by Elle Wright
“When I got your letter saying something bad had happened…no, let me go back so this makes sense.” She sort of laughed, but it was to herself. “I’m about to break the girls’ club cardinal rule.”
“Which is?”
“Never let the guy know how much you’re into him.”
He moved over so he was right up against her and put his arm around her shoulder. “Would it help if I turned in my man card and admitted I’m fuckin’ crazy about you?”
She dropped her head to his chest and nodded.
He lifted her chin with his finger and stared into those serious hazel eyes. “Absolutely fuckin’ nuts. Zoom. Gone. Wait. Here. Lemme hand you my balls.”
She laughed. Leaned in and kissed him. Hard. “Okay then. Here goes.” He rested his palm against her neck. “After you told me about the shooting at your school, I did some sleuthing and found out it happened at Sagawick Valley High School. I couldn’t believe you grew up about forty miles from me. Since I knew you went to a different school after the shooting, I found your sophomore high school yearbook and looked up all the guys whose names started with G. Then I narrowed it down to the jocks since you’d told me you were on a team at college. I thought you were Glen Ryback.”
He cracked up. Ryback. That tool. “Jesus. How’d you come to that conclusion?”
“Since I knew you went to an Ivy League school, I didn’t think the kid name Giovanni Di Caro was Ivy League material because…well…because.”
He motioned for her to continue. “Because?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and squinted her eyes. “Because I didn’t think anyone that handsome was serious enough to go to an Ivy League school.”
Okay. Yeah. This was good. His dick agreed and started to get ideas.
She pointed at his hard cock and said, “Put that away, you narcissist.”
He smirked. “Yo, Ace. I’m not the one who thought I was too good-looking to go to Brown. You were.”
“I knew I shouldn’t’ve told you. Now you’re going to lord it over me.”
“Well, yeah.” She smacked him on the chest. “But in an affectionate sort of way.”
“I need some dessert.”
“Lollipop?”
She smacked him again.
Laughing, he got up and put a cannoli on a plate, then brought it over to her.
She took her time polishing off the thing, and he watched every nibble, lick, and bite. Goddamn. He really was going to be hard for the next forty to fifty years.
After she’d tortured him enough, and she knew he was watching that mouth of hers like it was his job, she sat back and said, “That’s how I knew what you looked like.”
“I figured.”
“Gee, you really are Ivy League material.”
“Smart-ass.”
She grinned. Then sobered. “When you wrote something really bad had happened, I knew where to look, and found all the articles and TV clips.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “That’s when I realized who your father is. Your family.”
“And you came anyway.”
Her expression said, Are you kidding me right now?
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’d told me you didn’t want to go into the family business. I knew,” she tugged his hand, “I know you aren’t him.” He nodded. “When I decided to come back east, I had to make sure you were going to be here. I had to give TLC my phone number, so I hacked their system to get yours.”
“Clever girl. But that isn’t the accessory after the fact you’re worried about, is it?”
“Well, now that you mention it, that too. But no.”
He gave her all the time she needed. He knew whatever she was going to tell him was going to be hardcore.
“I set up that sonofabitch and good. Since my mother was never going to swear out a complaint against him, I had to find a way to put his ass behind bars for a long fucking time. I hacked the trucking company he worked for and over the course of eight months, I transferred money out of their accounts and put it in a bank account I’d opened in his name. You get this is federal weight. Two banks were involved aside from the trucking company.”
Damn. He knew he should tell her how dangerous it was, and she shouldn’t have done it, but he was fuckin’ proud of her. She was in high school when she set that motherfucker up. So smart, and so brave. His. Girl.
He nodded for her to continue.
“Until the last three transfers, I kept everything hidden. Then I made sure the company knew it was him who was ‘stealing’ their money, and they called the cops. On the last Thursday of my junior year of high school, the FBI banged down the door to our apartment at five in the morning and took that sorry excuse of a human being away in handcuffs.”
“And your mother?”
“Had cancer and didn’t know it because he never let her go to the doctor. She really was fading away. By the time she did see someone, it was too late.”
“Oh baby. I’m so, so sorry.” He wrapped her up in his arms and held on until she nodded against his chest, wiping the wet from that side of her face against his skin.
“She died ten days before he did,” she muttered, her head leaning against his sternum. “The July after I finished my first year at Brown.”
He sat back and looked into her shiny eyes. “You went to Brown?”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her cheeks. “Seems I’m Ivy League material too.”
“Wait. You weren’t there when I was a freshman.”
“A year ahead of you, youngster.”
“You’re – ”
“Three months away from my twenty-first birthday.”
“You lost a year when you ran.”
“Yeah. This past semester was the first time I’ve been able to get back to school since Brown.”
“Hold up. Go back. You said the piece of shit is dead.”
She nodded. “That’s why I had to run. He was killed in prison a few days before his trial was set to begin.”
“I don’t understand. That should’ve been your free pass.”
“Would’ve been if his father hadn’t cottoned onto me.”
Gio’s body jolted. Someone was after his girl. Holy shit. She’d put herself in danger coming back here. To be with him.
