by Nicole Fox
“You did a good job of explaining it to her,” I tell him.
“I’m glad you think so,” he mumbles. “I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.”
I smile. “You’ll get better.”
“If only talking to a six-year-old was as easy as torturing a traitor.”
I blanch at that.
He catches the expression. “It’s a joke,” he adds in a hurry.
“Ha-freaking-ha,” I scowl.
“I forget that not everyone is as comfortable with violence as I am.”
“Are you really that comfortable with it?” I ask tentatively.
“Maybe ‘comfortable’ isn’t the right word,” he admits. “‘Desensitized’ is probably more appropriate.”
“Is it over then?” I ask, trying to sound as removed from the question as I can. “Is he out of the cellar? Just so we can, y’know, steer clear of that area. Off-limits for hide-and-seek, that sort of thing.”
Lucio shakes his head. “He’s still there,” he replies. “In the same cell you were held in overnight. Don’t worry, though—he’ll be gone by tomorrow morning. It was a mistake to bring him to the house at all with Evie here.”
“But he’ll be here tonight?” I ask, infusing as much fear into my tone as possible to throw Lucio off my real intentions.
“Just one night,” Lucio tells me. “Locked up nice and safe. My men will come back in the morning to take him away, and then we’ll never see him again.”
“Oh. Right. Okay.”
We lapse into an awkward silence.
My eyes drift down to drink him in. He looks sexy as sin in his fitted black t-shirt. It’s not glaringly tight on him, which I like. But it is tight enough to accentuate the muscles on his arms and chest.
Something about that and the way he handles the rag deftly between his fingers is doing stuff to my heart. A little skip. A little flutter.
Maybe I’m just imagining what those hands could do to—
“My eyes are up here, Charlotte.”
Fuck!
“I wasn’t… that’s not…”
His laughter cuts me off. “Don’t bother,” he says. “I’ll ask you no questions and you’ll tell me no lies.”
His eyes are sparkling with mirth. This isn’t the same Lucio who pinned me against the wall in his office when we first met.
This is a warmer Lucio.
A softer Lucio.
A happier Lucio.
But the effect he has on me hasn’t changed. If anything, that’s only gotten worse.
Especially because his gray eyes glisten like a sea of diamonds. I have an insane desire to reach out and touch his face.
“Xander used to say that a lot,” I hear myself whisper.
What the fuck?
Why am I bringing him up?
But now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. It gushes out of me. “Whenever I asked where he’d been late at night or why he smelled like perfume or where the blood on his clothes came from, he’d just say, ‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’ Thought it was clever as shit.”
I can feel Lucio’s eyes on me. Appraising, but not cold.
Not intimidating.
Just… listening.
“Xander’s the ex-boyfriend?” he asks softly.
“Yeah. He was a piece of work.” I laugh bitterly without any trace of real humor in it.
“How long were the two of you together?”
“About a year and a half,” I answer. “He was—is—a cop. I think maybe that’s why I got involved with him in the first place.”
Lucio tilts his head to the side. “Because of his job?”
I shrug. “Not exactly. When we first met, he just seemed to have this, like… natural authority. I think I felt safe with him. But it was an imagined safety.”
I sigh and press my forehead against the cool expanse of the marble countertop.
“I’ve always hated the idea of the damsel in distress. I never wanted to need a man, the way my mom did. But without even realizing it, I picked a man because of the imagined security I thought he gave me.”
I peel my head up and look at Lucio again. To my horror, there are tears pricking at the corner of my eyes.
“I never wanted to be like my mother,” I whisper. “But here I am—a carbon fucking copy.”
Lucio just looks back. Unafraid. Unwavering.
“I’m afraid of turning into my father,” he admits finally. “Sometimes, I think I’m more like him than I like to admit.”
My breath catches in my throat. “In what way?”
“In my ruthlessness. My detachment. My lack of forgiveness.”
I feel a spindle of dread run through my body. And suddenly, I’m very aware of the fact that I’m working for the same people that Lucio’s mole was working for.
He’d been caught.
Will I be next?
“Charlotte?”
I look up, trying to wipe the fear from my eyes.
“Yes?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Your father abused you,” I say. We’d touched on this topic before. But it feels like there’s more left to be said here.
And that—maybe, just maybe—Lucio wants to say it to me.
For a second, I think he’s just going to ignore my probe.
But eventually, he sighs.
“Yes. He did.”
“When did it start?”
“From the beginning,” he answers emotionlessly.
I feel myself being pulled into his world, his past. I feel the need to reach out and touch him.
I settle for moving a little closer.
“Didn’t your mother try to stop him?”
A flicker of resentment passes across his eyes. “She mostly just sat and watched,” he tells me. “It wasn’t cruelty on her part. It was helplessness.”
Lucio breaks eye contact and gazes out into the distance like he can see the memories playing once again.
