But it had been MINE.
I decided to take it one step further.
Now that her hand had left the emerald, I plucked the necklace up, examining it in the streetlight. Her supple neck bowed toward me, and I fantasized of ripping off the necklace, tossing it into the street, and burying my mouth in her throat. Now I knew that I was drunk. “No,” I answered simply. “I knew Gabe. He’d been working on van Buiten himself.”
Sofi’s jaw dropped, but my hand skated beneath it, closing her lips for her. “He was just—not quick enough to spirit it away from you, I guess. But that’s…that’s Gabe. He’s a lazy ass procrastinator. He’d been working on her for weeks. Pretending to be her interior decorator, trying to get closer.”
“Oh, my god.” She bit her lower lip. Jesus, she was making this hard. I wanted to be mad at her, and to rip those filmy, four-thousand-dollar scarves off her body at the same time. She blinked up at me sweetly. “He was Mr. del Papas.” She shook her head up at me and swore, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know that Mr. del Papas was Gabe when he contacted Spider.”
She stepped away from me, the jewel slipping from between my fingers, and placed her own hand to the necklace instead. She swallowed and whirled, striding away from me. “You’ve put me into a very vulnerable position now,” she called over her shoulder.
I wish. “What?” I asked. “What vulnerable position?”
“You’re clearly angry,” she murmured, bringing her hands up to cup her head. “And here I am, working on this campaign with you.”
“Don’t you trust me?” I called after her.
“You mean the angry criminal mastermind whose brother I’ve wronged?” she yelled into the night, just as she passed a phone booth with an older woman exiting its shuttered door. Who even used fucking pay phones these days? She glared after Sofi in shock, then glanced at me, pulled her neckline further up her chest, and scurried in the opposite direction down the street. I winced. Damn, Sofi was indiscreet. No wonder Ronaldo wanted to keep her out of the business. If I had been the one in the field, not Gabe (or “Mr. del Papas”) at van Buiten’s estate, I bet I would’ve caught wind of Spider’s betrayal before it even happened. But it was too late to think about that now—and Gabe would make a terrible mastermind, just like I made a terrible con. I was trying it now, for the first time, and look what I’d done.
Fallen in love with the mark.
Well—not love. Not love.
“Look, Leo, I don’t blame you, okay?” Sofi was almost to the bus stop now. She wouldn’t look back at me, though I was only a pace or two behind her, following the dark scarves that were billowing in her wake. If I stretched out my hand, I could grasp one of them. “But maybe it would be better if I sat out on the Heart of Icarus. Maybe it would be better if I sat out on…all this—”
Before she could finish, my heart was wrenching in my chest. She was breaking up with the campaign. I was going to lose my revenge, and her, in one fell swoop. She didn’t trust me, and even though she shouldn’t have, even though she was right, it still hurt.
“Sofi,” I said, lunging forward and gripping her by one of her scarves, yanking it and sending her spinning against my chest. She gazed up at me with something like horror, though it wasn’t fear. Was she horrified with herself?
I let my knuckles brush softly down the side of her cheek, and her eyelashes fluttered dreamily at the touch. Her luscious lips parted slightly, enticing me. “Just because I have been angered doesn’t mean I can’t control myself.” My thumb roved over her parted lips, as soft as rose petals, and her head lulled on her neck, her eyes closing. Mm, she wanted me too. My cock strained against the fabric of my pants, begging to tear loose, reaching for the tender lips of her pussy.
My hand trailed down Sofi’s lulling throat, palm tracking her racing pulse. I felt like a vampire. I wanted to suck her dry. “Yes, I’ve done my research on the Castillos—and yes, they do compete with my people. Yes, I know that you—you took a score from beneath the Battista house. Yes, I know that Ronaldo doesn’t want you in this business, and that—that our people are not supposed to be working as one. But…we could change that.” Her eyes fluttered open and connected with mine, deeply, sensually. I felt the pulse run through my body and into my dick, electrifying every nerve. Shit. This was going to happen now. “We could show both houses that we can be good together.” I leaned down and brushed my lips over her earlobe, then her jaw. “You’re good,” I told her, almost breathing the words into her mouth. “For me.”
