His Mafia Prince
Chapter 273: Not Yet. Not Tonight

Chapter 273: Not Yet. Not Tonight

{TYLER}

A figure comes around the corner, shadowed by the low roof of the portico, and stops dead, staring straight at us. It’s the Irish guy. It’s definitely him; his shadowy figure looks exactly the same as it did in the catacombs.

I tense to run or duck, my hand squeezing Sasha’s so tight that he might lose a finger, but then our stalker looks the other way. I hear a soft curse carrying across the water. He strolls a little further down to stop in a patch of moonlight, and unbuttons his jacket.

For a very brief moment I feel Sasha’s hand squeeze back at mine, but then the man takes out a packet of cigarettes. He takes his time shaking one out, then reaches into his inside pocket once more—only to take out a lighter.

With a soft snick, a glowing yellow flame lights up his face, and he seems to look right at us for a moment before he touches it to the end of his cigarette. Then he leans against the railing and begins to smoke, casually, calmly, all the while looking down at the water of the canal.

Sasha begins to push me further down the alley, a finger to his lips to make sure I step carefully. Once we’re through, we find a few more side streets and alleys, until Sasha judges we’re far enough away to start running without being overheard.

I run with him, but there’s no panic in our pace; it’s steady, leisurely, a matter of putting distance between us and the opera house. We hit a wider street and slow even further to a fast walk.

All the while I let Sasha pull me along with him while he looks this way and that, until he finally makes for a very dark, very narrow alleyway. He bundles me into it, then leans up against the wall, face twisted towards the brighter street as he listens out for our stalker again. We stay like that for a long time, and I’m so damn proud of myself for keeping quiet and not asking any questions that I resolve to make Sasha praise me for it later, too.

Eventually, he peels himself off the wall and beckons me back into the street. It’s deserted; we’ve come a ways from the touristy areas, which worries me a little. This is the kind of street where a vengeance-seeking Irishman might be able to get up close and personal in his killing.

But it doesn’t worry me quite as much as it should, somehow. The way my heart is beating is closer to elation than terror. Sasha takes my hand again as we walk quickly through streets, taking corners here and there randomly as we head in the general direction of our palazzo. After a few minutes, he actually begins to swing our arms and gives a chuckle.

"Well, well," he says. "That was fun, wasn’t it?" "Honestly? Yeah. It kinda was."

He raises an eyebrow at my response. Then he glances around us again, but this time there’s an air of playfulness to it—and he pulls me into a doorway, keeping my face in the shadows, and kisses me deeply and soundly.

"Do you know how much I love you?" he asks me afterward.

"I mean, yeah, I’ve got a notion," I gasp out, making him chuckle again. "But Sasha—how did he know we’d be there tonight?"

"He knew because someone got word to him that we were in Venice, and he followed the money trail we left behind us. Splashing all that cash around like we have been, it gets attention. So now we can be sure—there’s a mole somewhere. But it’s not Miles." He leans over me, his hand planted on the wooden door next to my head, smiling down at me. He even leans in to rub his nose against mine.

"How do you know that?" I ask doggedly.

"Because if the Irish knew where we were staying, which Miles does, they’d hit us there."

"Really?"

He shrugs. "I would. Safer. No, he was just trying to get a lock on us tonight. Didn’t you notice he wasn’t carrying?"

"No?"

"When he opened his jacket to take out the cigarettes. Come on, baby bird, you need to notice these things more than you do."

I think about that for a second, and then slide a hand inside his jacket. "You’re not carrying either, baby. You don’t think it would have been a little reckless to try approaching Magda, with all her bodyguards, while you were unarmed?"

"I think it would have been reckless to try it armed," he says, running a thumb over my lower lip. "Reckless and obvious. Those bodyguards would pick it a mile off. And anyway, I was hoping Magda would see that I meant her no harm if I approached the front gates, so to speak, rather than cornering her. You don’t strap on a bomb before you go to peace talks."