“If she so much as made a sound, he would turn on her. He had broken her so completely that she was unable to raise her voice, even in my defense. Her way of coping was to dissociate from everything.”
He looks back down at me and sighs heavily again.
“Which is why she’s the way she is now,” he finishes.
“Even after your father passed away?” I ask.
“Her took her spirit long before he died,” he replies coldly. “She has only ever been a shell since.”
“That must be hard for you.”
Lucio shrugs. “I deal with it.”
“How?”
He looks directly at me, and I realize we’re only inches apart. Somehow, we’ve moved closer and closer together over the course of this conversation. I can practically count his individual eyelashes.
“How do you deal with your mother?” he counters.
“I don’t deal with her,” I reply. “I guess that’s how I deal with her.”
He smiles. “Exactly.”
“My mother lives very far away,” I point out.
“Physical distance and emotional distance are two different things,” he says. “I can be standing right next to my mother, having a conversation with her. And she might as well be talking to a stranger.”
I reach out without thinking and place my hand on his arm.
He glances down, and I feel the air around us change.
It’s electric at first.
Then it starts to heat up.
Fast.
I don’t know who leans in first. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s me.
In the end, it doesn’t matter, because the result is the same—his lips on mine.
This kiss is nothing like our first one. This is soft. Almost tender.
I feel every single thing. I’m hyper-aware of every single sensation.
His hands land on my hip and he pulls me off my barstool, towards him. His legs are parted and I fall into the crook easily.
His erection is impossible to miss
.
And I’m unable to resist.
I reach down between his legs and settle my hand over the huge bulge in his pants. A guttural little growl escapes his lips, and it floats right into mine, forcing them apart.
As our tongues war with one another, I can taste the sweetness of the cookies we made still lingering on his lips.
His hands move down from my hips and land on my ass. The only thing separating his hands from my bare skin is the flimsy pair of shorts I’m wearing.
And those don’t last much longer.
He tugs my shorts down as he kisses me deeper. His hot hand on my flushed skin draws a fresh gasp from me.
But I want some of him, too. I break our kiss so that I can pull the t-shirt over his arms.
An amazed little shudder escapes me as I stare at his broad, muscled chest. Tattoos arcing across rippling muscles and a smattering of body hair. I trace my fingers down the valley of his chest and graze over his stiff erection again.
He groans gutturally, then pushes me back away from him. I recoil at the sudden separation, the onrush of cool air.
But it doesn’t last long.
He pulls my tank top up and over my head, revealing my breasts, then yanks me back into him and devours me in another hot kiss.
I hesitate only a second before I reach for the waistband of his pants. I unbutton and unzip fast before shoving the fabric down his legs.
Pressing my forehead against his chest, I look down.
The black boxer-briefs he’s wearing can do hardly anything to hide his massive cock, which protrudes with sinful intent.
It feels like it’s looking right at me.
I watch hungrily as he discards his boxer-briefs.
And in the next second, I’m on my knees in front of him.
I feel his hand on the back of my head as I slip his cock into my wet mouth. I moan at the same time he groans, the sounds of our pleasure mixing in together.
My head spins a little, and I take his cock deeper into my mouth. I’m not as conscious of my movements or my motions as I suck him off.
Pure instinct takes over.
I suck hard and fast, gaining steam every time Lucio’s body tightens under my hands. Every time his breathing gets more erratic, I double down.
He’s the one who stops me.
He’s the one who pulls me back to my feet.
He grips my neck with one hand and pushes me against the kitchen counter.
Then he wraps one finger around the strap of my thong and pulls so hard that the material snaps. He flings my panties away and slips two fingers instantly into my wet, throbbing pussy.
“Luc…” I moan, as the sensation of being filled relieves the desperate need in my chest.
He fucks me with his fingers, fast and hard, sliding in and out of me easily. I can already feel my body roil with need, preparing for the orgasm I know is coming.
It’s coming…
It’s coming…
And just when I feel like I’m close, he pulls his fingers out of me.
My eyes flutter open in dismay. I want to scream at him that I was almost there.
If he pulls away for a third time, I might explode.
But the look on his face is so fucking hot that I can’t even find the words.
I reach out, but before I can kiss him or grab his cock again, he’s flipped me around and bent me over the kitchen counter.
I feel his massive cock behind me, sliding between my ass cheeks.
The prick is fucking teasing me.
I moan, pushing my ass into him, desperate to feel him inside me.
“You want this?” he growls.
“Yes,” I gasp.
“You want my cock?” he asks again.
My whole body is trembling with want. “Fuck, yes,” I beg breathlessly. “I want your cock inside me. Now.”
Ask and you shall receive.
The moment the words are out of my mouth, he shoves his cock inside me.
He doesn’t ease into anything.
He takes me with a wild power that I’ve sensed in him from the very beginning.
He fucks me hard, fast. Desperately.
All I can do is cling to the countertop, moaning and grasping and trying to ride each new sensation that screams through my body.
I’ve never been fucked like this before.
