“What are you two talking about?”
“Mythology,” I said in a bored tone. “Greek.”
“Ah. My favorite kind.”
Allister took a drink, watching the pool. He looked as apathetic as he’d claimed to be earlier, but something else wove through his disinterest. He was too apathetic. A shadow of something dark passing by below ice.
“I should have known I’d find you here, being lazy by the pool.”
“Yes, well, one can only tolerate the same story five times. Though, I’ve heard you mixed it up tonight.”
Antonio chuckled, reaching my chaise and running a hand around the back of my neck. “Don’t be mad, cara. It was a tasteful story, I promise.” His eyes coasted to Allister, hardening from amusement to jagged steel. “It’s not like I told them you bled all over my cock.”
I cringed.
The tension was so stifling I could hardly breathe. It settled in the air like late summer humidity, filling my lungs and touching my skin.
I downed my glass of tequila, biting down on it. The liquor burned away the humiliation in my throat. My husband was angry at me for a multitude of reasons, but this—whatever this was—wasn’t for my benefit. The two men weren’t even looking at each other, but nobody could miss the tightly-leashed venom between them.
“Your friends miss you.” Antonio’s grasp on my neck tightened enough for me to understand the warning. “Don’t be long.”
He disappeared inside.
Malevolence danced in the air, refusing to depart. My gaze drifted to Allister. Apathetic, but underlined with something so very scary.
A quiet, uncomfortable laugh escaped me. “It would seem my husband doesn’t like you either.” I swallowed. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll find some other dirty fed to work with?”
His gaze said he was not afraid in any way.
I’d never seen someone act so unenthusiastic to my husband’s face, let alone one of his employees. It seemed Allister wasn’t buying what Antonio was selling like everyone else did. It was . . . refreshing, and the first thing I truly liked about the man.
The tension in the air was still so thick I would grow lightheaded if I didn’t clear it.
“No date tonight?”
“No.”
“What happened to . . .” I briefly flew through the list of blondes he’d paraded around, coming up with the name of the last one. “Portia?”
“Monotony.”
“But you were perfect for each other.” I sighed, like I was seriously put out. “Both gorgeous, composed, unfeeling . . . What if she was the one and you tossed her aside without giving her a real chance?”
His gaze, so unimpressed with anything coming out of my mouth, touched me. “I didn’t know you had such an investment in my relationships.”
I got to my feet, pulling the pins out of my hair as I made my way toward him. The long strands tumbled down my back. His body tensed as the click of my heels moved closer, but he didn’t look at me until I stood in front of him.
“Have you ever thought that maybe you’re the problem?” I took the tumbler from his hand and stole a sip. The vodka in his glass always tasted better than any other.
“I’m guessing you’re going to enlighten me?” He took his glass back. He would always turn it to drink from a different spot other than where my lips had touched, but tonight, he drank straight from where my pink lipstick left a mark. It sent a strange rush of heat to my stomach.
I swallowed. “A woman likes some passion and spontaneity in her life. You, Officer, need to loosen up.”
“Should I fuck other women in her bed? Spontaneous enough, you think?”
God, he just had to know about Sydney.
I sighed.
I wanted to put a chink in that ice he wore like armor.
Stepping closer, I ran a finger across his jawline, my voice soft. “You have such a handsome face. Does it get you everything you want?”
“Almost.”
There was something so significant about that single word it put a hitch in my breath. I let my finger fall from his face with a light scrape of my stiletto-shaped nail.
“One look from you, and women swoon at your feet.”
He was growing annoyed with me. “Yet here you stand.”
I laughed lightly. “I have no interest in men, even ones as handsome as you.”
“Because you’re married?”
“Because I’m jaded.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re drunk.”
My gaze filled with mischief when I slipped my thin dress strap off my shoulder. “And you never are. Don’t you ever live on the edge, Officer? Just let yourself have whatever you want?”
The air pulsed like it had a heartbeat as I pushed the shimmery material over my hips, letting my gown fall to my feet.
Chink.
He didn’t look away from my face, though the urge was there. Shifting like a breeze heading in the wrong direction.
I stood inches in front of him, in a red bra and panties, with an entire party and my husband just beyond a set of double doors.
His response was simple and exactly what I’d expected from the strait-laced fed, yet it still found the heat to brush my back as I made my way to the pool.
“No.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Then how do you ever feel alive?”
A smile touched my lips as I dove into the water. Because his gaze had slid down the curves of my body, and it was the furthest thing from cold I’d ever felt.
September 2015
TAP,
tap,
tap.
Sasha Taylor, Ph.D. watched the motion of my finger on the armrest. Eyes narrowed, lips slightly pursed, it was the expression she wore when deep in thought.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap.
Her gaze met mine, and, as a slow smile tugged on my lips, she swallowed and glanced at the file in her lap to find some resolve. “Tell me about your home life,” she finally said, looking up. “Iowa.”
I chuckled. “Ah, Sasha, we both know that’s not what you want to talk about.”
She pulled the charm on her necklace, back and forth, and raised a brow.
“Ask,” I said impatiently.
