Our Crazy Little Thing Called Love

by Liz K. Lorde

  “What?” He asked gently for once, our eyes locking with one another.

  “I can’t stay with you here forever.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I don’t have a use for you anymore,” the words for some reason cut me down. “After a few weeks—“

  “Weeks?” There was no way I could do that. I could barely be in this elevator with him, just being so close was suffocating me in ways I never thought possible.

  Leonardo stepped closer to me, until I was forced against the wall of the elevator. “It’s going to take time,” he breathed, his lips dangerously close to my own now. “I can’t keep you safe, can’t keep him away from you – unless you are here.”

  “I can’t stay here with you for that long,” I insisted, the pain in my throat swelling. Between my legs I felt a powerful sensation, this brutal desire to be filled. God it was enticing, it was exhilarating to feel so… alive.

  “Why?” Leo husked, his face inching closer to mine. There was this sexual energy that practically bound us together in that moment.

  I didn’t answer. I was afraid of acting on my feelings, of acting on something so stupid and foolish – I didn’t want to be turned down, and it was just so weird to feel so strongly.

  Leo growled and my insides melted. He pushed his body against mine, so that I was squished against the wall. “Don’t play games with me right now, princess. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Because I can’t stop wanting you,” I admitted through the lust choking me, “and I haven’t even had you and I hate that I want you.”

  “You will,” he growled, crashing his greedy lips against mine and sucking me with a long, deep passion.

  The elevator dinged as we moved up another point, surely nearing the topmost floor of the hotel.

  His hands were strong and firm as they pressed me against the wall; I could taste the mint of his mouth, the sweetness and the salt of his kiss. I was totally enamored in it. All of those pesky little thoughts and intuitions went out the window. Replaced with a sense of want and desire and surrendering need.

  I shot my hand against the side of his body, feeling how hard and sculpted this magnificent beast of a man truly was beneath it all. Far from satisfied, I moved my hand to his firm ass and squeezed tight. Every inch of this man’s body was sinfully delicious to explore.

  Feeling a hand slip between my legs, a jolt of warmth bolted through me and I couldn’t help but gasp just a bit. Our lips met again, and I could feel the rhythm of my heart beating faster as our tongues danced with one another. Each kiss, each suck, was a promise. Waves of long untouched lust rolled against me, for just a moment all of my emotional and mental walls came crashing down.

  This was dangerous. Beyond dangerous, and I knew that if I didn’t regain my composure – surely I’d lose myself.

  I’d get hurt again.

  I was tired of that.

  So… so tired of hurting.

  Fuck. His great fingers pressed up against my clit through my panties. There was a soft moan then that left my lips. “Right there,” I whimpered like I was lost in heat. “Oh—“ I breathed, feeling a pleasurable sensation blossom deep inside of me. I’d never been touched like that by a man before, and I knew that I’d never stop wanting to feel it again and again.

  “We can’t do this,” I managed to say, and the elevator dinged in agreement with me.

  “We can,” Leonardo replied, continuing to tease my very happy clit, “and we already are.”

  There was something inexplicably honest and downright hot about being told no. Every blazing second that passed just made me more and more wet. I pressed his body against mine and spread my legs apart for him, giving him easier access to my naughty pussy.

  Before his finger could penetrate me, there was a final ding from the elevator and we came to an unfortunate stop.

  I breathed out a curse that I was hoping Leo wouldn’t hear.

  In that same moment, Leonardo threw a hand hard to the right of my shoulder. I could feel the vibrations from the wall, and sure enough it sent a kiss of life through me. If I was frustrated, then the man himself was furious.

  “Sorry,” he said with obvious annoyance, sucking his finger clean from any of my juices. The doors behind him came apart and revealed a long, wide corridor.

  I looked up to Leo’s haunting emerald eyes and a part of me wanted to grab his hand and push it back between my legs. “It’s okay.”

  He walked out of the elevator and signaled for me to follow. Just outside was a rich wooden flooring, some dark color of some tree that I couldn’t pretend to know. Leonardo leaned next to my ear, “We’re the last room,” he informed me. Indeed, there were doors on either side of me. Each of them black and with a mechanical slot to read the corresponding card.

  Leonardo went on, if only to fill the silence I presume, about how each room was ten thousand a night to rent out – and that every one of them came well equipped with noise cancelling installments. I guess that would explain the eerie levels of unsettling quiet.

  One jaunt to the end of the hall and we were in front of two, in comparison to the others, large black doors. I brought my chin up and looked upwards, noting the red paint of the ceiling. “There’s more money in that coat of paint than a years worth of my paychecks,” I openly mused.

  “Wait until you see the inside,” Leonardo gave a soft, somber chuckle.

  When he fed his special card into the door, he grabbed the handle and opened it, revealing an absolutely decked out penthouse. There were a number of men and women, though most of them were asleep. The ones that hadn’t fallen prey to the comforting embrace of night all looked towards us.

  Three others, off to the side, were still alive and kicking, playing pool. One was a pretty and crazy looking young woman, whom had messy mahogany hair. The man next to her looked unfriendly, and he had a full head of blonde hair in the style of Brad Pitt. Lastly, the only of the three that smiled, he had a tight crew cut and brown head of hair.

  One woman (who was looking out the glass windows) in particular batted her gorgeous, thick and dark lashes. She had short cut red hair and big brown eyes, and so too, I thought, an aura of mystery.

  Another one, a man this time, made sure to look my way. When he smiled, giving me a big huge grin, I concluded that he was happy to see Leo.

