He was in the doorway with his hands clasped together and asked her, “Shall I call the cops now, or would madam prefer to wait until after breakfast?”
She scowled at him.
He said, “There will be food in the kitchen if you want some. Although, of course, help yourself to whatever you want from the fridge anytime.”
He bowed as he backed out and closed the double doors. As soon as the doors shut, she rushed to them and pulled on the handles, sure he would have locked her in.
The doors flew open and she staggered back. Agostini was still in the hallway with a grin that made her want to slap him. “Something else that you’d like?” He lifted an eyebrow. “A pot of Earl Grey perhaps, or some cucumber sandwiches?”
With her teeth clenched and her cheeks prickling, Princess slammed the doors shut again. It was going to take some willpower to get through this.
She knew that she had to be honest with herself; there was no use pretending. He was smoking hot. Her pants were on fire for him.
There. Now she had admitted it to herself and maybe she could figure herself a way out of this.
Down in her lounge area, Princess made for the window. There was that balcony outside, but she couldn’t see any way to get there. It didn’t make sense.
The glass parapet was maybe four feet high. It would be scary and dangerous, but it did look as though it would wrap around, so maybe it could be a way out.
It could work if it went around to a service entrance, maybe. Or even another penthouse. The building could have two properties exactly like this, or maybe four. From inside, she had no way to tell.
Then she remembered the bathroom window. Princess hurried into the bathroom. The window looked as though it should open, but it seemed to be jammed shut, whether by paint or perhaps just because it was never opened.
No matter how hard she twisted the handle and yanked on it, the window wouldn’t budge. On the desk in her lounge, she remembered a letter opener.
Pierce finished his champagne as he returned to the lounge, shaking his head. Calhoun said, “She’s a firecracker, that one.”
Callaghan said, “Marlo called from reception, boss. Said he got a package for you from Adelina Bontempi.”
Callaghan and Calhoun were both looking at him. “Yeah, all right. That package is going to be the files from her husband’s computer.”
Calhoun said, “Oh, but are you sure, now? Might it not be a little note to tell you, ‘Oh, Pierce, I just need some more of your hot filling, Pierce.’ Do you not think she’ll be needing a repeat prescription?”
Callaghan grinned. “Once they get a taste of that salami…”
“Okay,” Pierce said, “knock it off, you two. And she won’t be getting any second serving.”
“Ah, sure, none of them do.” Callaghan shook his head.
Calhoun said, “Isn’t that the pity of it?”
Callaghan said, “The ‘one time only’ rule.”
Agostini started, “Look…” But he decided there was too much to be done and he didn’t want to be fooling around. His voice was firm as he told Callaghan, “Go check on our guest.”
“Yes, boss.” Callaghan’s mood snapped straight back to professional. Calhoun’s, too.
“And, Mr. Calhoun, if you’d be so kind,” Pierce said in a mockery of Calhoun’s Irish accent, “when you’re back from getting me parcel, will you see to it that one of the two of yez has an eye on the guest and the other one’s got a view of the door? We don’t want her getting lost now.”
Calhoun’s eyes flashed and his smile tightened as he unlocked the elevator and stepped inside. Agostini knew that Calhoun and Callaghan wouldn’t push their jokes too far.
Behind the banter, they all shared some real concern about what might happen with Adelina’s husband, Alberto Bontempi.
Pierce laughed whenever he heard someone had described him as a Mafioso, but Alberto Bontempi had come the closest of anybody Pierce Agostini knew to having been an actual made guy. Closest on Wall Street, as far as Pierce was aware. All a long time back, maybe, but those associations held their value.
But once he had the files, Pierce would have no more need for his association with Bontempi. Still, Alberto would jump at any opportunity to show that he could be an old-school heavyweight.
He couldn’t, and Pierce knew that. The man had been off the streets since he went to NYU and he’d spent his whole life since then bossing computer screens. He still knew plenty of guys, though, and there might be some owing him favors.
It was hard to say what would light more of a fire under Bontempi, knowing that Pierce had his files or the fact that he fucked Adelina to get them. Either way, he would catch wind of it sooner or later, one way or the other. When it did, it wouldn’t be pretty.
When one mob guy offs another, it doesn’t hurt the police too much and they don’t always break their backs trying to solve it. The thing of it was, though, far as anyone on the outside knew, Alberto Bontempi was a pillar-of-the-community, straight-as-a-die Wall Street banker.
For any chance that the cops would forget about it, he would have to go very missing indeed. No sacks off the back of a boat on the Hudson—Bontempi would have to vanish in the most unsuspicious circumstances.