“Talk to me.”
“His father is a scumbag mobster who covers his real occupation with a chain of dry-cleaning stores he uses to launder his dirty money. Drugs, prostitution, all mid-level. He has his little territory in Providence, and he’s king of his tiny empire. He’d gotten his son the job at the trucking company because he knew the fruit of his loins was a fucking moron. Which meant he knew there was no way that asshole was clever enough to pull off an electronic skim job.”
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
“It took him a while to suspect me. At first, I’m sure I didn’t ping his radar because I was a high school kid. And I’m a girl. But I’m guessing his son must’ve said something about how smart I am, and how much I hated him. It would have been easy enough to find out I was attending Brown and was taking computer science classes.”
Motherfucker.
“He put two and two together and was stupid enough to tip his hand. He came looking for me after he buried his kid. I was taking summer classes and was in the library. One of my classmates told me some thug was looking for me. I ghosted the next day.”
He wanted to hear the rest, but Natalia looked wiped. He stood and put out his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
She nodded and took his hand then detoured to the bathroom.
Knees touching, they lay facing each other. He wanted to lighten the mood while in the back of his brain he was running options about what he would do to eliminate the threat to his girl. Okay, what they would do, because if he made a move without telling her, she would kill him, twice.
“You like guessing games?” He ran his finger up and down her hand resting on the bed between them.
“I guess.”
“Smart-ass.”
She smiled. “Su
re. Go ahead.”
“EJ’s real name is Rusty.”
Her laugh was loud and long. “God, no. How’d you come up with that?”
“He’s the boss of a hardware store. Rusty nails is what came to mind.”
She gave her head a little shake. “El Jefe was a good moniker. EJ are his real initials. Edward James. Everyone calls him Eddie.”
“Huh. I have his husband as Bob.”
“Blake.”
“S is Simon.”
“Stan.”
“Shit. I’m batting zero.”
“Keep going. This is fun.”
Exactly what he was going for. “F is Fred. Well, really, Fuck-up, but that’s not a proper name.”
“Frank. But he is a fuck-up. Eddie’s already told Mrs. B that Frank has to go, but, typical Eddie, he’s giving him a month of ‘hard probation,’ which in Eddie speak means he’ll scold him for a month before giving him an official warning.”
“Soft touch.”
“Eddie? The nicest guy you’ll ever meet in your life.”
Gio thought of what his father would’ve done with a Frank. It didn’t bear repeating.
“So Mrs. B really is Mrs. B?”
“Yeah. Their last name is Berenikoff. As far as I can tell, no one ever uses their full last name. Always Mr. and Mrs. B. If I had to guess, Eddie’s grandfather probably was one of the few people who called them by their first names.”
“Myrna and Bill?”
“Oooo, close. Myra and Harry.”
He laughed. “Their kids…cop number one is Aaron, and cop number two is Jason.”
“Trask and Ethan.”
“I’m not very good at this.”
“No. But it’s a kick to hear what you called them in your head when you read my letters.”
“Have I told you how much I love your letters?”
“I bet as much as I love yours.”
He leaned in and touched his lips to hers. Christ. Any little thing she said or did set him off.
“Two more. The gossipy broad at the drugstore is Mrs. Reynolds.”
She slapped the mattress. “Hot damn. Spot on.” Then she clapped and whistled like a longshoreman, which cracked him up.
Still chuckling, he said, “And the baby transporter – ”
“She’s not a starship, she’s a surrogate.”
He dropped his brows. “Phraseology.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
“’Preciate it. Roxy.”
“Rita. But good guess.”
“Now you’re humoring me.”
“Is it working?”
“I’m a guy. Stroke my ego and I puff up like a peacock.”
“Such a bullshit artist.”
He grinned. “Okay, brains. Have at it.”
She tapped her forefinger to her lips.
No fair. He wanted to do that.
“O is Oscar. Has to be. Like Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple.”
“Don’t know that one.”
“Really?” He shook his head. “You have a lot of catching up to do, G-man. You’re way behind on the classics.”
He had the rest of his life to do whatever she wanted him to. “A comedy, I take it.”
“One of the best Neil Simon plays ever to make it to the silver screen.”
“Okay. You’re on. And no. Not Oscar. Ollie for Oliver.”
“He doesn’t act like an Oliver.”
“He doesn’t act like a human being.”
“Are you guys all together again in a quad next year?”
“We requested it, so probably, yeah. None of us want to adapt to new people.”
“Men. So inflexible.”
“Slide over here, baby. I’ll show you everywhere I’m double-jointed.”
“You didn’t just say that.”
“I couldn’t help myself. The setup was too perfect.”
She blinked fast a few times then gave him pop-eyes. “T is Thomas. I know, I know, not original, but in my head I said Oscar and Tommy. Sue me.”
“Ted for Theodore. We call him Ted Talks because when he’s high, which is often, he doesn’t shut up.”
“Now there’s a picture. Man-bun with fugly beard, high and pontificating.”
Gio pulled her to him and kissed her because he had to.
Breathing hard – now that right there puffed up his chest big-time – she asked, “What was that for?”
