The Chefs Obsessive Don

The Surrender

He carried me through the fortress like I weighed nothing.

My legs were locked around his waist, my arms around his neck, my mouth still burning from his kiss. The world blurred past stone corridors, dark wood, the flash of a chandelier overhead but I didn't look. I looked only at him. At the sharp line of his jaw. At the bruise still fading on his cheekbone. At the hunger in his gray eyes that made my stomach clench with want.

"You're shaking," he said, his voice a low rumble against my throat.

"So are you."

He was. I felt the tremor in his hands where they gripped my thighs, the unsteady rhythm of his breath against my skin. This man who had killed without flinching, who had faced down enemies and traitors and death itself he was trembling because of me.

It was the most intoxicating thing I had ever felt.

He carried me through a doorway and into a room I had never seen. His bedroom. I knew it instantly not from familiarity, but from the scent of him that saturated the air. Cedar. Smoke. The faint ghost of something darker. The walls were stone, ancient and cool. A fire burned in a massive hearth, casting dancing shadows across a bed that could have slept four.

He set me down on the edge of that bed, not gently, and stepped back.

I watched him watch me. The firelight caught the planes of his face, the silver at his temples, the tension in his shoulders. He looked like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, trying to decide whether to jump.

"Last chance," he said, his voice rough. "Tell me to stop. Tell me to take you home. Tell me you've changed your mind, and I will. I will walk away. I will give you back your week."

I reached up and unbuttoned the top button of my sweater.

Then the second.

Then the third.

"No," I said, letting the sweater fall from my shoulders and pool on the floor behind me. I wore nothing beneath it I had dressed in a hurry, driven by a desperation I no longer bothered to hide. "I haven't changed my mind."

His gaze dropped to my bare skin, to the rise of my breasts, to the n*****s that had tightened in the cool air. His jaw clenched. His hands fisted at his sides.

"Sofia..”

"Stop talking, Dante." I stood and crossed to him, closing the distance he had created. My hands found the hem of his shirt black, soft, expensive and pulled it upward. He raised his arms, letting me undress him, and when the fabric cleared his head I saw the full map of his body for the first time.

The scars were worse than I had imagined.

They crossed his chest like ancient rivers some thin and white, some thick and raised, some still pink with recent healing. A bullet wound below his left collarbone. A knife scar that traced his ribs like a question mark. The bruises from Palermo, fading from purple to green to yellow.

I touched each one, slowly, deliberately. My fingers traced the raised edges, the smooth skin, the places where he had been broken and had somehow healed.

"Who did this to you?" I whispered.

"Many people." His voice was strained, his body rigid beneath my touch. "Over many years."

"Does it still hurt?"

"Yes." He caught my wrists, stilling my hands. "But not the way you think."

He pulled me against him, skin to skin, and I gasped at the heat of him. His arms wrapped around me, crushing me to his chest, and he buried his face in my hair.

"I don't deserve this," he said, the words muffled. "I don't deserve you."

"Maybe not." I tilted my head back, meeting his eyes. "But I'm not giving you to anyone else."

He kissed me again, and this time there was no restraint. His mouth was fierce, demanding, and I matched him beat for beat. My fingers tangled in his hair. His hands slid down my back, over the curve of my hips, gripping the waistband of my trousers.

"These," he said against my lips, "need to go."

"Then take them off."

He dropped to his knees in front of me.

I stared down at him Don Dante Gallo, the most feared man in Sicily, kneeling at my feet and felt something crack open in my chest. He unfastened my trousers with hands that were not quite steady, pulled them down my legs, and pressed a kiss to the bare skin of my hip.

"You are so beautiful," he said, looking up at me. "I have wanted to be on my knees for you since the moment you told me boldness was a death sentence."

"I said boldness in the kitchen”

"I know what you said." His hands slid up the outsides of my thighs, his thumbs tracing the edge of my underwear. "You were wrong. Boldness isn't a death sentence. It's an invitation."

He pulled the thin fabric down, slowly, watching my face the entire time. I should have been embarrassed naked before him, exposed in the firelight but I felt only a fierce, burning want. I stepped out of the last of my clothes and stood before him, utterly bare.

His hands cupped the backs of my thighs. His mouth found the inside of my knee, then higher, then higher still. I gripped his shoulders for balance as his lips traced a path up my inner thigh, teasing, tormenting.

"Dante..”

"Patience," he murmured, his breath warm against the most sensitive part of me. "I've waited weeks for this. I'm not going to rush."

His mouth found me, and I stopped breathing.

The first touch of his tongue was a shock hot, wet, impossibly skilled. My knees buckled, and he caught me, one arm banding around my waist to hold me upright while his mouth continued its devastating work. I clutched his hair, his shoulders, anything I could reach, as waves of pleasure built and broke and built again.

