by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
* * *
The text came when I was almost asleep, from a number I didn’t recognize.
—Sweet dreams, Contessa. I will see you soon—
I jumped at the phone.
—Come now—
My message bounced. The screen announced that number had been disconnected or was unavailable. I was relieved he’d sent me a text but disconcerted that the number was unavailable. What if I needed him?
I couldn’t sleep. I put my hand under the sheets and slipped it beneath my underwear. I was soaked by just the thought of Antonio. My clit felt as sensitive as an open wound. I felt powerful, furious with desire, and I was going to come. My fingers wanted it as much as my engorged pussy. I counted to twenty, then I came forever, crying out for no one. When I was done, I cupped my pussy and looked at the ceiling, thanking God for the release.
My phone rang. Again, I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
Just breathing. A swallow.
“Antonio?”
No. It was a woman. On the off chance she was on a borrowed phone, I hedged my bets.
“Deirdre? Katrina?”
A sniff.
“Marina.”
Still no answer. Just a weeping woman. What if she was me? What if Antonio was cheating on her? What if I was the mistress this time?
“Are you okay?” I asked. “There’s no point calling if you’re not going to tell me off or something.”
“He’s one of us,” she croaked. “Not you. He’s not one of you.”
“I understand,” I said, even though I didn’t really.
“He thinks…” She choked a little before continuing. “I know him. He thinks you can make him something he’s not.”
“I don’t know what he thinks, Marina. You should ask him.”
She shot out a little laugh that must have soaked her phone in snot. “Maybe you should ask him.”
I was about to answer, but she hung up.
Chapter Thirty
Imagine being cooped up in small spaces with a hundred people in your age group, eight to eighteen hours a day, strictly focused on a project’s completion. Imagine long waiting periods where you talk at length about the project and the most important thing in the world—the state of cinema. Imagine you connect intellectually and spiritually with those people. Imagine you can’t connect physically because you’re so busy.
Now imagine the party at the end of it.
“Honestly, I want to wait to hear from the Germans,” Katrina yelled over the music.
It was the first time she’d been willing to entertain a serious discussion of my offer, and only then because she had a few drinks in her.
Katrina and I had gotten a downtown loft that was between owners for the party. The rental and cleanup were paid for by the last pennies in the budget, and some sneaky dealing on my part paid for a DJ and open bar. People had melded into a simmering mass of hot, wet flesh pulsing with the music. The loft, someone’s future overpriced home, had turned into a nightclub without the safety permits.
“If they fall though, I want a piece,” I said. Meaning, a piece of the pie. I tried to couch it not as a charitable offering but an investment in something I believed in.
“You heard from crying lady again?” Katrina asked to change the subject.
“Nope.” I hadn’t heard from Antonio after his good night text, either. I didn’t know what that meant. Did he plan to just come and go as he pleased? Were sweet little texts I couldn’t respond to some kind of leash?
“Well, epic party ahead,” Katrina said. “Maintain speed through intersections.”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me into the middle of the loft where the thump of the music was the loudest and the press of bodies hottest. With the floor shaking, the kisses from the camera man, the bumping and grinding, and the gleeful exclamations over the music, I got diverted. Michael came up behind me, put his arm around my waist, and moved his hips with mine.
I let go. No Katrina and her money woes. No Antonio or his secrecy and lies. No Daniel, period. Just a fine-looking, nice man dancing behind me, a few more in front of me, smiles all around, and a feeling that I’d been part of something bigger than myself.
When Michael moved his arm, I kept dancing for a second. Then I felt a whoosh as an area behind me opened up. I turned with the music just in time to see Antonio throw Michael against a table. Michael bounced off the top and fell cleanly, like any actor worth his salt had been trained to do.
“Antonio!”
If he heard me over the music, he made no indication. He stepped forward, stiff and enraged. Michael, being the class clown, spread his legs, waggled his brows, and dodged. Antonio caught his wrist, the motion so fast and effortless that Michael was slammed against the wall with his arm twisted behind his back before I took three steps. A circle of stunned people surrounded the two men. Antonio was such a ball of power and rage that no one dared come near him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t let her out by herself then,” Michael grumbled when I got close enough to hear.
Antonio twisted his arm harder. I put my hands on Antonio’s shoulders, tightening my fingers to make sure he felt them and knew it was me.
“Capo,” I said in his ear, “he’s my friend. Please.”
Antonio’s face was contorted in rage, and Michael was trying to smile rakishly through the pain. I pulled Antonio back, and he stepped against me. Michael turned and shook his arm out, giving his attacker a hot look.
“I’m sorry,” I said, taking Antonio’s hand.
“Put him on a leash,” Michael said.
I feared Antonio’d take the bait and attack the actor again, but personal insults didn’t seem cause for violence. He squeezed my hand and looked down at me, working his jaw.
“You have no right,” I growled as the crowd dissipated.
“I have the only right. I’ll hurt anyone who touches what’s mine.”
I knew we were being watched, so I smiled and touched his face. His jaw was tight and tense.
“Put a smile on your face or someone’s going to call the cops,” I said.