The tension culminated and snapped—I pressed my lips to hers and wrapped my arms around her. As that delicate brush fire kindled in the space between us, Sofi wilted against my chest. Our mouths cracked open and mingled together in the middle. My moan vibrated across her tongue. The anger came out of my pores, came out in my breath, and melted away with my inhibitions.
God dammit. I was trying to trap her, but kept getting tangled in the net myself.
“Come with me,” I commanded, scooping her up in my arms. Her legs opened and wrapped around me as I strode with her toward that phone booth we’d just passed. I felt her pussy pressed against my abdomen, piping hot and soaking wet. I shuttered the door to the glass compartment with my foot, then shoved us both inside, crashing against the black phone and propping her ass up on the little table beneath the phone. Some book—the stupid phone book—thunked onto the floor at our feet, and the pay phone came loose from its receiver and dangled by its cord against my thigh. I didn’t care. Every little thing around us—furniture, other people, time, space—was all just an obstacle to be flipped and torn and trampled over.
I could feel my shirt getting wet, pressed between her legs. She needed me too. “You’re not wearing underwear, are you?” I panted, scooping one hand into her skirt. She was smooth and slick and I shoved two fingers into her tight sex, everything but her and this moment spilling out of my mind. You couldn’t have convinced me that I had any other motive for being here in this phone booth with Sofi Castillo. I pumped as she writhed and whinnied like a damn nymph and I bit at her ear and her throat and her lips. I was losing my mind. I was drunk on her. “Are you ready?” I whispered into her ear. She moaned in response. “Sh, sh, sh, sh,” I warned her softly, one thumb rubbing over her opened lips. This phone booth was sweltering hot. Her eyes half-opened. “We’ve got to be very quiet.”
I pulled one of those scarves down from her shoulder and took her breast into my mouth like a starving man, rolling her nipple over my tongue, biting its tender underside. She yelped and cried out far too loudly, eliciting a guttural rumble from deep in my throat. I would have to deal with that soon. I lowered her feet to the ground, getting on my knees, and wrapped a length of her dress around my knuckles and wrenched. The fabric gave a satisfying rip and came away, leaving an exposed patch of her thigh right next to her sweetly beckoning entrance. God almighty, I could smell her like a hound.
The patch of fabric fell from my fingers as I buried my face in her Gucci scarves and ensconced myself, exploring, probing until my mouth found what it was looking for: a silky pink button to suckle. I pushed my tongue hard against her, using it just like any other muscle, with intention, with control. She cried out again and again—shit. I was going to have to fix that…in a minute. If I hadn’t dropped that shred from her dress, I could’ve shoved that into her perfect mouth. But first, I swept my tongue in circles over her, drawing another whimper from Sofi overhead. I tilted my face and peered up at her. Her throat was hyperextended, her back arched. The phone booth had wooden panels on the bottom, and I’d been hoping that they would hide me, and she would look like a regular woman, perhaps waiting for a call—but that body language was unmistakable. She was no regular woman. She was a woman on the tremulous brink of orgasm. She was a woman being pleasured in a phone booth.
I tilted my head and dove single-mindedly into her sex, lavishing, lapping as hard and as fast as I could. “Leo!” she shrilled, her fingers snatching at my hair, her back snappi
ng to attention. I could tell that she was now yelling down at me, instead of lulling backward. “Leo…Leo!” But I ignored her. I was busy tongue-fucking like the devil himself. “Leo…Leo…Leo! Ah!” Her fingers gripped my head so tightly that my scalp was aching, but still, I didn’t relent. I braced either side of the phone booth and pressed my face hard into her. Sofi’s thighs shook around my ears and I couldn’t breathe, but still, I didn’t relent. She would come now or I would die soon. She was screaming and she shouldn’t have been and she bucked against my face like she was trying to get me off her. I was supposed to be mad at her and she was drenching my chin with her juices, but still, I didn’t relent.
I didn’t relent until she sagged back, shaking gently, little more than a pile of electrified nerve endings now. She whimpered, even as my chin merely brushed her lower belly, departing.
