Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Anton snorted under his breath. “And you’re not supposed to know anything about that.”
“Yeah, well ...”
“How do you and your brother do it?” Anton asked quietly.
“Hmm, what do you mean?” Turning to her side, Viviana stared at him. Anton mimicked her position.
“You know who your father is, so doesn’t that make it hard for you?”
“To what?”
Anton lifted a shoulder in explanation. “I don’t know, see him as just your dad, I guess.”
“That’s all he is,” she said. “Just my dad.”
“He doesn’t scare you?”
Because that conversation he leveled on Anton before they left the house to go to the party kind of scared him. Not that he was about to admit it out loud. Plus, there was the whole mob boss thing. Sure, Anton lived with one himself, and he knew how to handle men of Roman Carducci’s calibre, but still.
Viviana was a girl.
She wasn’t like men.
“I love my dad,” Viviana said as if that was the only important thing about her father she cared about. “Nothing else around him matters but for the fact he loves me, too. I don’t need anything else and no one else has to matter for it to be true.”
“Is that how you see people like me, black and white?”
Viviana nodded. “That’s exactly how I see you.”
*
“Come on,” Viviana urged, standing knee deep in clear, cerulean colored water.
“Fuck that,” Anton muttered. He was happy sitting right where he was in the warm sand. “I’ll watch you and be just as good. It’s cold.”
“You’re cold!”
Anton’s head snapped up, meeting her blazing brown eyes instantly. “What did you just say to me?”
“You’re cold. Like ice, Anton.” She faked a shiver, making fun of him further. “You’re burning me from here with your attitude. Get in the water.”
Viviana pointed at the water, indignant and cute with her furrowed brow and pissed off glare. She looked sexy as fuck in her pure white bikini that was all strings and a little bit of fabric holding it together. How she got out of the house wearing that, Anton didn’t know, but he loved it all the same.
“Now, Anton, or I’ll go find someone else to swim with.”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You absolutely will not go find someone else to swim with.”
Not dressed like that, anyhow.
Viviana’s jaw fell slack, her hand dropping to her side. “Who in the hell are you to tell me—”
Anton was up off the sand and into the water before Viviana had blinked. She finally snapped out of her stupor just before he reached her, turning to run from his outstretched arms with a shriek. She didn’t have the chance to get away.
Anton took her down into the blue waves with him, falling to his backside in the water and seating her between his spread legs. Viviana kicked in his hold, turning just enough to slap his chest with her open palms.
“You bastard, let me go right now!”
“Ow, be nice, kitten.”
Viviana’s dark eyes narrowed. “Don’t you call me that.” Clearly frustrated he wasn’t going to let her go, Viviana turned back around in a huff, crossing her arms over her chest. “Fucking ridiculous.”
Anton couldn’t help but laugh. “Wow, you know that word.”
“I know a few more, too. A lot of them are in Italian and that’s the best part.”
“Oh, why’s that?”
“Because you wouldn’t even realize I was calling you an asshole.”
“Stop it,” he murmured in her ear.
The taste of salt water and heat danced at the edges of his mouth and her skin. Viviana shivered again, but it certainly wasn’t fake the second time. Anton’s hold tightened.
“The water is cold. Freezing my fucking balls off,” he said.
“Well, something else is working just fine.”
Anton stiffened for a brief moment, realizing what she was saying. “Yeah, well ...”
“Are you always like that?” she asked, changing the topic altogether.
“Like what?”
“A jealous prick?”
“That’s not very nice for a lady to say.”
“Nobody said I was a lady, Anton.”
“Are you always like this?” he asked.
Viviana turned in his hold, her knees resting precariously close to his groin under water. “Like what?”
“Defiant and pigheaded.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said quietly. “Because I can’t stand a girl who needs my hands to keep her upright. I don’t have time to teach you how to stand on your own.”
Without warning, Viviana leaned in and kissed him. That saltwater taste melted away when cherry flavored lips took his. Her mouth was soft and sweet, but he downright fucking burned as he grabbed her waist and pulled her closer to him in the water. When his tongue teased along the seam of her lips, Viviana tensed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Noth—”
“Hey, don’t start with that.” Anton pushed her just far enough away that he could see the indecision flicking across her pretty features. “Did I do something?”
“No,” Viviana whispered.
“Why did you freeze?”
A pink blush flooded her cheeks, reddening up her olive toned skin right down her neck and between the valley of her breasts. “I’ve never done that before.”