Determination flared in her eyes, and she dropped the necklace. “Fine. Let’s talk about your relationship with the number three.”
“And here I didn’t take you as one to engage in breakroom gossip.”
“I don’t engage, I merely observe. All means of information are valuable to a case.”
“All right.” I sat back, rested an elbow on the armrest, and ran a thumb across my bottom lip. “You tell me what you think this relationship is, and I’ll tell you true or false.”
Hesitation flickered across her expression, but she inhaled a breath and dove right the fuck in. “You only sleep with the same woman three times.”
“True.”
“Why?”
A whole list of reasons, but there was only one that motivated me to do anything.
“It feels right.”
Four times suggested the relationship could go somewhere. Four felt like a sloppy affair, with feelings and questions thrown into the mix. Four annoyed me.
She accepted my answer and continued with her probing. “Some motions, not detrimental to your overall schedule, such as adjusting your clothes, maybe combing your hair, or laps at the gym, you do in some figure of three.”
“To an extent.”
“What happens when you stop at two?”
I held her gaze.
Tap . . . tap.
She waited on bated breath for the next tap that would never come. “Are you obsessing over the third now?”
“No.”
Yes.
“Do you consider yourself OCD?”
“Mildly, self-diagnosed,” I answered, looking at the clock. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and impatience burrowed beneath my skin. I had shit to do this evening. I was on suspension at the Bureau, but I’d taken
on more work by outside sources, as much as was possible, because if I didn’t stay busy I was afraid I’d burn under the heat of my own fucking anger.
I’d climbed my way out of hell, had seen it, tasted it, felt it, and the only thing that got me through had been dreaming about revenge and everything I would have on the other side. I’d planned my future out, from the kind of woman I’d marry to the type of hardwood in my apartment. Nowhere in those dreams had I ever planned for a Gianna Marino.
I should feel reprieved she was married and out of my reach again, but, fuck . . . it sometimes felt like an impossible feat to forget her.
“What about contamination symptoms?” she added, averting her gaze like there was something important in my file she’d just now noticed.
“More gossip, Sasha?”
Not surprising. When someone met me, they didn’t forget me. Except for one woman, anyway. My face had been a curse when I was a kid, but now, I took advantage of it. To intimidate, to manipulate, to get whatever I wanted. Power. Information. Women. Ironic, that the one thing I now wanted, I couldn’t fucking have.
She looked up, flustered with herself. “You don’t kiss on the mouth.”
“True.”
“Why not?”
“It’s messy and unnecessary.”
Her eyes flickered with confliction. She’d already dug deeper into my psyche than this evaluation should have. Her interest was plain curiosity, the reason anyone decided they wanted to become a psychologist—to crack open a human’s mind like an egg, to see what made us tick. What she didn’t know was that I didn’t tick. I’d made the fucking clock.
“You don’t seem to have the same opinion regarding . . . other parts of a woman’s anatomy.”
I laughed.
I wouldn’t have a problem with any part of a certain woman’s anatomy. Truthfully, I’d let her spit in my goddamn mouth.
“So, if you’re willing to . . .”
“Eat pussy?”
She flushed. “This has gone beyond what it should have,” she muttered, fumbling with her pen.
“Are you getting all this down, Sasha?” I adjusted my cuff.
“Why no kissing?” Her uneasy movements had paused, her curiosity unwilling to let it go.
She thought she’d found something, a piece of the puzzle that made me. In truth, she was probably close. If she pulled at this thread hard enough, she might free another.
“Lipstick,” I said. “I hate it.”
Specifically, red.
A heart-shaped stain on my cheek. The red imprint left on the edge of a dirty glass or a lit cigarette lying on cracked pavement. The twisting of a little black container. I fucking hated all of it.
“So, the reason isn’t related to thoughts of contamination?” she pushed.
“No.”
It was mostly true. When I was agitated or stressed, my issue with cleanliness magnified, but otherwise, I just liked to be clean. I liked a clean space, clean clothes, and not to put dirty shit, like a used communal pen, in my mouth. Not to wake up with bugs crawling on me. Not to have to wash the dirt off my body in a drinking fountain.
“We’re at the end of our meeting, but I have one more question. What is your earliest memory of the number three?”
Knock, knock, knock.
The knocking reverberated in my mind, three heavy thumps I’d still have been able to hear even if I placed my hands over my ears.
“They always knocked three times,” I said.
“Who?”
“The men who made me.”
23 years old
July 2014
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
The shout of a hundred different voices hit me as I pushed open the club door. Confetti fell, sparkling beneath dim lighting and tickling my bare skin as it brushed my shoulders. Balloons floated to the ceiling, distorting the view of a photo of me blowing a kiss to the camera that took up the entire far wall. Birthday by The Beatles flooded the room.
Valentina ran up on stilettos and wrapped me in a hug. “Happy birthday!”
“Do you think you might have overdone it a little, Val?”
“Is it the photo?” She frowned, releasing me. “Too big, you think?”
Laughing, I kissed her cheek. “It’s perfect.”
