He hadn’t said or done anything yet to indicate that we had met. Maybe he was smarter than he looked. That wouldn’t be much of a stretch. Perhaps he would carry it off. Maybe there was just a chance that he wasn’t going to let on to Fat Tony and we’d all get through the day.
Then, with horror, I realized the other possibility. Maybe he spilled the beans already. Could it be true? That wasn’t something I wanted to consider. Fat Tony’s influence was strong, though, strong enough that my own father couldn’t be trusted. He sold me out, and for what? Really, I had no idea.
After Tony allowed him to run debts up across the gambling tables, he got the idea that Tony was some kind of a god. Tony treated my father probably like the Vegas casinos treat the high-rollers, at least when they’re on their way up. He acted like the more money my father owed him, the more important my father was.
My father was a complete sucker for that, obviously, but how dumb could you get?
Could he not see that there would come a point when Tony wanted something back, something in return? There was no realistic future in which father would have the money to cover those markers, except in his fantasy world where one day it would just rain money for him.
To give away something you can never replace? Tony came to him and told him how our families could have a ‘strategic alliance,’ that it would be the start of a great dynasty. And father believed him. When Tony left, I had asked my father what he thought that he was bringing to the ‘strategic alliance.’
He looked at me in that way that dreamers always have, like I was far away. Like I just didn’t understand. Nothing that he had left, nothing that I could think of, would be valuable enough to bail him out next time.
Luka, I knew nothing at all about. Nothing beyond the fact that he was an arrogant idiot who regularly made lewd propositions to women in bars. And then, amazingly, he expected that they would fall at his feet.
Well, maybe not so amazing. You’d do it for the view of his ass. To look up past his huge, sculpted pecs and into the deep pools of those hooded blue eyes. Really, I knew that I was just jealous and resentful. Other women got to throw themselves at Mr. Renaissance and crawl all over those fine, hard muscles, while I had Tony who I could count on to throw me at the wall.
I always loved women. A lot of women. Sometimes all night. Vix had left a storm before she took her tight little ass out of the bar, but she has her pride, so it was a short storm and in my book she was in her rights.
For some reason it had left me wondering how it might feel to see a woman walk away and wish that she wouldn’t. My rule wouldn’t allow it, but I was curious to know what it might feel like.
Then, next thing I knew, I was settled in for a peaceful drink and about a scotch and a half later, the door opened and she stepped in. Her ripe, full figure was not at all my normal type. I had no idea why it was that all of my senses immediately zoomed in and focused on her.
The moment my eyes locked on hers, a look stood between us, gripped us together. A flash of recognition. Like in combat. In the dark, in some undergrowth, you just make out the low glimmer of a pair of eyes. You may never have seen them before, but you recognize that you’re on the same side. You come from the same place.
The smallest movement, a nod, like a secret, unconscious micro-movement, a lowering of the eyelids for nobody else in the world to see. Her look told me that she knew me. And in the fraction of a glance, I knew her. She was the opposite of me.
I felt it, and something in me silently said hello. The opposite something in her responded through her eyes and said hello back.
From the easy sway of her lovely, soft hips, she was a woman who didn’t dress or perform for what men thought of her. She was her own woman.
Before I’d even thought or checked myself, my eyes licked and caressed every one of her stupendous curves. She was nothing like the women I usually fucked, and now, seeing her, they all seemed to fade away into the past like frail girls—like immature, entitled, whiny kids. Like teenage infatuations. Here was a woman.
With my eyes locked on hers, I was thinking what a delicious morsel she would be to pass my evening away with. Lovely, tumbling auburn hair, a wicked little half-smile on her wet, red lips, and curves that wouldn’t quit. A morsel that could turn into a feast. Not my usual type at all. In fact, if I’d heard a description, I probably would have said as much, but there was an energy about her that was like magic.
It popped into my head that the view of her walking away would be as much of an appetite stimulant as the view of her stepping through the shafts of low light and down into the bar. What would bring a woman like that to Bar Sicilia? I wondered, surprising myself again.
This place was usually somewhere middle-ranking mob guys came to wind down. Younger kids looking to make a name or get made would hang around, try to get themselves on a job, or make themselves useful. Some guys out of the military would come, usually looking for work.
Women didn’t go there much and if they did they were usually hookers. Bar Sicilia’s kind of male clientele obviously attracted a service element.
This woman was no hooker, though, unless she was the uptown, Fifth Avenue hotel type. And ten-thousand-dollar escorts knew better than to come and slum in a bar like this. This woman—she was too classy, and too conservatively dressed, for a whore—even at that level.
Her blue-gray silk suit flowed over her curves like a second skin; her soft cream blouse made her look like a CEO or a high-class lawyer with a healthy sex drive. And the thousand-dollar shoes, they weren’t props. She wasn’t dressed up to sell herself, to play a part, or to look like something she wasn’t. She was born to wear clothes like that.
