I woke up in Mariano's arms, snuggled closely against his chest, his face buried in the crook of my neck. I could feel my hair stand on end as our skins kept touching, his soft, warm breath fanning my cheek. I don’t think I’d ever slept like this with a man, except Aiden. I realised I’d had another night without a nightmare. Maybe my shrink wasn't that bad.
"Hey." I whispered, but he didn't reply, probably still asleep.
Chapter 11The first place where I looked for Mariano was the basement. He wasn't there. He must be in his office, I decided. I made my way upstairs slowly, bumping into Luigi on the way, and telling him that he looked dapper in his suit.I stood on the first floor and looked for his office. Which one was it, again? There were too many doors, all the same looking. I looked back for Luigi, but he had already gone downstairs.
No, I was not thinking about green eyes. No, I was not thinking about being entangled in silken bedsheets with a heavy arm wound around me. No, I was not thinking about Mariano Wolfe Lionelli - Montefiore Rivera. Nope. Not at all. Nada.Yes, I was lying to myself.Mariano hadn't left my mind since the second I had turned my back to him. He was everywhere. In Aiden's green sweatshirt, in Felicia's Guide to Basic Italian, in Lando
The next morning when I woke up Aiden greeted me with a mug of hot coffee, and I readily accepted it, gulping it down in large sips. "Do you want to see Mariano?" He asked."No?” Oh. Right.
Stefano called Mariano from his phone, and I sighed deeply before pressing it to my ear."Sí, Stefano?" Mariano asked curtly. His voice sounded different on the phone. Hm. I'd never spoken to him on the phone. It was still a nice voice."Uhm.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. "No."He tugged at his hair in frustration, groaning, then reached out and undid the knot I had made and yanked the shirt off of my waist.I gasped. The gall. The audacity.
I set about laying the table. Mariano poured wine for us. He didn't seem to mind that it was the cheap variety.As I pranced around the room, making sure to twirl around in my skirt so I looked pretty, I felt the constant thud of excitement in my veins.We ate in silence, with Mariano commenting
You know that feeling, when the world seems secondary, and the feeling in your heart comes first?I didn't. Not until Mariano's lips met mine.Once our skins had touched, I had thought I couldn't bear to be parted from him for even a second.
I sat down on Mariano's comfy bed, rolled the sleeves of his shirt upto my elbows, opened his laptop, and wrote - The Rivera Crime Family on Google.Mariano had gone to his home office to get some urgent work done. He had told me to sleep, but I wasn't that sleepy, really.I wasn't surprised to find a Wikipedia link for the Riveras. I had spent a lot of time reading about crime families on the internet when I was a kid. I couldn't remember if I had seen this one. Maybe I had.The Rivera crime family, is the family that dominates organized crime in the parts of America that are unoccupied by The Russian Mob and the whole of Italy. The family has been nicknamed the 'Rolls Royce' of organized crime. It is rivaled by size and skill only by the Russian Mob. They