doorway. Her sleeves are rolled to her elbows, flour dusting her forearms, a smudge of something dark on her cheek. She looks… happy, and fuck if that doesn’t make my heart skip a beat.

A tray of something golden-brown is cooling on the counter, and I reach for a piece.

“Don’t you dare.” Kira doesn’t look up from whatever she’s stirring. “I’m counting those.”

I take one anyway. It’s sweet, warm, some kind of pastry with fruit inside. I chew slowly, watching her over the rim of my coffee mug.

“I said don’t…” She turns, sees the missing piece, and glares at me. “Domenico.”

I swipe another one on my way past and land a light swat on her ass that makes her jump. The look she gives me could curdle milk.

“You’re insufferable.”

“You love it.”

She doesn’t deny it, which is its own kind of victory. Instead of leaving—which is what I should do, because I have a meeting in forty-five minutes that requires preparation—I pull out a stool at the island and sit down.

Kira raises an eyebrow. “You’re staying?”

“Apparently.”

She moves around the kitchen for the next twenty minutes with me as her audience. Every few minutes, she shoves something under my nose—a spoonful of sauce, a slice of bread, a piece of cheese she’s considering for a dish I haven’t figured out yet.

“Taste this.”

I open my mouth. She feeds me directly from the spoon, her free hand cupped beneath it to catch drips. I catch her wrist when she tries to pull back, hold her there for a second longer than necessary, and press a kiss to the inside of her wrist before letting go.

Her cheeks go pink as she clears her throat. “Well? What do you think?”

“It’s fine.”

“That’s not an answer. Be specific.”

“It’s sweet. Too sweet. The fruit needs more acid.”

She considers this, head tilted, then nods and goes back to adjusting whatever’s in the pot. The next time she makes me taste something, I’m ready. When she leans in with the spoon, I catch her hip with one hand, pull her between my knees, and kiss her properly before I take the bite.

She makes a sound against my mouth—half protest, half laugh—and pushes away from my chest with flour-dusted hands. The pattern continues. She moves, I reach. My hand finds her hip when she passes behind my stool.

By the time she shoves a plate of pasta in front of me—some kind of baked situation with cheese bubbling over the edges—I’ve rearranged the rest of my afternoon without consciously deciding to.

“Try this one.” Her eyes are earnest. “For real this time. No kissing until you give me a real answer.”

I take a bite. It’s good—rich, garlicky, the pasta cooked exactly right. But there’s something missing. “More pepper,” I say. “And lemon. The zest, not the juice.”

She watches me chew, waiting. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She makes a note, then looks back at me. “What’s your favorite?”

“My favorite what?”

“Food.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been feeding you a lot of different stuff, and I still don’t know what you actually like best.”

I glance down at the pasta. “This.”

Her brows lift. “Really?”

“My mom used to make it.”

Her expression softens as I tell her my mom always made pasta just like that when I was a kid. Usually when I was sick or had somehow hurt myself.

“Then I definitely need to get it right,” she exclaims, her tone making it clear she’s just turned a pasta dish into a personal mission.

I spend the rest of the afternoon exactly where I am. My phone rings twice. I ignore it both times. This is new. This feeling, this compulsion to be near her even when there’s nothing I need from her.

I’ve spent most of my life in rooms where people wanted something. Where every conversation had a purpose, every interaction was a transaction dressed up as something else. There are no transactions here. Just my wife, cooking, and me watching her.

Even though it would be easy to play this off as me thinking this is good for Kira, considering Dr. Morgan isn’t optimistic about Paige Adams, who still suffers seizures under her care, it’s more than that.

I genuinely love being around my wife at all times. But especially when she’s happy and excited, like now.

The cooking madness continues over the next few days. While she cooks and plans, Kira shares stories about Saint Benedict’s. I find myself laughing when she tells me about a disastrous youth group camping trip where it rained for three days straight.

She talks about dishes she’s made that turned out catastrophically wrong. A lasagna that came out of the oven like soup. Cookies that hardened into something closer to roofing tiles. A pie crust that she still refers to as ‘the cement incident.’

In return, she asks about me. Not the business. Me. Domenico—her husband.

Eventually, the questions stop, but I still keep talking. Everything I share feels like handing her something. Not secrets—nothing that would compromise the organization or put her at risk—but pieces of myself I’ve kept filed away because no one’s ever asked for them.