This was all so out of character for me. Usually the most curiosity I had about a woman was whether her bra snapped at the front or the back, and whether or not she was shaved. Now that those thoughts had got going, I couldn’t get them back in the box. My cock was paying attention to her, stirring in my pants. Swelling harder than usual.
This was not just another woman. This woman was going to be special. I spoke as soon as he saw her. Any other red-blooded male in here was going to take a stab at her. I wanted to make it clear to the room: hands off. She’s mine.
From the far, dark end of the bar, I spoke clear and low before the door even swung closed behind her, while the light from outside snapped lazily shut in her wake. I didn’t even plan to do it. Rule number one: never make the first move. And I broke it without a thought.
“Hey, baby.” My voice came out low and husky. “You’re just in time”
When she answered, it was like the jukebox played my favorite song. There was something so familiar about this woman. Her voice made me want to be on a thick rug with her in a log cabin in front of an open fire, rain lashing the windows. Wind making the doors rattle. Her on her hands and knees, panting with that stupendous ass up in the air.
She said, “In time for what?” She made it sound like she was bored. It got my motor revving. I got up.
“You haven’t had a good fuck today. Good thing there’s still time.”
She looked down, smoothed down the soft blouse over her lovely big boobs, and said, “Oh.” Her voice was like a whisper of sliding silk and my cock jolted as her eyes flashed back up. “Did I forget to take off the badge?” Most of my women were fun, but not many were as sharp as this one. We could talk while I fucked her. That would be cool.
And I was off the stool, standing. All of me was standing. I was standing so hard, she must have seen it from there, all the way across the room. Yes, I looked right in her eyes. She saw it. I felt her.
As she reached the bar, I moved to stand behind her, shielded her off with my big frame from the rest of the room. The warmth of her ass called to the banging pulse in my cock, straining at the insides of my jeans like an excited dog yapping on a chain. I leaned down so that my warm breath was in her ear, on her lovely, creamy neck. My voice was a low growl.
“You’re a woman with
a body that’s in need of some worship. Let me buy you a drink and I’ll tell you all the ways I’m going to make you feel better.”
“Nice try,” she said, “but I’m just here for the drink.” There was a frisky note that she couldn’t keep out of her voice. I could tell she was trying to seem uninterested, because when she stretched her neck, flicked her hair aside, it was a reflex. Fast and strong, like she’d been struggling to not do it. Like she’d held out against it. But it escaped. The animal inside her, breaking free.
Her scent was intoxicating. The animal inside my jeans ached so hard, I wondered if it too would break free. It wanted to get up that soft skirt and into her warm flesh, her wet folds, so fucking much it hurt.
My hands needed an effort of will to stop me grabbing that skirt and yanking it off her. Ripping through her panties and hauling her up to drape her legs back over my shoulders. Right there and then.
I imagined her, dancing wild, shaking her hair as she thrashed on my bulging cock. A picture sprang up in my mind of my cock shoved between her fantastic, bouncing breasts. Then the shaft sliding between her lips and into her throat. I wondered if she’d ever taken a cock all the way into her mouth before. She looked like she might not have done, but until you peeled a few layers away, you never could tell.
I was about to tell her, we can drink together. I’m buying, but she said, “A quiet drink, on my own.” Oh, I did love a little chase. “Which I will buy for myself, thank you, soldier.”
“SEAL, ma’am.”
“Can you balance balls on the end of your nose?” Her chin jutted.
“Can you?” Man, there was a picture that could keep you warm at night.
Looking into the big, liquid brown eyes of this gorgeous creature, I experienced that tingle in my stomach that a kid has coming downstairs on his birthday. She was going to be sensational.
The more she told me she wasn’t interested, not available, didn’t want to know, the more she had me trying out more and more of my best you can’t refuse me gags and tricks.
“Look,” she said when I finally cornered her into a dark booth, just us and the whiskey and the night. She held her hand against my chest and her eyes blazed. “It isn’t that I don’t want you.” Her eyelids fluttered and my cock jumped. “You’re a hunk. A panty-melting cauldron of fire and funk. Sure, I want you.” She moistened her lips. “I just don’t want you enough to actually die for it.”
“Ha. Don’t worry, beautiful lady,” I told her, “I won’t really kill you.”
See? I got her all wrong from the start. “When it’s all over though, you might wish I had, because the rest of your life won’t seem worth living. You’ll know that all of the best hours you’ll ever know are memories, seared into your flesh, pictures burned in your mind. Sounds you never thought you would hear, let alone ever make. But it will all be in the past.”
“No, lover boy.” Her voice was low and sultry. Her perfume was drifting like smoke in my head. Her sure, fill lips were moist; her magnificent, creamy breasts swelled. I wanted her so fucking bad. And knew damn well she wanted me just as bad.
But she said, “I mean that if I let myself do any of what you’re thinking, or any of what I’m imagining, then my fiancé will have me killed.” The spark was still in her eyes, but I could hear in her voice she really meant it. “You too, though I’d be lying if I told you that mattered anywhere near as much to me.”
