After a moment, he groaned. “We can’t do this here.”
“Let’s go to your house,” I said breathlessly.
He grimaced. “Can’t go there either. My Ma and Marie are there packing up come things she forgot in the attic. She keeps coming back,” he whined.
I thought fast. Where could we be alone? “The boat house. You still have a key?”
Without a word, he started the motor and tore down the street. My head was thrown back against the seat and the wind rushed to meet me, and I laughed, the air around me crackling with energy.
On the short drive to the boathouse, I didn’t bother to keep my hands off him. Unbuttoning his pants, I freed his hot, hard erection and tantalized him with my fingers and palms, the backs of my hands and the inside of my wrists.
“Jesus, Tiny. I can barely drive.” Joey gripped the steering wheel hard.
With a wicked grin, I lowered my head and licked him like a lollipop.
“Oh, fuck, now I really can’t drive. Oh my God. Oh Christ. Where the fuck is that boathouse, I can’t even remember the way right now.”
I laughed with him inside my mouth, the hum from my lips making him even harder. Tasting the salty sweetness of his imminent release, I took him deeper, relishing the feel of him at the back of my throat.
He must have remembered where the driveway was, because my head thumped the steering wheel as the Ford traversed the pocked dirt road that led down to the dock. Giggling again, I sat up. “Ouch. Guess I better stop for a minute.”
He parked under the willow tree and grabbed my hand, hauling me out of the driver’s side and racing for the boathouse without even shutting the car door. At the boathouse entrance, he fumbled with the key.
“Hurry,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around his torso and kissing his back.
Finally the lock gave. The moment we were inside we tore frantically at each other’s clothing, our lips and tongues and teeth colliding hungrily. The short amount of time that had elapsed since we’d last had our hands and mouths on each other was completely out of proportion with the appetites we’d built up. With impatient fingers I pushed the braces from Joey’s shoulders and shoved the buttons of his shirt through their holes. He managed to get my skirt off before shrugging off his shirt and pulling his undershirt over his head. Giving up on the tiny buttons on my blouse, he bent and yanked my underwear to my ankles. I kicked it off and jumped up, twining my stocking-clad legs around his waist.
When he licked his fingers and reached low, I opened my mouth to tell him he needn’t bother, I was already wet, but then his fingers were rubbing me, inside and out, and all I could do was sigh with pleasure.
Satisfied he wouldn’t hurt me, he moved toward the door. I cried out as he shoved his cock inside me, slamming my body against the wood. My eyes rolled back in my head and I dug my nails into his skin. But he didn’t stop. Again and again, he drove me into the wall with powerful, deep thrusts, shocking me with his violent need to fill me so completely.
When I regained the capacity to respond, I covered his face with feverish kisses. Between gasps, I breathed his name, pulled his hair, licked and sucked his neck, his mouth, his tongue. And when he put his hands on my ass and altered his angle just enough so that I rode him tighter to his body, the rock hard base of his cock rubbed me just the right way. I clutched him hard with arms and legs. “Right there,” I whispered against his lips. “Fuck me right there. Yes, yes, yes.” Something deep inside me was tightening and coiling in a way I’d never experienced. It wasn’t only just the delicious friction between our bodies; it was some hidden place in my body he was able to reach this way, and I had no words, no thoughts, no voice for what he was doing to me.
Higher and higher I climbed as he moved with utter abandon, until my muscles clenched and pulsed around him. Starbursts of color exploded in front of my eyes and I moaned his name over and over through the shimmering waves of bliss.
“Fuck, I can feel you,” he whispered. “Oh my God, I’m gonna come so hard.”
“Do it,” I panted. “Now, Joey. I want to feel it, now.”
Slamming me back into the door again, he groaned long and hard as he poured into me. I felt his shuddering release as deeply as I’d felt my own and exploded once more, the delicious rippling at my center lingering even longer than before.
