Read Online Breathless & Bloodstained (The Chicago War #4) by Bethany-Kris - Free Book Online Page A

engagement and the boss, Ella. I thought for sure
that Riley would take out Joel, and that would leave you free to do what you
wanted.”
    “With you,” she
said softly.
    Tommas had never
been a liar. “Yes.”
    “All you had to do
was tell me and not let me find out in a room full of people, Tommy.”
    “You wouldn’t have
listened no matter when I told you.”
    Abriella opened
her mouth to argue, but Tommas wasn’t in the mood to fight with his lover. They
had done enough of that over the last couple of months. The worst kind of
fighting was the kind that was silent and non-verbal, separated by people and
space. He preferred Abriella’s anger, even violence, over her silence and
distance.
    Instead of
allowing her to argue the point with him, Tommas leaned forward and caught her
opened mouth with his own. Her silky lips pressed back to his, returning the
kiss, and almost instantly, their softness was gone. Abriella’s fingernails dug
into Tommas’ cheek the second his tongue found hers when he deepened the kiss.
He fisted her dress and pulled her closer, wanting her to feel the hardness
growing under his slacks.
    Simply being close
and touching Abriella was enough to make Tommas harder than steel and fucking
stupid in the head.
    Tommas caught
Abriella’s bottom lip and bit down hard enough to leave the imprints of his
teeth behind. She gasped the sweetest sound, a high whine following right behind.
The spikes of her leather high-heeled boots dug into the small of his back,
stinging in the best way when she left her own mark on his cheek with her
nails.
    “You wouldn’t have
listened,” Tommas breathed against her trembling lips. “No matter what I said
or how I told you, Ella, you wouldn’t have heard a thing I said. All you would
have heard was that someone else would stand with me, and not you. Someone else
would be thought of as mine, and not you. Someone else who wasn’t you, Ella. It
wouldn’t have made a difference how fake it was, and that I never intended to
follow it through, because it wasn’t you .”
    Abriella’s lashes
fanned her cheeks, and more tears escaped the corners of her eyes. “You’re
right, but it still hurt me, Tommy.”
    “Hurting you kills
me, babe. You know it does. It was easier for me to do it the way I did. I knew
you would be forced to control your reaction and …”
    “Keep going,” she
demanded.
    “And I didn’t want
to see your face when you heard about the engagement.”
    Abriella didn’t
even seem surprised. “That was selfish of you.”
    “The word you used
was cowardly, actually.”
    “You’re not a
coward, Tommy, but you are terribly selfish.”
    “When it comes to
you, yes. I’ll always be that way. You’ve made me like this, Ella.”
    “And what about
the monster you turned me into, huh?”
    Tommas leaned
down, nose to nose with his lover. “I adore the monster in you.”
    The sadness in
Abriella’s gaze was replaced by a feisty fire. This was the woman Tommas loved;
she was the woman that he wouldn’t trade for anything. There was no one on
earth like Abriella Trentini. She was fucking gorgeous, as sharp as a razor’s
edge, and smarter than most men in the Outfit.
    She was perfect.
    Crazy wonderful.
    Abriella bent
forward and kissed Tommas hard, driving her booted heels into his lower back
and pushing him into her body. His tongue tangled with hers, their familiar
dance falling in tune like it always did between them.
    There was nothing
like this.
    No one else but
Ella.
    “Goddamn,” Tommas
groaned into her mouth. “I thought you said that you hadn’t come here tonight
for this.”
    Abriella’s laugh
was high and airless. “Should I go somewhere else for it?”
    Tommas let loose a
sound that came off a hell of a lot like a growl. He grabbed her waist with enough
force to leave his fingerprints behind, but he knew she liked it. Abriella
preferred him rough and dirty, not soft and sweet.
    “Excuse me?”
Tommas asked. “Do you want to