The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) (18 page)

“Oh, Leo,” I sighed, burying my face into his chest, letting my hands roam over his body at a leisurely pace.

But when they passed over his rear, I paused—and not for the usual reason.

There was a small, hard bulge in his back pocket, and I knew. I knew in part because I was a woman, and in part because I was a jewel thief. I knew that it was a ring box, and my heart squeezed like a python around my chest.

Leo rested his chin on the top of my head, and we stood there, locked. I wondered if he knew that I knew.

“You know, before you came into my life,” he went on quietly, “strangers could really piss me off. Traffic would piss me off. Bad timing. The weather. But now…now, the weather is just the weather.” He pressed a kiss onto the top of my head. “It just doesn’t matter as much anymore. I don’t know why. The rain falls, my suit gets ruined, and I don’t even feel it. I don’t even care.” He pulled back and gazed down at me with heavy, somber eyes. “Because I love you,” he said, his voice a hush.

I swallowed. “You never told me that before.” I commanded myself to not cry. That would be so embarrassing. “You never told me that you love me.”

“Really?” He smiled. “To me, it seemed like I was shouting it with every move I made.” His thumb traveled tenderly over my lips. “I can say it with my mouth now, Sofi.” He brushed a kiss over my lips. One. Two. Three. His hands slid away from my face, away from my hair, and spread a chemical fire over my breasts, singing down into my sex. My eyes closed and I almost groaned aloud. “I want to claim you. For my own. Forever.” He gripped my buttocks and hoisted me into the air, then reached behind himself. “I have something to show you.”

My eyelashes fluttered open and there, in his hand, he braced a black velvet ring box.

“Look at this.” He popped it open with his thumb and grinned at me.

My jaw dropped.

It wasn’t a diamond ring.

It was a round topaz, the size of a pea. A miniature version of the Heart of Icarus.

“Be my wife, Sofi,” he whispered. “Fill my heart.”

My hands went up into his hair and I crushed my mouth against his. “Yes,” I gasped. “Yes, yes, yes! God, you’re crazy!”

The ring ended up on the floor with everything else: the pieces of his suit, my clothes, the pillows. We slammed into the mattress and pinned against one another and ground our bodies together savagely, as if we were fighting, as if we were going to destroy each other, but—not quite. We didn’t want to destroy each other; we just wanted to mix perfectly together. If that meant we had to roll around on the mattress and crash onto the floor, then so be it. Somewhere between lovemaking sessions, I did end up wearing the ring, anyway. (We rolled on top of the ring box, and it was digging into my back.) We had to make it physical, make it real, make it now. Us, together, forever. Something I could believe in.

When his fingers laced into mine and I felt the metallic band press against my skin, tears welled suddenly in my eyes, and I had to clamp my lips together to keep from sobbing. Of course, Leo noticed.

“What is it?” he breathed, his thrusts slowing to a stop. “What happened?”

“I didn’t have to steal anything at all,” I said, letting the tears slip down my temples. I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in the side of his neck, relishing the throb of his pulse against my nose. “It’s mine. It’s all mine.”

T
he ceremony was supposed
to be subtle and intimate, but it was being planned by two large, Latin crime families, so—obviously, it was a hot mess. I hardly had a moment to rest for days before the wedding, and only saw Sofi occasionally flittering past in the background all the morning of the ceremony. The event was held at the Castillo home, but Sofi herself had been living with me at the Battista house for almost a year now. In fact—after the honeymoon—I was going to have to talk to Gabe about finally moving to his own place.

It was all set-up to be a beautiful affair: white folding chairs in front of an arbor laced in roses, against the backdrop of the ocean.

We invited Sofi’s aunts, uncles, and cousins on her mother’s side, but Ronaldo was still pissed off about his brother being ratted out eleven years ago, and he unbottled a rant about “those backstabbers” sullying his house at around 9 AM—as in, roughly four hours before their arrival. Gabe, of all people, went for a walk with the man and calmed him down.

I asked my brother what he could possibly say to soothe an irate thug like Uncle Ronaldo, and Gabe said, “I told him what he needed to hear: that this is a beautiful day, honoring your love for Sofi, and the new family being born.” He winked. “He thinks I’m in seminary school, by the way.”

Then, at 11 AM, Madeline climbed out of a taxi and came down to the beach wobbling, ripe with the scent of liquor. Her sunglasses, even though the lenses were the size of bagels, still couldn’t hide the fact that she was still drunk from the night before and had yet to sleep. “Oh, god, look at all this,” she scoffed, flailing her hand in the air at Sofi, who stood holding our six-month-old daughter, Rosalie, on her hip. “Seriously, Sofi.” Madeline crinkled her nose. “Children are so…so…” She pointed her finger at Rosalie, searching for the word, but Rosalie grinned at her, proudly displaying all four of her teeth. Madeline brought the finger back to her mouth and turned from us. I blinked, realizing too late that she was trying to hide tears. I looked at Sofi and bulged my eyes, saying,
What are we supposed to do about THIS?
Could Madeline really cry?

Sofi bulged her eyes back at me and dumped Rosalie into my arms, diving for Madeline and slinging an arm over those bony shoulders. “You’ll find someone, Maddie,” she cooed. “You’re freaking gorgeous, you know.”

“I know, right?” Madeline sniffed.

Sofi looked over her shoulder at me as she led Madeline away, toward the Castillo house. I twisted my eyebrows at her.
Who saw that coming?

Sofi pulled her mouth tight in an expression of alarm, replying,
I have no idea who this woman is, honestly.

“I’m going to be thirty soon,” Madeline wailed.

“Well, in two years,” Sofi added quietly.