Joey dropped his forehead to my shoulder. I hadn’t even realized my eyes were closed until I opened them and the colors disappeared. One by one, my senses returned. Beyond Joey’s dark hair, I saw the glow of the moon through the high windows. I felt the damp heat of his shoulders under my hands. I heard our heavy breathing as our lungs recovered and smelled the musty wood of the boathouse walls. Lowering my lips to his neck, I slipped my tongue through them and tasted the salty warmth of his skin.
“You keep doing that, I’m gonna have to pound you into the wall again.” Joey’s voice was muffled in my shoulder.
“Promise?”
He turned his face into my neck and inhaled deeply. “Mmmmm. Yes.”
“Good, because I liked it.”
Joey chuckled before picking up his head. “I used to wonder what you’d be like. I had a feeling you’d be a firecracker.”
“And? Am I a firecracker?”
“Doll, TNT’s got nothing on you.”
I laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
“I used to wonder what you’d be like too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And I used to touch myself all over, imagining my hands were yours,” I whispered.
I thought his eyes would pop from their sockets. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Maybe you’ll show me sometime.”
“I’ll show you right now.”
Joey staggered backward as if he’d been shot. “Oh my God, Tiny. You’re killing me.” Keeping me hoisted around his waist, he dropped to his knees on the cement floor, and then onto his bottom. My knees came to rest beside his hips and he leaned back on his elbows. “Show me,” he said.
I bit my lip. Was he serious? Down on the floor, the shadows were thick, and I could barely make out his expression.
But then I felt him stir inside me. “Show me,” he said again.
Oh, what the hell.
Slowly I unbuttoned my blouse while he watched. When it was undone completely, I did the same with the tiny row of buttons down the front of my chemise. With each new inch of my skin exposed, he grew harder. I let the blouse slip from my shoulders, but kept the chemise on, open at the chest. My thighs were pale above the tops of my black stockings. When I looked down, I saw the place where our bodies were joined, and a rush of arousal swept over me. My skin tingled. Involuntarily, I clenched around him.
He grew harder.
I brought my hands to my breasts, kneading them as I began to rock my hips a little. “First I’d do this,” I whispered, keeping my eyes on his. “And I’d pretend it was your hands on me.”
Joey’s mouth fell open and he made no effort to close it.
My breasts were small but responsive, and as I played with my nipples they tightened and peaked. I brushed my fingers over the taut pink skin, pinching and pulling them. His cock continued to swell, and I closed my eyes as I circled my hips.
“Oh my God,” Joey moaned.
“And then,” I said, sliding one hand down my body, “I’d do this.” When my fingers reached the warm, slick spot just above where our bodies were connected, I rubbed myself slowly.
By now Joey was fully hard and I could feel him moving his hips, trying to push up inside me. “Christ, you are so beautiful,” he said. “I’m dying to touch you but I don’t want you to stop.”
I laughed, luxuriating in not only the compliment, but the intimacy of the moment and the erotic pleasure of the act. “Remember the night you slept on the couch at my house?” I asked. “I could barely sleep that night, knowing you were downstairs.” Taking my other hand from my chest, I le
aned back slightly, placing it on his leg behind me. The new angle increased the pressure to that place inside me that made me gasp and arch.
Joey groaned as if in agony. “Me either. God, I wanted you so badly that night.”
“And then the next morning, you stayed to cook breakfast and I went upstairs to take a bath.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, and this is what I did while I thought about you. Your hands on me, your mouth on me, your cock inside me.”
“Oh my God.” Joey sat up fast and took a nipple between his teeth. Crying out at his bite and the uncontrollable urge raging through my body, I held on to his thick, muscular shoulders and rocked against him. Nothing had ever felt so good in my entire life, and as the frenzy inside me hit the tipping point, I flung myself forward, knocking Joey onto his back and pinning my hands on his chest. Bucking wildly on top of him, I thrilled at the sound of his rasps and strangled grunts and the sight of his gorgeous jaw dropping open as another climax hit him. He gripped my hips hard as we came together, our bodies pulsing in perfect sync.
