Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (18 page)

Of course, that was unlikely ever to happen, since having sex nearly killed him.

Joey stood in the midst of a throng of people, many—most—of whom he knew. People from his town. People he’d grown up with. His own family. His girlfriend. And he felt alone. Everywhere around him were people having full lives, with love and children and futures, and he was blocked from all that by his faulty, stupid body and brain.

Jesus Christ, you weak suck. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You want to fuck your girlfriend? Then fuck your girlfriend. Get out of your damn head. You’re a Pagano, for fuck’s sake. Act like one.

The sense that he had heard his father—his healthy, powerful, impatient, demanding father—speaking was so strong that Joey turned and looked behind him. He had
heard
that voice he knew so well, the way Pop had often spoken to him before the shooting, the tone he’d taken in every one of their many fights. But, of course, there was no father behind him. Pop was dead.

The words he’d imagined lingered on, however, as did the sense that they’d come from Pop.

Tina was near the house, holding Rita, laughing with Rosa and Sabina.

You’re a Pagano, for fuck’s sake. Act like one.

It was a big risk—if the same thing happened to him this time that happened last time, who knew how much new damage he might end up with.

But he knew what that problem had been. He hoped he knew. Only one way to be sure.

He hooked his cannula into his nose and over his ears, and he crossed the sand toward his woman.

She beamed at him as he approached, but, afraid to let his mind land on any other thought than the conviction that had taken hold, he didn’t return it, and by the time he was close enough to touch her, the bright shine of her smile was doused. Rosa and Sabina had turned to him as well, and all three women directed similar curious glances his way. Tina’s was a bit different, because hers included worry, too.

“Joey?”

“Inside,” he said and tugged on her arm. She handed Rita to her mother, and Joey took hold of her hand and tugged again.

“Okay.” She turned to the women. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Joey headed toward the beach house without another word, dragging Tina along with him.

The beach house had been a tiny cottage, just a bedroom, a bathroom, an L-shaped living area that was kitchen, dining room, and living room, and a loft above. But since John and Katrynn had gotten married and so quickly pregnant, John and Luca had been working on an addition—nothing extravagant, but a couple of extra rooms, about doubling the area of the first floor and making the home big enough for a small family.

For the most part, all that was left was the finish work—flooring, wall treatments, cabinetry, lighting and plumbing fixtures—but the addition was still shielded from the area they were living in by a heavy vinyl strip door.

As Joey pulled Tina into his brother’s house, the plastic strips waved, and the room got a fresh hit of the pleasing scent of new construction.

They all used the house on family beach days—party or otherwise—for the bathroom or for naptime for the little ones, or just when they needed a quiet moment. Joey knew that all the siblings had fucked somebody in here at least once. He had done so often back in the day, when it had been Carmen’s place and he could breathe.

He’d been caught bare-assed a couple of times, and Carmen had lost her damn mind once when he’d taken a girl up to the loft and fucked her in his sister’s bed.

He had no intention of taking Tina up to the loft. Instead, when she pulled on his hand to get him to turn around, he pushed her up against the door he’d just closed.

“Joey!” she gasped as her back hit the door. “Are you angry?”

Yeah, he was angry. He was always angry, but not at her. At life. At himself. At his traitorous fucking body. His hands were shaking, but he ignored that and gagged the thoughts that had made them shake, determined to stay out of his head.

“No,” he answered her and shut down anything else she might have said by slamming his mouth over hers and kissing her the way he wanted to kiss her—not slow, not sweet, not careful. He kissed her liked she was his. Like he meant to mark her indelibly as his own.

The cannula dug into his nose, and he knew it was digging into her face, and he didn’t fucking care. He focused on his tongue moving in her mouth, on her tongue finding his, on her barely dressed body in his arms, pinned to him, on the way the sun had warmed her skin and her sunscreen made her smell like a perfect day. He focused on her little, desperate gasps that filled his mouth, on the rhythmic flex of her hips against him, on her hands wrapped around the straps of his pack and pulling, dragging him closer.

He kissed her like there was nothing wrong with him, like there was nothing between them, like they were limitless.

And she kissed him back just the same. Her hands left his pack, and her arms coiled around his neck. Her body gave itself over to his, and then it was true. There were no limits.

Just them.

He tugged on the string across her back and loosened her bikini top. With her beautiful tits free, he covered one with his hand and groaned as her nipple contracted into a hard peak against his palm. He wanted to suck her, so he dropped his hands, hooking them around her waist, and lifted her until her face was a couple of inches higher than his.

“Joey!” she cried, and he could hear a ripple of worry in her tone.

He had no room in his brain to try to make words, and he had no intention of shifting his focus, so he simply grunted, not caring that he sounded like a dumb beast, and bent his head to suck her tit and its perfect nipple deep into his mouth.

Her legs went around his body as she surrendered again. He could feel his throat and chest thickening, his lungs working harder than they should, but he kept his focus and inhaled, sucking into his nose the oxygen his tank gave him as he sucked her nipple against the roof of his mouth.