I don’t know how I’m going to go back.
I moan wordlessly. My lips are barely functional at this point. Just hot breath and panting and whispered, garbled begging for more, more, more.
His hands are on my hips, holding me steady as he takes me from behind.
Each thrust is more ferocious than the last. He’s so deep inside me that my legs start spasming uncontrollably.
Any hope I had of being quiet flies out the window as he bears down on me.
My moans fill the kitchen and reverberate everywhere.
Lucio’s do, too. And the sound of his grunting hunger makes me clench hard and tight around him.
He grabs my hands and pulls me upright so that my back is pressed against his chest. I can feel his hot breath against my neck as he bites me gently.
I crane my head back, gasping desperately up towards him.
“Mo…more…” I whimper like an animal in heat. It’s all I can manage.
But it’s enough to coax more out of him.
His fingers find my clit, circling it slowly, pushing me towards orgasm even as his cock thrusts deeper and deeper into me.
I dissolve as the orgasm crackles through me. Little pops of pleasure building into bigger and bigger, until it’s consuming me head to toe.
He never stops fucking me.
Instead, he ramps up the speed, chasing his own orgasm.
Seconds later, he pulls out and I feel him splatter on my back. It’s the hottest fucking moment of my life.
Little by little, the world settles back into place. My breath calms. I stay pressed against the marble for a little longer, savoring the coolness on my fevered skin.
Then I straighten up slowly and turn around. I feel dangerously off-kilter.
Looking at Lucio doesn’t help. There’s a light sheen of sweat on his body. He looks like he’s been carved from marble. His eyes traverse over my body and linger on my breasts as he picks up his t-shirt.
“Turn.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“Turn around.”
I do as he says, and he uses the t-shirt to mops the mess off my back. He’s tender, soft, and careful.
All things that I thought he wasn’t capable of.
All things that terrify the fuck out of me.
I need to remind myself of who he is. Of who I am.
And, most of all… of who I owe my loyalty to.
“I… I should go back upstairs,” I stammer.
He doesn’t say a word. Just nods soberly.
Left with no alternative, I dress quickly and leave the kitchen.
Lucio’s eyes never leave me.
27
Charlotte
I can’t sleep.
I’d been trying for two hours now, but my head is disturbed. The sex with Lucio is a mindfuck in and of itself.
And then there’s the question of the mole.
As in, the mole who’s in the cellar right now.
Unguarded, if I heard Lucio correctly. My men will be back in the morning.
Doesn’t that imply that there’s no one down there right now?
I get out of bed and pad over to the windows.
They aren’t sealed like the windows were in my first room. The door to my room isn’t locked, either.
A gesture of good faith. A symbol of trust between Lucio and myself.
A trust I will most certainly be violating if I leave my room tonight.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath.
I’ve been thinking about the man in the cellar ever since I learned of his existence.
He’s a double agent for the Polish.
&nbs
p; Guess what?
So am I.
The acknowledgement sits heavily in my chest. I feel weighted down by it.
But my choices were stripped away the moment I’d made that deal with the Polish to spare Xander’s life.
Because, just like my mother, I’m a fucking idiot who’s so desperate to be loved that I compromised my own future in the process.
Dressed in fresh, more modest pajamas—seeing as how the last ones ended up soaked through with sweat from kitchen sex with a man I shouldn’t even be looking at—I take a few hesitant steps towards the door.
I need to know what he knows.
If he works for the Polish, there’s a very real chance he knows about me.
And if he knows about me, then there’s a very real chance he’s going to give me up to Lucio—if he hasn’t already.
If I don’t go find out, then I’m as good as dead.
And yet my fingers hang over the doorknob, uncertain.
I take a deep breath. Go, Charlotte. You don’t have a choice.
I open the door as softly as possible and make my way downstairs to the wine cellar on bare, silent feet. My hearts hammers against my chest the entire way there, but I don’t run into a soul.
Thank God for small favors.
The lighting is minimal, but it’s enough to illuminate the familiar sight—rack after rack of wine bottles standing sentry over the frigid, stone-walled space.
I remember this place.
I move to the door I was thrown through that first night. Memories wash over me.
Lucio. The hunger in my belly. Mickey and Mrs. Hammond and the waiter and Evie—Evie, my beautiful little girl, the lone bright spot in this whole fucked-up ocean of confusion and darkness.
Am I betraying her by coming here?
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t fucking know.
As I reach for the door handle, my hand trembles, but I force myself to open it anyway.
As soon as there’s enough space to slip through, I duck inside.
The man crouching in one corner behind the metal grille is bruised and bloodied. He lifts his head in pained confusion. I can see that his nose is broken hideously. His shirt is a tapestry of dried bloodstains.
It’s strange to be on the other side of the cell.
The man sits up a little but he doesn’t bother to stand. Maybe he can’t—the darkness hides much of his body. There could be more unseen injuries. More body parts missing.