When I could move again, I brushed the hair from his forehead. “You know, that was actually even better than it was in my fantasy.”
“Mine too,” he whispered, eyes closed.
“Now you’ll have to show me how you touched yourself when you thought about me. It’s only fair.”
He opened one eye and looked at me. “You’re killing me.”
“Not right now, silly. Maybe next time.”
“Deal.” He shut his eyes again and sighed. “God, I love you. And I don’t want to go, but I promised to meet Angelo at ten. I should get you home.”
I couldn’t bring myself to release him yet. “How much will you owe him?”
He grimaced. “Probably about ten grand. I’ll have to run booze from Chicago to keep Sam’s nose out of it. Or maybe New York. But don’t worry about it.”
“Ha.”
He squeezed my hips once more. “Come on, let’s go. Better pull yourself together, though. I don’t need your dad after me at this point.”
Reluctantly I got to my feet, my knees aching a bit from the cement. “At this point, what would it matter?” I checked for holes in my stockings. “We’re getting married, aren’t we?”
Still on his back, he lifted his hips and pulled his pants up, a masculine maneuver that somehow made my belly tighten even after I’d already come three times in the last half hour. “Yeah, the sooner the better. Because I want to do this all the time now.”
Smiling, I buttoned my blouse and pulled on my skirt. “Me too. Any idea where my underwear went?”
Joey squinted into the shadows. “I think I see something white over there.” He walked over and picked them up. “These belong to you?” he asked, swinging them around on one finger.
When I grabbed for them, he held them out of my reach. “Now, hold on just a second. I once made some pretty good dough charging the boys to peek at your knickers. I might be able to afford a ring if you let me keep these.”
“Joey Lupo! You give me back my underwear this instant!” I jumped for them.
“Last time you threatened to tell my mother.” He held them way over my head.
“Don’t think I won’t, mister. Or better yet, I’ll punish you myself.”
He stopped moving and considered that before handing them to me.
“That’s what I thought.”
On the way back to my house, I asked Joey if he’d told his family about us planning to marry.
“Not yet. I thought we could do it together.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “Maybe dinner one night this week over at my apartment?”
His apartment? “So you’re going to keep it?”
“For now.” He glanced at me. “We can live there after we’re married. But I’d like a house eventually. Once I save up the money.”
“I’d love that. All of it.”
“Good.” He kissed my hand. “When do you want to get married?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Me too. Let’s go see the priest tomorrow, OK?”
“OK.” God, there was so much to do—I hadn’t even told Evelyn yet! “Where will we do it?”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get married where my sisters did, at Holy Family.”
“That sounds nice.” Bridget had been married there too.
“And then maybe luncheon at the restaurant? We could close it for the day. Would you like that?”
“That’s perfect!” Inside my chest, my heart thumped a happy rhythm. “Hey, you know what? Drop me off at Evelyn’s—I want to tell her the good news if she’s home.”
“Sure.” He turned onto her street and chuckled a bit. “Hope Rosie doesn’t throw something at you. She was coming on pretty strong.”
“Yeah, I saw that. Looked like it was really tough on you.”
He grinned. “I liked that it made you jealous.”
“Of course you did. Well, not to worry, I’m sure she’s on to the next sap by now.”
“Swell. She can bring him to our wedding.”
“As long as she keeps her hands off the groom, it’s fine by me.”
“Could be tough. Especially if I wear my nice suit.”
I sighed in disgust as he pulled up in front of Evelyn’s house. “You know, just when I think you’re a nice guy…” I opened the door and started to get out, but he grabbed my arm.
“You know how much I love you, right? How happy we’re gonna be?”
“Beat it, Joey Lupo. You’re a troublemaker, that’s what you are.” I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “And if you didn’t have such perfect lips and hands, or such a nice big”—I glanced down at his crotch—“apartment, I wouldn’t even talk to you.”