He stared at me with white hot intensity.
“I said smile.”
He shut me up with a kiss. I must have tasted of sweat and hormones. The one beer I’d had was probably stale on my breath, but we kissed as if I was clean and fresh from the shower. Our tongues curled around each other, eating each other alive. His hands crept up my wet shirt, slipping under my bra.
“No,” I said, turning away. “You can’t just kiss me and make everything okay.”
His mouth was on mine before I even finished. I pushed away with my arms, but my mouth had a mind of its own and stayed locked on his. My resolve melted like butter in a frying pan, leaving a streak of bubbling grease behind.
He put his hands on my face and moved an inch away. “You’re mine. That means no pretty boys on the dance floor. No fake dates with the district attorney.”
He must have seen me with Daniel on the news. Maybe in the paper. Maybe the man with the smelly Turkish cigarettes had told him.
“I’m not telling him anything about you,” I said.
“I know you’re not. In my heart, I know you have too much grace for treachery. But he wants to fuck you. I don’t like it.”
I wanted to draw the rules out for him in a cold, businesslike manner. But I couldn’t, and it wasn’t just his beauty but the intensity of his gaze. Something spun inside him, some toxic lava. It terrified me, and it was the thing I wanted most. How could I draw lines around that? Was there a law I could lay down that it would obey?
“I can’t see you with anyone else,” he whispered into my ear. “It makes me crazy.”
“We’re supposed to be discreet. This isn’t helping.” He pushed his erection against me, and I gasped. “And where have you been? Your phone’s disconnected.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You’re asking que
stions.”
“I don’t have the right to ask questions? Still?”
He held his finger up to my face. “I fuck you. I take care of you. That’s what I offer.”
“It’s not enough.”
“You American women make me crazy.”
I closed my eyes for a second, getting a hold of myself. I couldn’t fight him like this. He’d only come back at me like a bull.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me what’s happening. Where have you been? Are you all right?” I took him in, his eyes blacker, deeper from the moonlight coming through the window. “Don’t tell me facts. Your truths all sound like lies anyway. I don’t care about names and dates. I don’t care about the situation. Just tell me about you. I want to know you, Capo.” I touched his chest with the flat of my hand. “I want to know your heart.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Let me know you.”
“Contessa,” he said so tenderly I barely heard it.
“Let me know you,” I repeated. “Let me in.”
He brushed a strand of hair off my cheek. “You dance with your friends. I don’t. You see movies. I don’t. You have a good life. I have something else.”
“Come with me. You can dance too. We can go out to movies with friends, do all the things people do.”
He put his arms around me and kissed me fully. When I slipped my hands under his jacket and felt the lump of a gun holster under his arm, he stiffened. I kissed him harder, because the feel of it had dumped a bucket of desire between my legs. I clutched him, the gun on the inside of my forearm.
He shook his head. “You turn me around every time. You’re going to make me soft.”
“A soft man wouldn’t say that.”
Something changed in his face. His jaw got tight again. “No, a soft man would.” He grabbed my hand. “I’m taking you now, Contessa. And not gently.”
We were in a room full of people. I had no idea what was on his mind, but he pulled me to the back of the loft and through the kitchen, which had been stripped to the lathe. He pushed through a metal door and yanked me into a fluorescent-drowned hallway with cracked walls and mottled concrete floor.
He rushed me into a dark closet and slammed the door behind him. Brooms and mops fell around us when he grabbed me, pulling my hair back and hitching up my skirt. The painted-over window let a little of the streetlights in, and when my eyes adjusted, I saw the fire in his eyes. Was this his reaction to a moment of softness?
“You’re going to get me killed.” He ran his fingers over my pussy roughly. “That make you wet?” He jerked my hair.
“Mercurial, much?”
“I will not die because you made me weak.” He put me on the edge of the slop sink. I leaned on my hands, and he jerked my legs open.
“Fuck me then, you son of a bitch.”
He ripped a gaping hole in my panties and shoved two fingers in me. With his other hand, he released his erection as if it was a weapon. He took his fingers out of me and put them on my throat, thumb and middle finger on each side of my jaw, pressing me to the windowsill.
“I fuck you, and you take it, do you understand?” Without waiting for an answer, he shoved his cock all the way in me in one thrust. The wind went out of me, and his hand on the throat kept me from speaking. He said, “You’re mine. I am who I am, and I own you. That’s all it is.”
He fucked me hard and dirty. One hand pinned me by the throat, not choking, but letting me know he was there, and the other hand spread my knee wide. My ass was balanced on the edge of a sink, and somehow, as rough as he was, his hands kept me from falling.
“You take it. Take it.”
“Yes, yes,” I croaked, pressure building every time his cock went in me.
He hooked his pussy-soaked fingers in my mouth. “Come, Contessa. Do what I tell you. Fucking come.”
In three painful thrusts, I had to obey. I shuddered and cried out into his fingers, coming for him, only for him. He ground his teeth and plowed into me so hard, the pain was muffled by another rising orgasm. Still he came at me, punishing me with his dick, and still my body rose to him. He slowed, and I thought he was done, but he pounded twice more, lengthening my climax.