“I told you, I was a Navy SEAL.” I took her hand and patted it. “I don’t think your fiancé’s going to hurt either of us.” And I gave her a nice, confident smile.
She said, “My fiancé is an underboss of the Bonaventura family.” Oh. Ratshit. “He would have you splayed and gutted.”
Couldn’t argue with that.
Fat Tony wasn’t ever going to let me go. Not voluntarily. Nothing would persuade him, I knew it now. Deep inside, I think I knew it from the start. There just didn’t seem much point in facing it head-on, at first. But it was what it was. More than anything, I desperately needed a way out of the engagement.
Tony’s pride couldn’t admit a failure of any kind, so whatever distressed or upset him, he blamed me and he took it out on me. The fight with his boss, a puncture in his tire, his team losing. Bam.
“Dumb putana. Now look what you’ve made me do.”
Bam.
“How am I going to make you understand? Eh?”
Bam.
“The simplest fucking thing. I can’t trust you with any damned thing.”
Bam.
Bam.
My father had decided I was going to marry Tony. “Like it or not. You’re his, and that’s an end of it.” There was no way on hell or on earth that I ever would have gone near him, otherwise. I tried to say that I wouldn’t have him. That was the first and only time that my father struck me. A taste of what was to come, as it turned out.
“Daddy, please. I can’t stand him.”
My father took another bite off his whiskey. “You’ll come to see the better side of him.”
I didn’t believe that; I doubted he had any better sides. Still, I was in no way prepared for his cruelty, for what a brutal, uncaring savage he really turned out to be. He had been that way from the very start. I was sure that it was because he came so damned fast on our first night, and then he wilted.
For days, I tried to think of a way to tell him it was all right, that I didn’t mind and I wouldn’t ever tell anyone. However I thought of phrasing it, I knew that it was going to come out something like, “The sooner you get through, the better for me. You’re an evil slug, and the very scent of you makes my flesh creep.” At least, that was how to would sound to his ear. Whatever else Tony was, he was not dumb.
It would have been clear, simple, and truthful to explain it to him, more or less like that, but somehow, I didn’t think it would do much to improve his temperament. On the rare occasions that we talked, he insulted me and I asked him, “Wouldn’t you rather be with a dancer from one of your clubs?”
“One? I spent last night with three of them. Gorgeous women.” The look on his face was like a butcher, eyeing a rack of sizzling ribs. “Not like you, you ugly whore. I only fuck you to remind you who’s the boss.”
Like it could make any difference to me at all, the reasons why he fucked me the way that he did. I said, “Why don’t you marry someone more suitable, then? Someone more to your liking?”
Bam.
“You ungrateful bitch. You live in this beautiful apartment, plenty of money. And all you want to do is complain.”
Bam.
“You belong to me, bitch, and I will die before I let you go. And believe me, you will die before I do.”
So a few months into what must have been one of the worst engagements ever, I knew that the only way that I would ever be able to escape him, before the wedding or afterwards, would be if he was dead.
Now he was going to have me watched over, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. And while a red-hot hunk of muscle in jeans stuck to me like a sweat twenty-four-seven, and I couldn’t so much as touch him, the slug that he worked for could have me any way, anywhere, and any time he wanted.
~~
The sound of the doorbell brought me back into the room. After a moment Tony looked over at me, expectant. He was standing right by the buzzer, but he told me, “Get that,” in a voice like he was talking to an ignorant child.
For some reason, him treating me that way, it hurt more, than it would have if Luka hadn’t been there to see it. His eyes, burning holes in the floor, made me really want to cry inside. Still, I had to walk past him and not act like I knew Luka, or that there was anything between him and me.
I knew not to argue with Tony, so I slipped by him and lifted the intercom handset. On the screen was a thickset, bullet-headed man at the door. Tony’s elbow jabbed sharply in my back ribs. It knocked out my breath and the pain made it hard to force myself not to cry out.
Tony stood between me and Luka, so Luka probabl
y hadn’t seen it happen. Tony would have arranged it like that. “Let the man in,” he snapped. I pushed the button to release the door. It was a typical lose-lose setup for me.
If I had simply let the man in, Tony would have been furious that I opened the door to a stranger. As it was, he was angry that I kept the visitor waiting. I didn’t deserve this. But it was my present and it stretched out into my future, stretched as far as my mind’s eye could see.
I opened the door to admit man into the apartment building. Tony barged me aside to greet him at the door.
The elevator sounded and I heard the swish of the doors. Tony said, “Bruto,” and welcomed the man with a typical exaggerated hug. Arms wrapped all the way around each other, leaning together and lots of back patting, no expression on either of their faces.
Bruto was thin-lipped with sunken eyes and much taller than I expected. He didn’t speak to me. The way that he looked at me made me feel like he was looking at a thing. An object.
Two Hitmen: A Double Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 1) Page 91