He laughed out loud, and I pulled my arm away. “No kiss goodnight?” he asked.
“You’ve had enough kissing. Now go.” I slammed the door.
Grinning, he threw me a kiss and took off down the street.
Chapter Seventeen
Later that night, I walked home, my cheeks sore from smiling and laughing so much with Evelyn. Other parts of me were sore too, but even that made me happy.
At the news of my engagement, Evelyn had been stunned, then ecstatic, then envious, and then thrilled when I asked her to be a bridesmaid. After a lot of squealing and hugging and misty eyes, she got practical, going over all the details I’d have to attend to before the wedding took place.
“You’ll need bridesmaids dresses—you’ll have your sisters, of course—and flowers. You’ll have to plan the menu for the party and have Bridget’s dress altered and get a license and oh! You will let me throw you a bridal shower, won’t you?”
I’d winced and shook my head, telling her I wasn’t really the bridal shower type, and anyway, we were moving into Joey’s apartment, which already had everything we’d need, assuming his mother let us keep it all. Did I really need my own china or silver tea service to sit unused on a shelf like Bridget’s?
Eventually, Evelyn got smug and told me she’d seen it between Joey and me all along, and how even Rosie had admitted that he hadn’t laid a finger on her and in fact he had talked about nothing but me the two nights he’d driven her home. When we imagined her sitting next to him in the car, getting huffier and huffier at his inattention, we laughed out loud.
As I rounded the corner onto my block, I thought about Joey’s meeting with Angelo. Twisting my hands together, I prayed that everything had gone smoothly. Why hadn’t I made him promise to call?
Daddy’s car was still in the driveway. I was surprised that he was taking a night off, although it was a Monday. Perhaps the club was closed. I let myself into the house, which was dark and silent. Everyone must have gone to bed already. I knew I should too, but I was antsy. I wouldn’t be able to sleep worrying about Joey. So when my eye caught Daddy’s keys on the front hall table, I swiped them into my hand and went out again.
I wanted everything settled. No point waiting until
tomorrow.
I’d talk to Enzo tonight.
#
“Floor, miss?”
“Nine, please.” My voice was shaky, and I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”
The operator at the Statler pushed nine and the doors closed. As we ascended, my stomach churned incessantly. What would his reaction be? Had I made the wrong decision to come here tonight? I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. By the time the elevator pinged and the doors open, I was close to nausea.
But I stepped out, nodding at the operator behind me and taking a few deep breaths. Come on. You faced Angel down when you were hundreds short on the ransom. You tricked Raymond into all sorts of things, even when you were at gunpoint. You can end things with Enzo without falling apart.
I put one foot in front of the other and began the walk down the hall to the front apartment. But my knees wobbled. What if Enzo didn’t see it my way? What if he tried to change my mind?
No, impossible. I straightened my shoulders and lengthened my strides, confident I wouldn’t be seduced by him ever again. Maybe I won’t even find him attractive.
Somewhere deep in my brain I heard a peal of laughter.
OK fine. But even if I find him attractive, there is nothing he can do or say to make me change my mind about Joey.
Positive of that, I approached the door to his apartment, lifted my fist, and knocked.
No answer.
Maybe he wasn’t here? He’d said he would be. I put my ear to the door, and sure enough I heard his voice. It was too muffled to tell what he was saying, but it was definitely his.
I knocked again, louder.
Nothing.
Shifting my weight from one leg to the other, I debated using the key he’d given me. I’d brought it to give back to him, along with the necklace. I raised my hand to knock one more time when suddenly a rhythmic thumping began. I cocked my head—it sounded like it was coming from inside the apartment.
Then laughter. Female.
That’s it—I was using the key.
I rummaged in my purse, pulled it out, and slipped it into the lock with trembling fingers. Bursting into the apartment, I took in the low light, the women’s heels on the floor near the window, and an evening bag on the coffee table.
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