He would have to choke on an ice-cream cone in Grand Central at rush hour, or die in a freak yawning incident in St. Pat’s. Either that or disappear in a puff of smoke during a live interview on CNN.
Sitting on the couch in the loggia, watching twilight drop like a blanket over Manhattan, Pierce’s thoughts drifted around Princess. Played with the idea of her. She wasn’t like any of the usual women he had. She wasn’t a clothes horse, she didn’t play the little girl with a vacant stare, she didn’t simper and pout.
Princess had the body of a real woman.
He thought how she might look. What she really was like under her clothes. He’d seen her in the sleek black and white she wore in the club, neat and severe in a way but not showy.
And when he lifted her, in that thin print dress, he felt her soft curves. He imagined her peachy skin emerging. Her frank eyes.
He thought of her playing. How her mouth would taste. Her sitting on top of him. Feeling her, rolling her ass to press his balls. Watching her full breasts pushed together between her upper arms. Seeing her eyebrow twitch and her teeth bite into her bottom lip. Dragging her plump, wet wings along the throbbing ridge of his cock.
Of her hair spilling on his chest as she grazes the flesh of his shoulder, her hands reaching down between her legs, past her trembling wetness. To seize his cock. As she sighs, her warm breath fans his shoulder, her cool fingers wrap around his thick, stiff cock and she grips it.
She leans forward and her breasts push and spread against his hard pecs while she pulls his cock toward her soft, swollen opening.
He rises. Her eyes widen and her mouth opens as he puts her on her back, holds her neck, his thumb against her jaw. He feels his grin spread and relishes the sight of her apprehension, her anxious wait while he spreads her soft thighs wide.
He lets her feel the weight of his cock. Drags the length of it slowly against her clit. She peers down as he pushes it to rise from the fuzz on her soft mound.
He takes a hold of her plump breast and squeezes it, watching her face collapse and feeling her hips buck against him when he turns her shrinking, hardening, darkening nipple. He leans over to blow on her nipple, then seizes it with his lips. Sucks on her, pulling her breast into his mouth.
He cradles and hefts her other breast as he sucks. Then he holds her throat as he leans up. Moistens his lips as he traces hers with his thumb. He leans over her and bears down.
The underside of his cock drags against her hot, weeping pussy. He holds the back of her neck and connects his lips with her open mouth. As her hot, heaving breath fills his mouth and he seals her, he draws the length of his cock down.
She shakes as he slips the head against the entrance of her waiting lips. His hard bulb presses
her opening and she moans as her thighs quiver. Her breath vibrates and her hands clasp the hard cheeks of his ass, pulling him. He makes her wait.
Her warm breasts push up against him and her breath trembles.
His eyes are on hers. When he pierces her pussy, pushes her lips wide apart, slides up along her hot, wet walls and her folds close and grip him, he slowly fills her. Tilting her hips up, she tempts him, urges him, tries to take him, but he holds back.
Her hands squeeze and claw at his ass, her nails drag up the rolling ridges of his back. Her fingers slide through his hair, winding and pulling.
He enters her slowly, making her feel every hard, hot, velvety inch of him, feeling her plead and giving her all but the last inch before he drags it back, pressing down against the back of her hungry pussy.
Then, with her eager eyes showing she’s ready, he saws all the way into her, plunges right to the hilt, grinds his wide pubic bone against her full, soft mound. And she groans into his ear, holds his head as her mouth works on his, her breath drawing him, urging him, begging him in.
Pierce realized his hand was absently on his stiff cock. Harder and fatter than usual. He shook his head and went for a glass of water. Women didn’t get to him like this. When he started to fantasize about a woman, which he almost never did, he’d just call one up. Fuck her and give her cab money.
There was always a long enough line of beautiful women, women with pouting lips and thrilling, quivering breasts. Women who had begged him to fuck them and he hadn’t bothered. He could call one, any of them would come running.
But not now. Right now he wasn’t interested in any of them. He must be tired.
Pierce heard a thud and Callaghan shouted from the guest suite, “Boss!”
Pierce started through the kitchen. When he got to the stairway, Callaghan had Princess in an arm lock. He dragged her to the steps and Pierce stood aside to let them through.
When he got her to the lounge, Callaghan said, “She had the letter opener, and she was using it to try and hack open the bathroom window. I heard the sound from outside and I had to shove open the door.”
When Callaghan said he’d “shoved” the door, that probably meant there was no longer a door. Callaghan let go of Princess and let her stand. She shook herself and jutted her jaw. In the print dress and boots without the leather jacket, she looked vulnerable.