“Sofi,” I said to her. I was heady, but I was calm. My fix was coursing through my veins. I needed to make her come like a junkie. I stood and wiped my soaked chin, smiling at her as I shook my head. “You were supposed to be quiet.”
Her curls were wet. They clung to her temples with sweat. Her eyes were glassy with satisfaction.
“I know, but I—you—”
“Sh, sh, sh, sh.” I laid a finger over her lips. “That was a very bad girl.” My thumb roved her bottom lip; its plushness was intoxicating. I’d never seen a lip so round and soft, so pink. She was like a fucking rosebud.
My hand went to my lapel and tugged the handkerchief from it, then pried her mouth open and shoved the silk square into it. I got a kind of savage gratification from the way her eyes bulged at me. “Mma mer moo mooey?” she asked.
She’d find out what I was doing soon enough.
The whole element of surprise is part of the magic itself.
One hand traveled down to my zipper, unfastening, while the other expertly scooped her ass up and deposited it onto the shelf beneath the phone. It would be no mystery to any passerby what we were doing now, but all our sweating and panting had clouded the glass sections so much, they looked frosted. She was probably going to leave her ass print on that little shelf, but I was several leagues beyond caring by now.
My cock practically exploded from behind my zipper, and shot into her with all the primal instinct of a predator dancing with its prey. The phone booth began immediately to tremble with our movements—so much for any hint of mystery. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care. Exquisite pleasure bolted up my spine and rioted inside my head. She was such an unbelievable perfect fit—like a glove in a fairy tale. Like I could search the entire kingdom for a fit this perfect…
Sofi’s head rolled back as we found a rhythm (and a sensational stroke) easily, immediately; she was dripping and I was rigid. We were together in one second, magnetically. I drove myself into her, full to the hilt, again and again, and she moaned, the sound dampened by the wad of kerchief in her mouth, protruding in folds like a silk bloom. I could see my initials sewn into its corner there, a stamp on her open mouth: L.B.
Mine. Mine, mine, mine…
I buried my face into her hair and filled her repeatedly, not making a sound. Her nails bit into my shoulders and my free hand slammed into the glass pane at her back; the print it left dripped and the phone dangled from its receiver in all the scuffling, sounding off with a distant dial tone. I drove into Sofi with a consistent beat, madly, viciously, nowhere near as gentle and careful as I had been on the beach and twice as deep as we had been in the car. The phone booth shuddered and rocked with my thrusts now and her wonderful pussy gripped me in a trembling embrace and we were probably about to go spilling sideways onto the sidewalk but she came again anyway, shrieking “Meeeooo! Meeooo!” into the gag. I think she might have been literally weeping at this point.
I slammed into her hips, meeting her in the middle, and did what I had refused to do ever since I’d met her: I let go. The visible world swirled away and I unraveled into her all the cum from our sessions before, jetting in spasms of agonizing joy, so tense one minute—veins bulging, sweat flowing—and dissolving in the next. Suddenly, I could have been a fucking zen master for the amount of nirvana I had attained. I leaned my sopping forehead into the crook of her shoulder and grunted like I was in pain as the last of my juice shot into her. God, yes. Fuck yes.
Very slowly, my eyes came back into focus.
This was no good. This was no good at all.
I wanted to die right here and now for this woman. She was the most beautiful and perfect thing I’d ever encountered.
“Mm,” Sofi said from behind the silk still shoved in her mouth.
I grasped the tip of the kerchief and let it unravel from between her teeth.
“What?” I gasped, still unable to fully stand.
“I said ‘wow,’” Sofi sighed. “We should fight more often.”
“Mm-hmm,” I grumbled. “That stupid restaurant really brings out the beasts in us.”
“What’s that sound?” Sofi asked.
“What--?” It was only then that I could consciously register the plaintive bleating of the disconnected phone, still swinging around my kneecaps. “Oh. The phone.” I scooped it up and slammed it back onto the receiver, exhaling heavily and finally pulling to a full stand. I helped Sofi down from that little table and shuttered open the phone booth door. She hobbled out into the night like a newborn calf, and I followed, high as a kite.