And he was okay. His lungs loosened up again, and air moved as well as it could. Emboldened, holding her in place with the weight of his body, still sucking hard on her tit, he fumbled at her hips, looking for a way to get rid of that scarf thing and get to her body. Finally, he simply yanked until it pulled away. Her bikini bottoms had ties at the hips, and he yanked on one of those, too.

“Oh God, Joey,” she gasped as his fingers found her lovely, smoothly shaved pussy and slid in. Jesus, she was so wet.

He’d done this for her several times. It was all their sex had been before Pop’s funeral—her blowing him, and him fingering her. Like tenth fucking grade. Since the night of the funeral, however, they’d barely even kissed deeply. Joey had been struggling too much with despair and Tina too much with worry to be intimate.

As he curled his fingers up and found the spot that drove her wild, she arched off the door with a cry, and her tit popped free of his mouth. He eased her down the door so they were face to face. “Want…fuck you,” he gritted, and even those apish words had been a struggle to find.

One look into Tina’s hooded, ravenous eyes cast aside any bad feelings that might have been seeded at the sound of his own stilted voice. She had given herself over entirely to carnal pleasure, and she simply nodded and rocked her hips against the rhythm of his hand.

Then her hands slid from around his neck, down his chest, and worked open his shorts. She took hold of his cock—sweet God, her hand felt good—and drew him to her. She held him as he pushed in with another animal grunt.

Sinking deeply into her, he held, pressing her against the door with the weight of his body, holding her impaled on him. He felt impaled himself, his chest rent by overwhelming emotion and sensation.

He breathed from his nose, letting the tank do the work his lungs were struggling to do on their own. They were strong enough; his brain just had to stop shutting them down.

“Joey,” she whispered, and the sound was sweet and light. “I love you so much.”

Sweet and light was not what he wanted. Wild and feral was what he wanted. He pulled out abruptly, to his tip, and slammed his body into hers so hard her gorgeous eyes went preternaturally wide and she screamed.

He did it again, and the pleasure soared up his cock through his body, did loops through his brain and careened back down. And again. And again. And again. Jesus fuck, he’d missed this—no! He’d
never had
this, not with someone he wanted so badly, someone he
needed
. Someone he loved.

In his arms, his beautiful, beautiful girl was going wild, her nails digging into his scalp, dragging over his neck, her mouth vying with his as if they were actually battling for victory over the kiss, her hips driving against him, countering his rhythm, making every impact of their bodies almost painful with pleasure.

The slice of his mind he’d assigned to remember to breathe, to use the tank, kept him in control, and she came long before he was close. He felt it, the muscles of her pussy first quivering over his cock, and then rolling, and finally simply clenching as if she meant to hold him inside her forever. When she went over, her body flailed crazily, slamming against the door, and a strange, wrenching wail erupted from her chest.

Never had she come like that with him before.

As soon as she was done, he let himself go and chased his own, remembering to breathe but forgetting everything else except the pursuit of his release. The building ache deep in his gut, the way hot tension coiled up his spine, the hot roll of pleasure through his muscles. Each pulse of her body, still racked with the lingering bliss of her orgasm, drew an answering thrust of his. By the time he caught his own peak, he didn’t have enough breath to yell, but it was the most consuming, painful, perfect climax he’d ever experienced.

This was what sex was supposed to be. Now that he’d experienced it, something he’d never known before, no matter how strong his body, who the fuck cared that he’d been wearing a cannula to get it.

Heaving, unable to force himself to keep his mouth closed and breathe right, Joey pulled out and set Tina back on the floor. Her knees buckled, and he kept her up with a protective arm around her waist. He leaned his forehead on the door above her, trying to get his body back under his control.

She was breathing nearly as hard as he was. “Tell me you’re okay,” she gasped.

“Okay,” he managed. He didn’t sound convincing even to himself.

“Baby, I’m worried.”

“Don’t.” He clamped his mouth shut and forced himself to breathe through his nose. Did he need his mask?

After another couple of breaths, he knew he didn’t. He really was okay. He pushed away from the door and smiled down at her.

“M’okay…Promise.” Her face was noticeably red from the abrasion of the cannula. He traced a finger over the red mark. “Hurt?”

She smiled and shook her head. “If you’re okay, then I am
perfect
.” Her hands came up and hooked around the straps of his pack. She shook him—or tried, anyway. “Joey, that was
amazing
! That was…
everything
!”

He bent down and kissed her abraded cheek. “Yeah. … …Perfect.”

~oOo~

“Absolutely not.” Carmen crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Pop left this house to all of us.”

Directly across the table from her, Carlo leaned forward, as if her movement had pulled him with her. “He gave it to me to live in. This has been my family’s home for almost ten years. No way I’ll agree to sell it.”

Memorial Day weekend had come to mean a sort of official ending to their mourning period, with the beach party on Saturday and the charity run on Monday. On Sunday, after Mass, the family had, as usual, congregated in the house they’d grown up in. There had been a surreal quality to the atmosphere, as if they’d all, all at once, realized that their father was truly dead, and that they were all orphans.