Agostini lowered his voice and pointed to the couch. “Sit down, Princess. We need to have a talk.”
Her eyes blazed and she said, “I’m not—” He stepped toward her. She sat.
“Were you really hoping to climb out and helter-skelter straight down twelve hundred feet of glass?” She tightened her lips and narrowed her eyes.
He went on, “It’s a bold plan, but it’s flawed. I feel you haven’t taken full account of the sudden death element.”
She said nothing, but she was radiant with anger. Agostini took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry if it infringes on your liberty, Princess, but you may not commit suicide while you’re in my care and custody. It could upset my schedule and it would be an awful nuisance.”
She glowered.
He told her, “Outside the bathroom window is a drop of about ten feet to a glass balustrade. That’s about two and a half feet wide, so in the wind, you would have a pretty good chance of missing it. Even if you managed to land square, and if you were lucky, the wind would pluck you off in no time. Did I mention that we’re twelve hundred feet up?”
After a moment’s sulky silence she spoke. “What do you mean, ‘lucky’?”
“Not much lives up at this height, Princess.” He gestured to the loggia, indicating the view. “The building, like most tall buildings, has staff to police the few things that do inhabit the altitude.” She frowned.
“Not human staff,” he said, “obviously. They employ big hawks. Eagles, to be precise. A fine family of golden eagles keep the riff-raff away from the armored glass of our balconies.”
He watched her think about it, turning it over. It was going to be hard to keep a tight rein on her. Especially when she was so attractive. Each time he saw her, he saw something new and he liked her better.
“When cleaners and maintenance crews work outside,” he said, “they tie themselves into gondolas that hang on steel cables from cranes and they wear carbon fiber armor, covered in thick leather.” Was he putting her off outdoor adventures at Park Place Pinnacle? The spark in her eye made him doubt it. “And they carry weapons. Just in case.
“A letter opener won’t make it against a golden eagle, Princess.”
“Can I get a glass of water?” she asked.
“Callaghan will get it for you.”
“What about the balconies outside?” Her head was low and so was her voice. “The–what do you call them, the viewing boxes?”
“The one in the guest suite is a bay,” he told her, like this was Architecture 101. “This one is a loggia, because it covers two stories.” He gave her a nice smile. “What about them?”
She said, “They both have balconies outside. There must be some way to get to them.”
He narrowed his eyes. She wanted him to tell her the way out. Well, good luck, Princess, he thought. As far as he knew, there wasn’t one that wouldn’t lead to imminent doom. “They’re part decorative, partly for service. The only way to reach them is from above. Either in the service gondolas or by wire.”
As Callaghan ran a glass of water from the kitchen faucet, Agostini stood and went over to the window in the loggia. The instant his back was turned, Princess took the briefest of chances and bolted for the elevator.
Callaghan’s frown spread and his head shook as he looked up at Pierce. Pierce drew an inward sigh. She hit the elevator button.
Pierce didn’t move. Neither did Callaghan. He was starting to chuckle, but Agostini felt his irritation rise. She rattled the elevator button. And nothing happened. She pressed the button again and again, apparently baffled when it didn’t even light up.
Then her shoulders sagged as she touched the lock beneath the button. Just like the one inside the elevator. Pierce Agostini was right behind her when she spun around, so near that her breasts were pressed against the ridges of his stomach. He pressed closer.
“Look, if I don’t have you, then I won’t get your daddy’s cooperation.” Her eyes brightened. But he held up a finger. “If I have to, I can do what I need with the both of you in barrels of oil. It isn’t what I want, but I can do it. Am I getting through to you?”
He stepped forward, pushed her back against the cold lacquer of the elevator door. Felt her intake of breath. Watched the defiance in her widening eyes turn to uncertainty.
“Here’s how it works, Princess: if you don’t behave, if you cause trouble, it’s your daddy who will pay the price in the end. Now stop making life difficult for all of us and let’s just get through this.”
He knew what was about to happen and he was ready. She wasn’t. The elevator bell dinged and the doors slid apart.
She could have fallen straight backwards into the elevator and whacked her head. The elevator carpet was thick, and Pierce knew that Calhoun was inside, but instinctively, he grabbed her.
He caught her. Snatched her close. He gripped her hard. Her body pressed back against him. He tasted her breath. He smelled the fresh, straw scent of her hair. And her fragrance rose, sharp and strong.
She heard the “ding.” The elevator doors slid open and she fell backwards into the space. But he caught her. Pulled her to him. Her breath fluttered in her chest. Damn, he was so hot, and it was so unfair.
Perfectly Damaged: Luka : A bad boy mafia romance Page 23