That elderly woman who had pulled her blouse tight and given me a dirty look before was standing there again. If I thought her look was dirty before, it made this one look like pure mud being hurled at us as we walked away, my arm around Sofi’s waist, supporting her unsteady gait. I was as bedraggled and victorious as a heavyweight boxer claiming his title. Mine. Mine, mine, mine.
13
Sofi
Wednesday morning had a slow start. I woke up slowly, fluttering my eyelashes like a goddamn Disney princess. I stretched leisurely and I took my time in the shower. Then I took my time picking out the perfect top. I descended the staircase on a dreamy cloud of a hundred orgasms, and there was Madeline, standing in Uncle Ronaldo’s kitchen, enjoying a cherry Popsicle. My nose curled.
Ever since she’d blurted out that she would “party” with Leo, something had changed between us, whether she knew it or not.
“Hey there, pretty lady,” Madeline greeted me coolly. I strode to the pantry and fished out a bag of ground dark roast and coffee filters, not looking at her.
“Eating a Popsicle for breakfast, huh? Isn’t Luna here?” I asked snidely. Luna was the chef who could fulfill your heart’s every last desire. I took the dark roast to the coffee pot and opened it.
“I’m actually eating a Popsicle for late, late dinner,” Madeline said.
“Of course you are,” I grumbled, inserting the filter above the coffee pot.
“Still mad, huh?”
“No,” I lied, gently filling the filter with fresh grounds. “I did the reasonable, adult thing, and I talked to Leo about it. Everything’s fine.”
“Mm-hmm. Well, that’s good. Good for you.”
I took a cup from the cupboard and filled the back of the coffee machine with fresh water, careful to not slam anything and give away my annoyance. “Ahem. What?” I said, frowning at Madeline from over my shoulder. She wore a smug expression of assumed innocence.
“I said that was good for you. So, did you accuse him, and then there was a round of the best sex you’ve ever had?” she asked, still wide-eyed.
I hesitated, then turned from her and slammed the back of the coffee machine down, jamming my finger into the ON button. “Maybe,” I answered shortly.
“Classic.” Madeline gave a little sniff and pivoted. I stared hard at the coffee pot as it percolated, spreading my palms across the counter and feeling the stress from our conversation settle right onto my shoulders. Maybe she had a point. What if all this sex was just a tactic to keep me distracted? Damn it. I snatched the pot out of the machine and poured it into a cup, stari
ng down at the steamy abyss. Leo and I had to talk. Again. Right after I chugged this liquid strength. And no sexy interruptions this time!
The Battista estate was every bit as sweeping and palatial as Uncle Ronaldo’s private stretch of beach. It was obvious that Leo was as accomplished a financier as a thief. I knocked and knocked again, then rang the doorbell, a frown culminating on my brow. Was no one home in this whole huge house—
I was stretching my hand forward to ring the bell one final time when the door popped open.
My jaw dropped. In front of me stood a stunning hulk of a man, with sandy, shoulder-length hair and dazzling sky blue eyes. He wore a thin white t-shirt, which betrayed his chiseled pectorals and abdomen, and loose gray jeans rolled over his ankles. He was barefoot. “Sorry about that,” he said, his eyes ticking over me thoughtfully. He was wiping his hands with a damp cloth. “I was cleaning out the gutters on the other side of the house. Can I help you?”
“Don’t tell me you’re another Battista brother,” I said, laughing breathlessly. “That would just be too much.”
“Ah, afraid not,” he answered. “Just one of their many associates. My name is Maximiliano. Or Max. And who are you, beautiful?”
In spite of being friendly, he was also discerning, which I guess was good. Maybe I was a little disappointed that Leo hadn’t been telling the world and showing everyone my picture.
“My name is Sofia,” I told him. “I’m—a friend of Leo’s.”
Max scrutinized me with a little quirk in his lip, blue eyes turning to a smolder. His eyes trailed me from head to toe, unabashed. “Ah, so you’re Sofia,” he said, biting down on his lower lip with an unmistakable air of what almost seemed like greed. “Now it all makes sense. But, as luck would have it, Mr. Battista has departed for the day.”
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