“Please stop.” I gasped. “Please, Capo. I can’t take it.”
He sighed, shifted his hips, and gathered me in his arms. I wrapped my legs around him and rested my head on his shoulder.
“You’re going to be my death,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. I feel weak around you. I’m going to slip up.”
“I want to be there for you, but I can’t. I can try to stay out of trouble,” I said.
“I’m not worried about you getting into trouble. I’m worried about trouble coming to you. I’m worried about spreading myself too thin. I have enemies all around me. Every man wants his own thing, and not every man can have it.”
I felt a light vibration at his hip. He ignored it and pulled his lips along my cheek, then to my ear.
“A bunch of my crew broke off. Is that enough for you to know?” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s my fault, and it’s going to take time to make right. I’ll have someone on you.”
“Will you come see me?”
“If I can.”
His phone vibrated again. We kissed briefly before he dropped me, stepping back to button up his pants then his jacket. He checked me out and, finding me presentable, kissed my cheek and took my hand.
Back in the loft, in the middle of the crowd, he kissed my hand then stepped back. He bumped a girl in a tiny skirt then Michael. Michael held up his hands, and Antonio did the same before he spun on his heel and walked out, one hand on his phone.
Katrina crept up behind me. “Got a live wire on your hands, girl.”
Michael passed by, a pretty girl on his arm, and said, “No dancing,”
I slapped his arm, but he walked to the dance floor with his new girl as if that sort of thing happened all the time.
Chapter Thirty-One
Someone knocked at my door early the next morning. Katrina still wasn’t home. I’d left the party twenty minutes after Antonio.
Looking out the window, I saw a bald man in jeans and a long black jacket. He was smoking. Would answering the door be stupid? Would that be getting myself into trouble? I decided not to risk it and let the curtain close. I waited one minute, then two, then looked out. He was gone, and a little package had been left behind.
I opened the door and peeked at the package without picking it up.
Contessa
Same handwriting as the cards on Antonio’s flowers. I brought it inside and opened it. A phone dropped into my hand.
This device is secure. My number is on it. Please only use it for emergencies. And be very safe.
I checked and saw one number in the contacts with an area code in Nevada.
The front door opened, and I jumped. It was Katrina, and her lip was split.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He picked me up.” Her breath hitched in a loud sob. “I got in the car, I didn’t think anything of it. He said I lied about who I was. That I couldn’t pay him back because no one was going to buy my movie.”
“What did they do to you?” I said with an edge I didn’t recognize from my own throat.
“The lip. It’ll go away. I’ll just make my vig until I prove him wrong”
I did something I’d only done once before, on the side of the road with a Club in my hand.
I lost my temper.
“What do you mean make your vig? Do you live in one of your goddamn movies? Who the hell even knew that fucking existed anymore?” I paced.
Katrina cried. She’d never seen me like that. I’d never seen me like that. I didn’t even know who I was.
“I’m calling the cops!” My hand was shaking so hard, I couldn’t dial before Katrina snapped the phone away.
“Central?” She spat the name of the LAPD’s Downtown division like a curse. “Are you fucking
with me? They’re a bunch of blabbermouths. The editor of the Calendar has every one of them on the take. If this gets out, I’m finished.”
“When what gets out? That he pulled you into a car and slapped you around? No. No. A thousand times no. I’ll call Antonio.”
“No! I don’t want to be rescued by your boyfriend. That’s weird. Forget it. Just forget it. I’ve handled douchebags like this before.”
“How much do you need?”
She leaned on the back of the couch and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “A thousand for last week and a thousand for next.”
“Interest compounded minutely if you don’t pay.” My arms were crossed. I was so mad, all my compassion had run away in fear.
“I can pay it all back when I get distribution. He just…” She drifted off, and tears welled again. “He didn’t know about the lawsuit I lost. He found out. I think it just… I don’t know.”
“For someone so smart,” I said, unable to stop myself, “you leave yourself open to the stupidest mistakes.”
I stormed into my bedroom. My closet held a few thousand in small bills for emergencies. I counted out three grand and stuffed it in an envelope. I called Antonio from my new phone then hung up. Was this an emergency? Did he just tell me to stay away from Mabat because he was being protective? I really didn’t want to bother him when he had so much going on. I’d apologize later for disobeying him if I had to.
I went downstairs. “Come on. I’m delivering it personally.”
* * *
Katrina drove. The place was in East Hollywood, a trashy nightclub as big as my childhood living room. Vtang. I had no idea what it meant, but it was in big, flat red letters on the front, bathing the people in line in blood.
The bouncer, his hairline a receding M, moved the rope before we’d even slowed down. He ushered us past the register for the cover and into a room so dim I wouldn’t have been able to tell the girls from boys if there had been no high hair involved.
I was still mad. I didn’t know how I’d held onto it that long, because anger wasn’t my forte. It was unattractive and uncontrollable. It pushed people away and for the most part, achieved nothing. This anger was mine, though, and it was a caged mink about to get skinned.