Illicit Temptation (Astoria Royals #3)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Trace

I flag down the car service I called to bring me and Shea to East Hampton. “Wait here,” I tell her.

Showing the driver my piece, I reach in and snap a photo of his medallion. One he doesn’t want to lose. “Here’s two hundred dollars. If anyone asks, you dropped off two people at a nice house in East Hampton.”

He stares at me and then the money. Shrugging, he takes it. “I didn’t feel like trekking out there. Thanks, man.”

After he drives off. I get on my phone and call my car service. “I need a lift from The Orchid to Manhattan. Ten minutes? Thank you.”

Shea steps out from under The Orchid’s portico to meet me near the entrance to the parking lot. “What happened? Why did the car leave?”

“I paid him to leave.” I tuck my phone into my suit jacket.

“That’s what you wanted to show me?”

Smiling, I say, “No. I called my car service. Someone who won’t snitch on me and where I go. Where we go.”

She blinks up at me, her eyes shining with an infectious smile on her lips. “Where are we going?”

“Manhattan. Better for your meeting tomorrow if we don’t have to battle expressway traffic, aye?”

“Really?” she chirps, then frowns. “Is it wise for us to check into a hotel?”

“We’re not staying in a hotel, princess.” I grip the sides of her face. “I’m taking you to my new apartment.”

APPROACHING THE MIDTOWN Tunnel, the entire city skyline lights up in front of us. “God, it’s beautiful,” she purrs .

“It sure is,” I say, kissing her knuckles.

She cocks her head. “So what do you have? One of those studio apartments? I can do cozy.”

I bark a laugh. “ Not a studio apartment.”

Cutting north, the car weaves through narrow side streets, navigating around trucks making late deliveries, cabs, pedestrians, bikes, and dog owners taking their pets on the last walk of the evening.

Rian pulls up outside the impressive skyscraper with the wraparound luxury apartment Griffin’s new lawyer, Kai Powers, signed over to me. I’m far from a billionaire right now, but the Keller holdings are staggering. Griffin and his new consigliere are working out the ownership details and how the monthly earnings will be divided. I might be rich in a couple of years.

“The Lancaster?” Shea looks up. “You have an apartment here?”

I smile, loving her excitement. “Aye. I do now.”

“Not a studio, no shit.” She continues to stare into the sky.

After flashing my ID, I strut into the lobby, holding Shea’s hand with my head held high. I’m in a suit, dressed like her bodyguard, but right now, I’m a husband showing my wife an apartment that one day I want to share with her.

We ride the elevator, the whir of flying up so many floors a gentle hum.

“How many apartments per floor?” Shea asks.

“One.” I pin her against the wall. “Scream as loud as you want while I’m fucking you. Only people in helicopters flying by will hear you.”

On my floor, there’s a small foyer and a steel-reinforced door. I use my key, and a secondary electronic code to enter. It’s dark, except for the lights shining in from floor-to-ceiling windows .

Shea gasps and skips toward the wall of windows. Fucking skips like a schoolgirl. It’s hard to impress a billionaire mob princess. But I just did.

“This...” She goes breathless. “Why were you keeping this a secret?”

“I finalized the papers in February and had movers bring over what little I did have in my apartment here. I never even spent the night here yet.” I kiss her hand. “I was needed in East Hampton.”

“What else are you not telling me?”

You have no idea...

“I’ve told you everything as far as how I feel and what I want.”

I worried Kieran told her about the deal with Scava earlier, but I know my princess. She’d have been livid and would have said something to me. At the same time, I’m sick with the guilt from not telling her myself. She’s still not convinced we have a future.

I’m focused on getting approval from her father. Permission and acceptance are a heartbeat away.

“Trace,” she starts but the exhaustion in her eyes guts me.

“Come on, it’s late, let me show you the bedroom.” I kiss her forehead, and with my lips pressed against her skin, I add, “Our bedroom, if you’ll just give us a chance and trust that I want you and only you. For better or for worse.”

I bring her into the primary bedroom where Shea stops short.

She lets go of her breath. “Trace. That view.”

“No kidding.” I pinch her chin.

“Stop. You got me here.” She steps past the king-size bed with a black leather tufted headboard and dark blue bedding and goes toward the far wall also made of all glass. “I love my ocean view. But this... ”

“This...”

Shrugging. “It’s exciting. At the beach, it’s just water and the moon. It’s...nothing. This is everything. All these lights are people. Stories.”

“Clients,” I whisper in her ear and watch her eyes slip close. “I will stand up to your brothers. I will fight for you, Shea.”

I’d just feel better with her father on my side.

“It sounds like a fantasy,” she whispers.

“I’ll make all your fantasies come true, princess.” I turn her around and unzip the back of her gown to strip her out of this bridesmaid dress.

“Always the bridesmaid...,” she laments, running her fingers over the fabric.

“My secret bride.” I toss the gown aside and unhook her bra. I’m tired of it not being her turn. She’ll have the biggest, badass wedding dress money can buy. My money. And I won’t take a dime from her brothers, they can keep whatever the hell money Nico Scava was promised.

Once she’s naked, I lay my wife out on my bed. I lavish Shea’s silky skin with my tongue, moving down every inch slowly until I get between her legs.

“I love it when you do this to me while you’re still in a suit,” she moans.

“The suit I wear to protect you.” I spread her thighs and lick her cunt until she comes in my mouth.

“Trace,” she cries out my name as waves of pleasure storm through her.

“Stay right there.” I back up and shed every layer of my clothes until I’m completely naked with a dick so hard for her, it’s nearly unbearable. “Play with that drenched cunt I just licked.”

Shea drags confident fingers through her slick folds wearing a grin I want to remember forever. It feels different here. The power balance shifted, evened out really more than anything.

God, I love her like this. Under my control, and submitting to me. Her flushed face, wet cunt, trembling heart, and the wild look in her eyes are her consent. But I check, anyway.

I climb on the bed and line up my dick to her soaked entrance. “Consent, princess?”

“Yes, you have my full consent. Now hurry up, please.” She pulls at my hips.

“Your begging lights me up like a stick of dynamite.” Electricity zings through me and adrenaline replaces my blood to tighten my balls when I push inside her.

Her groan and slick channel feel like heaven.

Her pink, smooth pussy sucks me in and strangles me. I needed to fuck her so badly. “This is too damn good, but I’ll come quickly because you’ve got to be sore from my savage fucking this morning. That kind of roughness is reserved for when I need you so much, I can’t even speak. When I don’t say a word. When I kick the door closed, draw the blinds, and make sure we’re not within ten feet of anything that can fucking shatter. I will lay you out and fuck you until you cry out of my name,” I groan, rocking my hips. “Christ, you take me so well, princess.”

Shea grunts in response. My princess comes in violent waves around my cock, her juices dripping down my balls. Her contractions do me in, and I come, too. With a jerk, I drench her with so much seed, not caring one damn bit if it all goes to waste.

She’s all I want.