A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family, #1)

by Kath Richards

she yells, and god, why is she so pretty while she’s yelling at me?

“Sorry again,” I mouth, and she gives an absolutely lethal eye roll that I will be thinking about for the next three weeks while I shower and every time I close my eyes to sleep.

Her smile is everything to me, like it might make my brain melt the way her cheeks push up her eyelids and she tries to keep her lips closed.

As if her face isn’t already perfect, she needed to have a dimple. Sure.

She’s smirking, like a cheeky, devious little angel,

“And even if I did know many women, you might be the most beautiful one.”

Vanessa is hot, like stupid hot. She is hotter than me, I am aware. I would probably have to be an Avenger, or a fucking vampire to be as hot as she is.

Hot, and charming. Deadly combination.

This makes it look too clean, suspiciously clean, so I grab the hand lotion and deodorant and place them back. It can only be a good thing that she know I am moisturized and smell good.

I am also debating whether or not the slip of her nickname means that I can call her that but decide that best practice would be not.

she likes walking and that I would be amazed at the things she can do in her heels. (This made my neck hot because I just kept thinking about things she potentially does in those high heels and my mind isn’t better than that of my fourteen-year-old students, it’s just better trained.)

Vanessa’s dimple makes itself known, and it’s so cute I want to do something absurd like kiss it.

My mind paints a very clear fantasy, unbidden, in which Vanessa and I live in domestic bliss. I’ve quit my job, just for a few years, just until the youngest is in pre-school, and Vanessa runs the world all day before she comes home to be with me and our two babies. After the children are asleep, after a delicious dinner I made, unless we ordered in, we make love and in fact make another baby, a third, a girl who we name Vanessa Jr. She has my nose. I think there is something wrong with me.

“No, no, Vanessa. Tennis is tennis. Pickleball is kind of like tennis, but smaller. More like ping pong.”

An hour ago, he looked at me like I was a revelation, like I could have been a goddess or some apparition. Now, he looks horrified, and desperate to believe I’m not what he thinks I am.

Tony.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

“Yes, I’m thinking about taking what I’ve learned and starting my own mafia. I would invite you, but I think it should just be teachers.”

I’m getting used to having to look up to meet his eyes at night.

I can handle any number of things on my own, but I didn’t realize how nice it is, sometimes, to have someone whose job is to handle things with you.

I don’t know how to tell her she’s the most beautiful woman, monster or not, that I’ve ever seen, and with every day that passes in her presence, I’m increasingly certain that there’s hardly a bad or cruel or monstrous thing about her.

“I will probably never, ever forget.” I stare at the spot between her breasts where her shirt hangs open. “But I will pretend.”

I’ve won some sort of karmic lottery to be in bed with Vanessa Morelli.

I can tend towards the dramatics, I recognize this. But when I say that Vanessa’s pussy wrapped around my cock is the best feeling I’ve ever experienced, well I’m being modest.

She’s wearing wool socks even though it’s the middle of June, and a hunter green silky night dress with little loose sleeves and I want to take it from her and hide it where she will never find it so I can keep it until I die. I’ll be buried with it. Green is my new favorite color.

Fourteen tonights.

“You know what I am,” Vanessa says. “I do. I think you’re the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I do step closer now, anxious to touch her and hold her and kiss all over her face, put hickeys on her neck so everyone knows she’s mine.

It’s caveman speak and probably not very feminist of me, but I want to fill her up and keep it there, I want to come across her chest, her back, her ass, and then I want her to ask for more.

“I don’t give a shit about living some boring ass life teaching math in Connecticut, so if you’re doing this for me, then you need to stop right now.” He puts his forehead against mine. “Please, just say you won’t marry him.”

I would do it again.

“I love you,” he says, pauses, then rushes on, “I am criminally, fatally in love with you, and you can try to marry someone else, but I’m not going to leave. I like your house too much and I like you too much to ever be away from you.”

I’m going to put a ring on your finger and marry you in front of every criminal in this city, and if anyone has a problem with that, they’ll have you to deal with, and clearly, you are no one to mess with.”