I maneuvered my way into the club, hugging and thanking people for their birthday wishes until my cheeks hurt. My world tilted as someone picked me up by the waist and spun me around. The spinning stopped, and Luca’s close gaze came into focus as my feet still dangled a foot off the floor.
“You owe me money, Gianna.”
I frowned. “Is this how you wish everyone a happy birthday?”
“Only women that try to wiggle their way out of their debts.”
“Oh, please.” I brushed a piece of nonexistent lint off his shoulder. “You’ll lose the next bet. I’m only saving us time with an exchange, is all.”
A dry breath of amusement escaped him, and he set me back on my feet. “I think you’re the worst cheat of us all, and you’re not even a Russo by blood.” He took a seat back at the bar.
“Oh, look,” I said, stepping between Luca and Nico, who sat beside him. “I’m so popular to be honored with the great Nicolas Russo’s presence at my birthday party.”
Nico gave me a half-smile, nursing a glass of whiskey. “Got a meeting tonight.”
“Ah,” I responded, understanding it would be downstairs in the conference room. “Do you think you could at least pretend to be here for me?”
“You have plenty of people here for you.”
I pouted, looking around the crowded club. “True.”
We hadn’t talked about that night one year ago. Not once, since the morning after. It was like, if we didn’t speak of it, it hadn’t happened. However, the secret had eaten away a large chunk of my soul. Regret was a hungry beast, and every day, it fed.
Nico and Luca’s gazes went to the door. They stood at the same time, and I turned to see a man I didn’t recognize—black suit, black hair, the glint of the Cosa Nostra in his eyes.
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“None of your business,” Nico responded. He didn’t take his eyes off the Made Man as he cupped the back of my head and pulled me against his chest in a rough, short hug. “Happy birthday,” he said, adding, “Try and take it easy tonight, yeah?”
“Sure, Dad.”
He pushed me away playfully by the face, and then both Russo men headed toward the man who was none of my business.
Valentina bumped shoulders with me as she ordered a large number of drinks from the bar, and soon after, I was lost in the bottom of a shot glass, bathroom trips, and a heady, uninhibited rush in my blood.
Purple, yellow, blue. The panels beneath my feet blinked back and forth, casting a glow against my bare legs and white dress. Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl blared through the speakers, as the bodies on the dance floor moved together, limbs jiving, hips rolling, lips touching.
Purple. A drop of sweat down my back. Yellow. The glide of skin against mine. Running my hands over my neck, I lifted the heavy strands and looked up.
Blue.
My breath slowed, and so did my movements.
I held his gaze as he stood next to Nico at the bar. Allister responded to something Ace had said but kept his eyes on me.
The roll of my hips, the glide of my hands in my hair—they moved to a different rhythm than the beat. Slower. Sexier. Like a caress of silk sheets against naked skin. Holding his stare, I lip-synced a line of the song. The words poured from my red-painted mouth, sensual exhales between parted lips.
His eyes darkened.
I’d only been messing with him, but somewhere in the middle of it, my body had grown confused. The blood in my veins heated. My nipples tightened. Sweat glistened like drops of oil on my skin, tickling as it ran between my breasts.
His gaze drifted to my photo on the wall behind me before he met my eyes.
I smiled, lifted a hand, and blew him a
sweet kiss.
With shaky legs, I stumbled off the dance floor a half hour later and drifted upstairs to quiet the thumping pulse of music in my head.
I opened a VIP room door and paused with my hand on the knob. A familiar dirty fed stood with his back to me, facing the large window that sparkled with city lights. He had a phone to his ear, and his smooth, deep words reached me. Something about a contract and a bad situation. Sounded intriguing. I entered the room, closed the door, and leaned against it. Allister’s back tensed subtly at the quiet click, but he otherwise didn’t acknowledge my presence.
He’d grown out the top of his fade haircut in the years since I’d met him. It was now long enough to run one’s fingers through, to grab a handful of. The thought made me feel warm and strange, and I quickly pushed the feeling away.
He hung up and turned around.
We stared at each other, and a thick, almost suffocating tension filled the air. Two nights on a terrace had been the only other times we were alone. Now, with a closed door, a ceiling, and four walls surrounding us, it felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the small space for us both.
“Grown bored of your party already?”
There were a number of games we’d played over the last year, at the few functions where we ran into each other. A favorite of mine required us to ignore the other’s presence completely, even if an acquaintance chose to introduce us to one another. Another game was that I pretended to be madly in love with him. He hated that one the most, and because annoying Allister would taste sweeter than my birthday cake, it was the one I decided to play.
I slipped my heels off. “Maybe I came up here to be with a man.”
Something dark moved through his eyes, but as soon as he leaned back against the glass it disappeared. “Let’s hope you’re not keeping it in the family this time.”
My stomach dropped like lead, and a quiver started in my chest. He knew. He knew about me and Nico. I’d seen the fed with Ace a few times over the last year, but I didn’t believe they were close enough to share secrets with one another. How much had Nico told him? It felt like I was going to be sick.
I swallowed and tried to keep my voice steady. “You and I aren’t related, Officer.”
The Maddest Obsession (Made Book 2) Page 5