He learned me like a recipe, adjusting pressure and rhythm based on every sound I made, every tremor that ran through my body. When I gasped, he slowed. When I moaned, he deepened. When I cried out his name a broken, desperate sound he hummed his approval against my flesh, and the vibration sent me over the edge.

I came apart in his arms, shaking and gasping, and he held me through all of it.

Dante’s POV

She tasted like salt and honey and something I would spend the rest of my life trying to name.

I lifted my head as the last tremors faded from her body, and I looked up at her. Her face was flushed, her lips parted, her eyes half-closed and hazy with pleasure. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

"I'm not done with you," I said, standing.

She blinked, trying to focus. "What?"

I lifted her onto the bed the massive bed with its dark sheets and its mountain of pillows and laid her out like a feast. Then I stripped off the rest of my clothes, watching her watch me. Her gaze traveled down my chest, my stomach, lower, and I saw the moment her eyes widened.

"You're..”she started.

"I know." I knelt on the bed, crawling over her until my body covered hers, my weight braced on my forearms. "Is it too much?"

She reached down between us, her fingers wrapping around me, and I groaned at the contact. "No," she said, stroking slowly. "It's perfect."

I kissed her again, deeper this time, my tongue sliding against hers as her hand continued its maddening work. I could feel how ready she was ,how wet, how warm and every instinct screamed at me to f**k her, to claim her, to bury myself inside her and never leave.

But I wanted to hear her say it first.

"Sofia." I pulled back, looking down at her. "Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me."

"I want you," she said without hesitation. "I want all of you. Please, Dante”

That was all I needed.

I positioned myself at her entrance, felt the heat of her, and pushed inside.

She gasped, her nails digging into my shoulders, and I froze.

"Okay?" I managed, my voice strangled.

"More than okay." She lifted her hips, taking me deeper, and I lost the last thread of my control.

I moved inside her slowly at first, savoring every inch, every sound she made. Her legs wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer. Her hands roamed my back, my arms, my face. She said my name like a prayer, over and over, and I answered each one with a kiss, a thrust, a whispered promise.

"Look at me," I commanded, and she did. Those dark eyes, steady and fierce, meeting mine even as I drove her higher.

"You're mine," I said, not a question. "Say it."

"I'm yours." Her voice broke on the words. "I'm yours, Dante. I'm..”

She came again, clenching around me, and the sensation ripped my own release from me without warning. I buried my face in her neck and let go, pouring myself into her as she trembled beneath me.

Afterward, I gathered her against my chest and pulled the sheets over us. The fire crackled. The wind howled outside the windows. And Sofia De Luca, the woman who had called me a coward and meant it as a compliment, traced lazy patterns on my chest with her fingertip.

"Was that the ruin you promised?" she asked, her voice sleepy.

"No." I kissed the top of her head. "That was the beginning."

She laughed softly and tucked herself more firmly against my side. Within minutes, her breathing evened out, her body going soft and heavy with sleep.

I stayed awake, holding her, watching the fire burn low.

Outside, the world waited violent and hungry and full of enemies who would use her to hurt me. But in this room, in this bed, there was only her.

And for the first time in twenty years, I felt something that might have been peace.

Sofia’s POV

I woke to the smell of coffee and the weight of a man who had stayed.

Dante was propped against the headboard, a mug in his hand, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read. The morning light was gray and soft, filtering through the heavy curtains. The fire had died to embers.

"You're staring again," I murmured.

"You're worth staring at."

I stretched, feeling the pleasant ache between my thighs, the memory of last night still warm in my bones. "How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough to watch you sleep. Long enough to decide something."

I sat up, pulling the sheet with me. "Decide what?"

He set down the mug and turned to face me, taking my hands in his. His thumbs traced circles on my palms.

"I decided that I'm not going to hide you," he said. "I'm not going to keep you in this fortress like a secret. You're mine, Sofia. And I want the world to know it."

My heart stuttered. "What does that mean?"

"It means tonight, there's a dinner. My capos. Their wives. The people who run my empire." He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed each knuckle. "I want you there. Beside me. As mine."

I should have been terrified. A room full of mafia soldiers, all of them judging me, measuring me, waiting for me to fail.

But when I looked at Dante at the hope in his gray eyes, the vulnerability he was trying so hard to hide I felt only one thing.

"Yes," I said.

"Yes?"

"Yes, I'll be there. Yes, I'll stand beside you. Yes, I'll let the world know I'm yours." I squeezed his hands. "But Dante..?”

"What?"

"I'm not just yours. You're mine, too. And if anyone tries to take you from me, I'll poison their food and smile while they die."

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he laughed that bright, surprised sound I had heard only once before and pulled me into his arms.

"I believe you," he said against my hair.

"Good."

He kissed me, soft and sweet, and I let myself sink into him.

Tonight, I would walk into a room full of wolves.

But I would walk in on the arm of the devil himself.

And I was no longer afraid