Baring Brando (The Adamos Book 8) Read online

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  Sasha:

  Brando Adamo is not my type. He’s too rough, too aggressive.

  But when he touches me, nothing else matters.

  I know I should keep things purely physical, but I fall for him anyway.

  Just when I’m starting to think we have a chance, I learn the hard way that only fools fall in love.

  Brando:

  I have no business wanting a girl like Sasha Delacroix. She’s too young, too innocent.

  A guy like me can only hurt her. I should leave her alone and forget she exists.

  There’s just one problem: she was born to be mine.

  So when the demons from my past rear their ugly heads, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

  Even if it means she’ll never forgive me.

  Baring Brando

  An Adamo Story

  Mia Madison

  BARING BRANDO

  Copyright © 2017 by Mia Madison

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. She’s Yours

  2. Harder And Hungrier

  3. That’s Whack

  4. Animal Sex

  5. More Pleasure

  6. Without Even Trying

  7. The First Time

  8. Don’t Stop

  9. We Certainly Can

  10. Done For

  11. I’d Be A Fool

  12. Lost In The Woods

  13. Take A Chance

  14. A Dog Named Pizza

  15. Under The Mat

  16. Let Her

  17. Hope

  Epilogue

  Also by Mia Madison

  About the Author

  1

  She’s Yours

  I’m getting old.

  I came down to the city to hang with some friends, and they brought me out to this club. I thought it would be fine, but the crowd has me on edge, and the music blasting through the speakers is giving me a headache.

  Worse, all the girls look like they’re half my age. Plenty of them are shooting me come-hither looks, but they’re just kids. Most of them are probably young enough to be my daughters.

  When did my quiet life in the mountains go from being a temporary escape to being my new normal? The guy who lived on the edge isn’t just hibernating; he’s dead and gone.

  Ladies and gentlemen, meet Brando Adamo, washed up at thirty-six.

  Pathetic. I’ve got no business being here, ruining everyone else’s good time. I look around for my friends, intending to make my excuses and take a cab back to my car, which is parked at their place.

  And then I see her.

  She’s standing with a group of friends some distance away. I’m vaguely aware of the other girls around her, but they’re like the blurred backdrop to the focal point in a photograph. She stands out, as if the moon had broken through the clouds and then right through the roof, defying the laws of physics to illuminate her.

  Everything in my body tightens with need. A little voice in my head points out that she’s too young, like all the girls here, and looks nothing like the tall, willowy blondes I usually date.

  It doesn’t matter. A primitive drumbeat is pulsing through my blood, awaking a hunger that won’t be denied. That one. She’s yours.

  I obey without thinking, weaving through the packed club toward her. She senses me when I’m a few feet away, turning her head until our gazes lock.

  Big, misty green eyes stare at me. She’s gone still, as if she’s unable to move or look away. Her friends notice, and by the time I reach her side all of them are staring at me too.

  “Excuse us,” I tell them, and draw her aside.

  2

  Harder And Hungrier

  His hand on my arm sends tiny bolts of lightning shooting through my body. All that energy ricochets off my nerve endings and arrows down between my legs, leaving me wet and aching.

  He leads me to a darkened hallway with no one else around. A low-wattage bulb far overhead is barely enough for me to make out his features.

  Why am I here? I don’t wander off with strangers. And he’s not my type at all.

  All my boyfriends have been gentle, sensitive men. Musicians, artists, poets. This guy looks like he just stepped out of a military recruitment poster.

  He’s well over six feet, his t-shirt straining to fit over his biceps. His hair isn’t in a buzz cut, but it’s short. His clean-shaven face is all angles and shadows in the dim light.

  “What’s your name?” he asks. His voice is low and husky and it does strange things to my insides.

  “Sasha.”

  “I’m Brando.”

  “Like the actor?”

  “It’s an Italian name.” He sounds half amused, half resigned. “I come from a big Italian family.”

  “Okay.”

  His hand slips under the edge of my shirt, his fingers resting lightly against the skin at my waist, and the heat building in my core intensifies. My hands, as if by instinct, come up to rest against his broad chest.

  He’s so warm, and solid, and I’m already a little dizzy from his nearness, even before he bends his head. One big hand curls around the back of my neck, and then he’s kissing me.

  My body ignites with a roar, and I lose what’s left of my mind.

  Winding my arms around his neck, I kiss him back like it’s my last night on earth. When his hands go under my ass and lift me, I don’t hesitate to wrap my legs around him. He grinds his cock against my clit, and sensation gathers and tightens in my core, the pressure building with incredible swiftness.