While he’s been talking, his hands have been exploring, carding through my hair, sliding around the back of my neck, the other moving further down, inside my jacket, pressing against my chest. He must be able to feel my heart, strong and fast.

He leans in very close to brush his lips over mine, and I think about that Roman alley, not so dissimilar to this deserted Venetian street, and my body starts to respond hopefully. His palm, stroking down my body, cups my hard-on and gives a light squeeze. "Oh, angel," he breathes. "You really are perfect for me."

"And you for me," I tell him, pressing into his hand, lifting up my mouth for more kisses.

He indulges me, but only for a moment. "We don’t have time for this," he sighs regretfully. "Not here and now. We should get back to safety."

I quietly grumble my frustration, but hey, I’m in no hurry to die, either. Not these days. "Back to the palazzo?" I suggest. "And we can continue this there?"

"The perfect ending to a perfect evening," he agrees.

I tuck that little tidbit away until we’re safely back in the palazzo with all the alarms set. I’ve been up to our rooms to shower and then I dress in the old gold satin and brocade pajamas I bought here in Venice. The palazzo feels like the right place for them, and when I pull on the matching robe, I can’t help but admire myself in the mirror.

I should be the most tempting morsel in this whole watery town. But Sasha is nowhere to be found. I have to go all the way downstairs again to find him, holed up in the living room, working on his phone.

I sneak up behind him and then jump forward with a "Rah!", grabbing his shoulders.

He just reaches up to pat my hand absentmindedly. "Feel better after your shower, baby bird?"

Now that I think about it, sneaking up on a Mob Boss probably wasn’t my best idea ever. Still— "How’d you know I was there?" I come around his chair and throw myself across the love seat opposite him, one leg hooked over the arm.

"Those pajamas are lovely, but noisy. You make a sort of—" He holds up his fingers, rubbing them together. "—shushing noise when you walk."

At least he noticed the damn pajamas. I ask the question I’ve been mulling over since our necking session in a Venetian doorway. "Was it the perfect evening?"

"Hm?" Sasha is finished on his phone, and tosses it aside. He comes over to look down at me, lean over me on the love seat, trace a finger down the shirt collar of my pajamas.

"You said, back there on the street—the perfect ending to the perfect evening."

But he’s already busy undressing me, impatiently trying to get down to my skin as fast as he can right here in the drawing room. "Did I?"

I take his hands in mine to make him focus on the conversation. "You did. But we didn’t achieve anything we set out to achieve. So was it really perfect?"

Sasha’s eyes are a much deeper hazel in the mellow golden lights of our Venetian palazzo. They shine like sapphires as he looks down at me, frees his hands, and caresses my nipples under the silk of my pajama shirt until they stand out against the fabric, begging for further attention. "Yes, it was perfect, baby," he says, admiring his handiwork. "We’ve come to Magda’s notice, even if we didn’t have a chance to speak with her. We know our enemy is in Venice. And I..."

"You what?"

"I have been reminded, once again, how lucky I am to have you by my side." He pulls me to my feet, and I let him slide his arms around me. He gives a happy sigh. "Tonight, I felt young again."

"You’re not old, baby," I point out, laughing.

"No. But in my position now..." He gives a half-shrug. "So much of it is strategy. Diplomacy. Tactics. I’d forgotten about the thrill that comes with action. When I was younger, right around when I met you, I enjoyed the danger. I enjoyed all those near-misses, the close calls, the death threats. I was more reckless back then. It gave me a rush, knowing that I’d escaped my fate once more." He scrunches up his nose. "I’m not sure I can explain it."

"I get it," I say, my sincerity making him look more closely at me. "I know what you mean. I felt—still feel, sometimes—the same way."

The feeling of being most alive when my life is under threat. And I know, too, that sense of escape—from fate, as Sasha calls it.

But I call it Death.

Suddenly I want nothing more than to show fate, Death, all our earthly enemies, that they can’t have us. Not yet. Not tonight.

"Come to bed," I say. "I want you to fuck the living daylights out of me

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