I looked at Rosalie and brushed my thumb over her plush, pink cheek. “I think you and Auntie Madeline should get along very well,” I murmured. I turned and nuzzled her neck. “You’re both big babies. Yes you are!”

Then, at 1 PM—an hour before the ceremony—the caterer was fired for saying something disrespectful about Sofi’s parents. That one was my bad. I’d overheard two of the chefs muttering about the “ruined” family this food would feed. Their backs were turned to me, one of them banging a bag of ice onto the table and the other dumping a bottle of champagne into a punch bowl. “That bill will be paid with blood money, sweetheart,” the one with the bag of ice whispered.

“If it’s paid at all,” the one with the champagne replied. “The bride is basically—” He turned and went ashen at the sight of me. “Excuse me, sir,” he breathed. “Please, please accept my apologies.”

I tilted my head to the side and glared. “The bride is basically what?” I hissed.

“N-nothing, sir,” he said, his face gray.

My hand darted out and caught his collar, crushing it in my fist. “What IS she?” I roared.

“N-nothing.”

The rest of it was a blur of overturned skillets. I physically removed the two gossiping chefs, then starchily informed the others that they were also dismissed.

I went to warn Sofi, passing Madeline curled up in a snoring bundle at the bottom of the stairs. “You have no idea how sorry I am,” I explained through her room door, “but if you’d heard their tones—”

The door fell open, and so did my mouth. My throat closed up out of sheer gratitude.

I’d never understood the majesty and romance of it all—until now. Until seeing her in the gown. She was like an angel who had lost her wings to be—well—mine.

“We can go to a restaurant,” she assured me warmly.

“You…look…”

“Radiant?” she suggested, her eyes crinkling.

I swept her hand up to my mouth and kissed her knuckles with brutal passion. “As the sun,” I replied hoarsely. “I can’t believe you still fit in that thing.”

Sofi gaped. “Leo!” she chided.

“Well! You had a baby!”

“And I’ve had the waist let out twice since we bought it, so shut up,” she said. “Get out of here. You’re distracting me. Check on Rosalie for me, will you? I gave her to Gabe.”

“Gabe?” I groaned dramatically. “He uses her to pretend to be a single father. You know that, right?”

Sofi grinned and leaned closer. “I’m just kidding,” she whispered. “You’re so easy.”

“Yeah, well, he does do that,” I pointed out, though I was not sure why. I could feel my blood pressure ticking up, just talking about it. “He used her to get a discount on his stupid car. He saved two grand on the down payment!”

Sofi’s hand fluttered over my chest delicately. “Shh,” she coaxed. “It’s all right, honey. She’s
our
baby, you know.”

I looked at her beautiful face—and her white gown—and my breathing relaxed. I bowed my head. “You’re right,” I said.

“We can use her to get all sorts of discounts we want,” Sofi added with a grin.

I couldn’t help but smile back, damn her. “You’re awful, Mrs. Battista,” I said.

“Shh.” Sofi shut the door.

The seats on the beach were filled with con men and forgery artists and fencers, thugs and frauds and their trophy wives. Hell, one of them was holding our baby. But I didn’t see any of that. All I saw was the infinite expanse of ocean in front of me—and then, when the quartet began to strum, all I saw was Sofia Castillo Battista, floating toward me in her frothy gown of white, curls as loose and wild as the day we’d met. I half expected her to be barefoot.

And when we met under the arbor to give our vows, she went first, speaking with a simplicity that surprised me—but she couldn’t hide the way her eyes were shining. Those were tears of joy. “I have spent my life as an outsider, Leo,” she said. “Even my own family lived in another world, and when my parents…separated…I didn’t know if I could ever believe in the idea of a man and a woman, forever, ever again. But then I met you. We tried to be separate, but we couldn’t do it. Instead, we had Rosalie. And I feel…connected. I feel whole. We have our own world. Our own family.” She laid her hand over her heart and I smiled.

“Sofi,” I said. These were supposed to be my vows—formal, a speech in front of our families. But she was right. When we were together, we had our own world. “There was a time when I thought that love was crazy, and marriage was crazy, and women were crazy. All I wanted was more money and more work. I didn’t know you, and I didn’t want to go out and meet you, either. I was turning into an old, bitter man, even though I was only thirty-one. And now I know. Now I know how to stop the clock.” I placed my hand on her cheek and pulled her closer. “When I kiss you, time goes a little funny. And I don’t know if I wake up or if I go to sleep and dream a little, but either way, when I come back up for air, I feel…better. Recharged. Alive. And you know—I was right. Love is crazy. Marriage is crazy. And you, you are definitely crazy.” I grinned. “But you make the rest of the world sane. You make me sane. You give the world a reason to be. You give me a reason to be. I am now—and I hope to always be—a better man.”

I tilted her face up toward mine, and somewhere, off in the distance, the priest may have announced that we could kiss in some official capacity, I’m not sure. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close, and the crowd cheered, fuzzy and distorted, but I didn’t really hear it. All I could hear was the slow, steady beat of my heart.

* * *

* * *

W
ould
you like to receive a full length bad boy novella for FREE? This is the prequel to my book
Bad Boy’s Cinderella
, called
Hard Crush
, which is the story where April and Breck meet and fall in love (you can read this novella independently too, as a stand-alone).
Just go to this link
and provide your email address, and I’ll send the book to you right away!

I will never spam you, and your email will not be shared with anyone, I promise!

If you haven’t read
Bad Boy’s Cinderella
, it is available for free at
amazon.com
and multiple other retailers, and you can
get your copy here
.

And here is a preview of
Hard Crush
:

* * *

T
he office bathroom
was a shitty place to be caught crying.

You know what’s shittier? Finding out that the guy I invested more than three years of my life in had just gotten engaged, less than six months after breaking up with me.