  He moves one hand to my breast — how hot is that, that he’s strong enough to hold me so easily? — and tweaks my nipple. The quick, tiny jolt of pain pushes me over the edge into a violent orgasm. I cry out when I come, but no one hears because it’s swallowed by his mouth.

  For an instant, he breaks free. “Fuck,” he growls, and then he’s kissing me again, harder and hungrier.

  3

  That’s Whack

  She tastes like candy, sweet and addictive. I drink her down and when she whimpers into my mouth, I want to take her right here, right now, up against this wall, and to hell with anyone who might see us.

  When I lift my head again, her pupils are huge, her lips swollen. The image of them wrapped around my cock almost sends me over the edge. But that, delicious as it would be, is not my priority.

  I need to be inside her, to feel her tight wet heat clench around me, welcome me, bring me home. Nothing else matters but claiming her, taking her, fucking her until she screams my name.

  We’re standing near an exit door. It hasn’t got one of those “do not open or alarm will sound” signs posted, and I’m pretty sure I remember from my younger days that it’s safe to go through.

  Only one way to find out. Sasha’s still wrapped around me; I move us over and give the crash bar one hard shove. The door swings open silently.

  “Where are we goi
ng?” she says when I carry her outside into the sweltering summer night. Her voice has gotten all rough and smoky from our kiss, and the sound goes straight to my dick.

  “My place.” I never take women home, but I can’t wait to get Sasha there. We’ve come out on one side of the building. I set her down, reluctantly, and immediately want her back in my arms, her curves pressed against me.

  We reach the sidewalk and I wave down a cab. “Um,” she says, and the tentative sound pierces the lust clouding my brain.

  I look down at her, her dark curls tumbling around her face, her black jeans and silky top hugging her form. She looks so young, and away from the heat and noise of the club it starts to hit me how crazy this all is.

  It hasn’t even been ten minutes since I laid eyes on her. I’m on the verge of upending both our lives so I can fuck her. Have I lost my mind?

  Maybe.

  My gut doesn’t think so. Or the rest of my body. My instincts, my libido, my cock all agree: this woman belongs in my bed, and there’s nothing more important right now than getting her there.

  There’s just this pesky corner of my brain saying, She doesn’t know you. You could be a serial killer.

  I don’t want to give her an out; my caveman side is totally fine with more or less abducting her. But I can’t let myself be a total asshole, and scaring her is not on the agenda. So I force myself to ask, “You okay with this?”

  She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. It’s all I can do to wait, not to kiss her again, give that full lip a nip with my own teeth, then suck on it.

  “I just … I mean … I don’t really do this kind of thing. I don’t even know your last name.”

  “Adamo.”

  Her face lights up. “I went to school with some Adamos. Abri and Delfina.”

  “Two of my many cousins. Like I said, big Italian family.”

  She relaxes, obviously reassured, and my vague sense of guilt, already held at bay by my primitive urges, all but vanishes. I’m not forcing her; she wants this too.

  The cab pulls up, and I open the back door for her, then climb in and give the cabbie my friends’ address. He makes good time, cutting across the city’s congested traffic in a controlled frenzy. I haven’t been here in a long time; I’m usually up on the mountain, working, or in my hometown just down the hill.

  When he pulls up at our destination, I shove some money through the slot and help Sasha out of the cab. “This is your house?” she says as our ride pulls away.

  “No, some friends of mine live here.” I gesture to my SUV. “This is my car.”

  She climbs up into the passenger seat readily enough but as I start the engine she says, “Where do you live?”

  “Up in the mountains.” Her eyes get big. “You can text your friends when we get there and give them the address.”

  “Okay.” The way she says it tells me she’s getting nervous again. After a moment she adds, “Maybe I should text your cousins right now and tell them I’m with you.”

  I pull out into the street, heading for the freeway. “That’s fine. Just know that if you do, my entire clan will be waiting at the house for us.”

  “What?”

  “Adamos are nosy. Especially the mamas. They tend to butt in.”

  My eyes are on the road, but I can feel her watching me. Finally she says, “You’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Your whole family — sorry, clan — will drop whatever they’re doing and come visit you because you have a … guest?”

  “It’s kind of a tradition.”

  She laughs. “That’s whack.”

  “That’s my family.”

  4

  Animal Sex

  My phone rings as Brando takes the freeway onramp. “Where are you?” my friend Emily says. “You were with that guy and then you disappeared.”

  “Still am,” I tell her, and there’s a long pause.

