Read Playing with Fire for Free Online

on Long Island. I haven’t heard from you in a while, Sal. What’s up?”
    He sounded fine. Not upset … not anything but like a normal teenager. Sal didn’t have enough facts to get the kid all worried. No use in that, because it was Reign’s place to tell her son about the shooting and she obviously hadn’t yet. He just wanted more information, and this was apparently not the source. Easily, he said, “Nothing really. Just thinking of you and knew you were a night owl. Hey, didn’t realize you were out of town with friends.”
    Educated guess. Reign had done a good job with him and was up and coming with her career, but she did not have a house on Long Island, or at least not one that he knew of, and he was fairly sure he knew everything about her.
    Because he loved her. Not like a little, but the real deal, full devotion and all the crap that came along with it, which at this moment meant that he was worried sick but didn’t want to dump Vince into the same hole.
    “We left a couple of days ago.” There was a shrug he couldn’t see but sensed in Vince’s tone. He was Reign all over again: green eyes, that jet-black hair, and those amazing cheekbones. “I’m having a good enough time.”
    And he was out of harm’s way.
    Because there was a dead man in your mother’s bedroom earlier .…
    No one was shot in another person’s closet unless there was something bad going down.
    Salvatore said with what he hoped was equanimity, “Tell your mom when you talk to her I said hi.”
    Vince sounded a little puzzled over the purpose of the call, but he said, “Sure. She called earlier too.… Is there a reason?”
    “Nope.”
    “Okay then, gotta go. We’re going to go swimming. Full moon tonight.”
    “Have fun.” Salvatore hung up the phone and sat there, rubbing his temple. He wanted to try Reign again, but he had sworn he wouldn’t after their last conversation. Never should he have told her he loved her. He was a smart guy, he knew better, but it had just slipped out in the aftermath of making love to her in the pool they’d shared that last night, the warm feel of her in his arms so comfortable he’d almost made an even worse mistake and asked her to marry him.
    More than once she’d said firmly she would never ever get married again. It was off the table.
    Especially to someone from his family was the unspoken ending to that declaration. His father and her father hated each other, and in a different world, that might be not speaking to each other at the country club, but in the Life, there could be unpleasant consequences to a feud that ran as deep as theirs.
    Sal should never have slept with her in the first place. Reign sure as hell shouldn’t have slept with him. It probably would never have happened if either of them had given their last names when they met.
    He stared at his phone and even pulled up his contact list. “Fuck,” he muttered and resisted the urge to press that button and try her cell again.

 
    Chapter
    F OUR
    He’d left her alone the night before.
    Nick watched her sleep—he didn’t sleep much himself. A few hours and he was good to go, but Reign hadn’t had the easiest evening. He’d admired the way she’d handled it all, but near the end he’d known she was simply too tired to do anything else but strip off her clothes and fall into bed.
    He really, really approved of the stripping part. She might be in his bed—she’d not opted for the guest room and he thought that maybe, just maybe, the reason why was that as strong as she might be, she didn’t want to to be alone—but he hadn’t touched her because she’d fallen asleep almost immediately and hadn’t given him permission.
    His mother had raised him to be a gentleman. Pure Sicilian, she tolerated no bad behavior from her sons, and he’d learned that the hard way a time or two because his father had backed her up every single time, and he was not a man to take lightly.
    So Nick propped himself on one elbow and