“Fugly. I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“An apt descriptor. His scraggly beard was stuck in my head.”
“Believe me, it’s worse in person. Especially after he’s eaten.”
She made an ew face. “E is Evan.”
Now he slapped the mattress. Behind him, since she was still right up against him, where she was supposed to be, all the fuckin’ time. “Bingo.”
“Bingo?”
“Catholic church. Wednesday evenings?”
She shook her head. “No religion here. I haven’t been in a church since I was nine years old, and we didn’t do bingo.”
“My nonna went every Wednesday, rain, snow, sleet, or hail.”
“She was a mailman in a former life.”
“Smart-ass.” He smacked her butt and left his hand there. She wiggled against it. Excellent, she was getting frisky.
“She was a five-star general in a former life. Believe me when I say there is no doubt about that.”
“Formidable and can cook. Good combination.”
He smiled. “The best. Anyway, she dragged me with her until I was nine. Then I begged off because Sofia was old enough to take my place. I was working on my man card already.”
“Early adapter.”
“Encoded in my DNA.”
“No doubt.” She pushed her fingers into his hair and rested them on his scalp where she made tiny back-and-forth scratches. Jesus. Everything she did felt amazing. “Ian.”
“Nope. Ignacio. Everyone calls him Iggy Pop.”
“Strung-out, or strung-out personality?”
“Strung-out personality. Wired for sound.”
“You had mentioned.”
“Mmhmm.” He was playing his fingers along the top of her crease.
“The glam squad: Dean and Nash.”
“Darius and Nathaniel. Nate.”
“Slick, huh?”
“Spit and polish, all the way.”
“So confession here, your roomie threw me for a loop. Putting a name that begins with an H to a quirky genius was no easy thing. I came up with Hayden, and I know that’s not correct, but it’s the best I got.”
Gio squeezed her ass and chuckled. “He’s so far from a Hayden, it’s not funny. Howie. Howard Greenblatt.”
“He’s your guy, isn’t he?”
“We’re tight, but it’s quiet. We don’t hang the way I do with Evan, but I know Howie always has my back. He waited for me to come back to get my things after I knew Sofia wasn’t hurt. School had been out for days, but he stayed at the quad to make sure I was all right. He could’ve called. Evan and Iggy did. The other guys texted, but Howie is low key. He doesn’t do drama, and he’s big on not intruding. But if I called him right now and told him I needed him, he’d be here as soon as he could. No questions asked.”
“A rare and special friend.”
“Yeah. He is. He was my roomie freshman year. By winter break, we’d agreed to bunk for the duration.”
She arched her back and his hand moved to one of the globes of her spectacular ass.
“I wanna eat.”
“There still food out on the…oh, ohhh.”
He flipped her on her back, made his way down her body, and pushed his shoulders between her thighs.
He’d tasted her mouth and her skin, but he wanted her pussy on his lips. Her juices down his throat, and her coming against his mouth.
Bed
Their suite
Fairmont Hotel
Natalia
When she lifted her head off Gio’s chest and saw
the bedside clock said Sunday, 10:23 a.m., Natalia did a double take. Well, considering how they’d spent the hours between midnight and four, she figured they hadn’t really slept in. Before Gio stirred and put his morning wood to good use, she slid out of the bed and dashed to the bathroom. She was back in bed, propped against the headboard as she watched him wander in from the living room. He must have used the little WC at the front of the suite. God help her, she took one look at his long, muscled body, and she was wet and ready to go again.
Instead of coming back to bed, he sat in the wing chair in the corner, spread his legs so the full package was on display then said, “Grab a condom, baby, and get over here and sit on my dick.”
“What a romantic good morning. I mean, how could a girl refuse?”
“My thoughts exactly.” He slapped the arm of the chair a couple of times. “Don’t dawdle, Ace.” He looked down at himself. “I’m dying to get up in your tight pussy.”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
Seated on his irrepressible cock, she sighed when he placed his large warm hands on her face and their gazes locked.
“Nothing will ever feel better than this.”
She smiled, and when he kissed her, she began riding him like she had to win the Kentucky Derby. And when he started slapping her rump, he helped bring ’em home.
Still inside her, he moved to stand, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, thinking those magnificent thighs were seriously strong. She was no lightweight, but he walked them across the room without one stutter in his step. He laid her on the bed and pulled out of her slowly. She pouted, and he grinned.
Sitting up with the covers pooled around her, she was reading the breakfast menu when he came back from the bathroom.
“I’m thinking granola and yoghurt.”
“I’m thinking we need to get back to Fiddler’s Rest.”
Natalia dropped the menu book, her jaw working, but no sound was coming out of her mouth. Gio sat next to her and grabbed her ankle through the blanket. Like a ground, she found her airwaves. “What did you just say?”
“You, my little hacker, are not the only one who knows how to sleuth on the web.” She crossed her arms over her bare breasts, and he chuckled. “The letter with Shanghai Buffet also mentioned Abel’s Auto Repair.”
“I did not put Abel’s in a letter.”
“’Fraid so, Ace. Freudian slip.”