  “You’re still with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  Another silence, and I know she’s analyzing the background noise, or lack thereof, coming from my end of the conversation. “You left with him?”

  She knows that this is totally out of character for me. “It’s fine,” I tell her. “Everything’s okay. I’ll text you later with an update.”

  “You’d better. Are you sure you don’t want me to call somebody?” Like my parents, or the police, or both.

  “I’m okay, Emily. I promise.”

  “Okay, well, keep in touch.”

  “I will.” I end the call and tuck my phone away, hoping I’m not crazy.

  Everything is fine, right? I’m not being an idiot, trusting a charming psychopath who’s going to cut me into tiny pieces and feed me to his goldfish. Right?

  Like I told Brando, taking off with a guy I’ve just met is not something I normally do. As in ever. But then, neither is losing all my inhibitions, making out in a nightclub, and having a wild climax while pinned against a wall by a muscular body with a massive hard-on.

  The truth is, from the moment he touched me, I’ve felt protected, not threatened. Wildly turned on, but also somehow safe. I’ve never responded to a man this way.

  All those nice, sensitive guys I dated were great for talking about ideas and emotions. Not a single one of them dry-fucked me against a wall; if they’d tried to, I would have been shocked, hurt, angry.

  With Brando, I want to know when he’s going to do it again. And if we’ll fuck without clothes next time.

  I should probably tell him I’ve never actually had sex with anyone. Honestly, sometimes I’ve wondered if something was wrong with me, because it never seemed like an urgent priority. This sudden, base craving to have animal sex with the man next to me is a shock.

  But it doesn’t feel wrong. On the contrary.

  I’ve never felt so alive, so at home in my own skin, as I do right now with Brando Adamo, a man I barely know, who is going to hold me down and kiss me and stick his cock inside me and probably do all sorts of other filthy things to me.

  I can’t wait.

  The silence between us isn’t awkward, but I break it anyway. “Tell me about your big Italian family.”

  The flash of his smile makes my heart flutter. “Many years ago, a young man named Alonzo Adamo came over from the old country. He settled here and started working, and soon made the acquaintance of a young woman named Lucrezia, whose family had also recently arrived.

  “She was only sixteen, but those were different days. He courted her while he built up his business, and they married when she was eighteen. In seventy years of marriage, they had twelve sons.”

  “Twelve!”

  “That includes three sets of twins and one set of triplets. But still. Different days.”

  “Wow.”

  “One of their sons became a priest, but the rest followed their parents’ example, and soon the state was filled with Adamos. And it still is.”

  “So, uh, more recent generations …”

  He laughs. “I think five kids is the most any of them have had.”

  Five is still a lot, but I don’t say that. It’s not like Brando and I are getting married. We’re just going to have wild sex for a night, maybe two, and then we’ll go our separate ways.

  I ignore the pang in my chest. A fling is obviously what he’s after, and I’m going into this with my eyes open, so there’s no room to complain. To wish for something different.

  All I have to do is remember how he made me feel in the nightclub, and I know it’s worth it.

  “How about you?” I ask. “Do you have a lot of siblings?”

  “Just one. My brother Matteo.”

  “Older? Younger?”

  “Younger.”

  He says it with a grin, and I take a guess. “By how many minutes?”

  I know I’m right when he laughs again. “About thirty seconds. We were in a hurry.”

  “Does he live in the mountains, too?”

  Brando’s smile fades; the mood in the
car shifts to something that makes the skin on my arms prickle. “Not right now,” he answers, and the way he says it I know better than to ask any more questions.

  5

  More Pleasure

  I wish she hadn’t asked. Matteo is so off limits right now, I can’t even talk to my mother about him. For a while, we go quiet, watching the miles unfold in the beam of the headlights.

  “Your turn,” I finally say, in a blatant bid to keep the silence from getting too oppressive. “Big family, or a tidy two-point-three children?”

  Her smile is wistful. “Just me. When I was a kid, I went back and forth between enjoying the lack of competition and wishing I had someone to play with all the time.”

  “And now?”

  “I wish I’d had at least one sibling. I know they’ve done studies, and solo children grow up to be more successful and all that, but I don’t think I would have been shortchanged by having to share.”

  I can’t really respond to that without steering us back toward my brother, so I switch topics again. “Did you grow up in the city?”

  “Born and raised. You?”

  “I grew up in a town north of here; we’ll go through it on our way. I enlisted after high school and when I got back, I moved up into the mountains.”

  I feel the weight of her gaze, but Sasha’s good at sensing when I don’t want to talk about something. Instead of asking about my time in uniform, she says, “What do you do up there?”