  I imagined that even the people I’d let inside of me wouldn’t look at me the way that this man looked at Leo, speaking figuratively of course. Why did I have to find myself so… jealous.

  The Happy Man leapt from his position on the dark green couch. As he moved towards Leonardo, he was already motioning for a one arm hug, “Leo! You son of a bitch,” he bellowed more akin to a great beast than to a man. He had a frightfully attractive accent – somewhere from Ireland maybe.

  Leo didn’t smile. Not a real smile, at least. The one that you would paint on just after waking up and before having your morning coffee; that special kind of smile you needed to put on with your makeup. Behind those disguising lips was a world of pain, and I was the only one privy to their depths – the memory of them on me touched me in a ways I never thought possible.

  “Connifer,” he said just before the towering mass of a man collapsed into him. The brotherly affections of these two was enough to tug at the strings of my heart. Connifer squeezed him tighter and then smacked Leonardo’s back.

  “You alright, brother?” He asked, flashing his teeth in a smile – which was framed by dark brown facial hair. He looked over to me then, and back to Leo, “done with her already? Surprised your father let you keep her.”

  “Con,” Leo began, he then moved towards the couch and looked to me.

  “I’ll stay, if that’s alright,” I told him in answer, before he even asked the question. I think, perhaps, that he wanted me to be there.

  Leonardo sat his friend down and tilted his head downward. He stood there for a brief moment, more like he was hanging at the neck than actually willing himself to stand. “Killaine,�
� the name came out strangled, “he murdered Pops.”

  Connifer’s jaw dipped and his eyes widened slightly. The air in the room changed and every breath, every movement and every subtle noise became a soundtrack to their mutually assured suffering. I watched the fatal scene unfold before me; their voices became mute, but their expressions became all the louder. Leonardo’s friend must have known Ligotti very well. He tilted his head in disbelief, asked a question of Leo – and then immediately tried to swallow back some of the aching pain in his throat. I knew intimately that, that specific pain, would not leave with a simple swallow or a long list of sleepless nights – there was no cure for a lifelong suffering.

  All of a sudden, Connifer shot up from his spot on the couch. Leonardo intercepted the tower of a man before he could rush out of the penthouse. “Whoa whoa whoa,” Leo said.

  “I can’t just sit here,” Connifer replied. “Not while that bastard still takes in air.”

  “It’s what I wanted too,” Leonardo said in an attempt to assuage the man’s desire for vengeance. “But hitting this head first is asking for a bloodbath on either side.”

  Connifer shook his head, “It’s not right, Leo. It’s just not right – how the hell’s he supposed to run the place? You don’t just kill the king and take the throne.”

  “No,” Leo said somberly, “it takes all kinds to betray. He paid the right people, I’m sure.”

  Connifer looked over to me and raised his chin, “What about her?”

  Yeah, what about me?

  “Killaine’s got an interest in her, that’s for sure. Keep her safe until this all boils over.”

  “Ain’t she worth a pretty penny?”

  Leonardo looked to me then, and his eyes locked with mine. “She is,” he looked back to Connifer, “look, I’m going to need you to sew this shoulder up until I can see a real doc. And I’ve got a list of names I need you to call. There’s work to be done right now, and justice to be sought.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ONE MINUTE

  TABITHA

  After Leo and Connifer took care of their business, and he sewed up his wound, Leonardo came in through the door to his personal bedroom.

  I’d tried to sleep, but all my mind could think about was how to get out of here and get to Fee’s place. Surely she’d be able to guide me through this mess. I wasn’t sure if staying with Leo was the best bet… especially with the way that I felt about him.

  The way my body felt about him.

  The way my heart… No.

  To say the bedroom was anything less than modern royalty would have been utterly wrong. The queen sized bed was dressed in a heavenly white duvet. The floor was a well-kept wood, polished to a sheen. There were posters and pictures on the walls. Some of old movies, some of Polaroid’s and printed out pictures of outings with friends and family.

  Seeing as how they caught my eye earlier, I strolled back over to them – feeling Leonardo’s eyes watching my backside carefully. I turned my head to cast him a spying look, “What?” I asked with a small degree of sharpness to my voice.

  “Nothing, just watching you, is all.”

  “Well watch a little harder, won’t you? You’ve got to learn how to properly flatter a girl.”

  “Bend over and I can have that arranged,” he strode over towards the bed and sat down, carrying all the weight of his night with him. No sleep would strip him of that armor, no matter how deep.

  Something in my chest tugged, but I kept looking over the many pictures. There were clippings of crimes, crimes that the Ligotti family was tied to – some I knew they had even been tried for, but the courts never ruled against them. When I saw the polaroid off to the far left of the wall with just a young Leonardo, a woman, and a much younger version of his father, I thought it best to put this all behind me.

  Turning away from the wall, I made my way over to Leonardo – but did not get on the bed just yet.

  He looked up at me slowly, and I watched the green bangs of his hair move past his eye. He breathed in and I found myself utterly entranced by that simple action; it fascinated me in the ways of which his sexy body moved. Pained me, when I looked deeper into his eyes and found shards of stained glass where memories used to be.

  His eyes couldn’t even bare to look at me. So he averted them. “Sorry,” he said, and I felt an invisible punch to my gut. Was he embarrassed to be in such distress?

  “Don’t be,” I bent down to level myself with him and placed a hand gently on his knee. “You must grieve now,” I told him, squeezing against the hard muscles of his leg, “or else you’ll be caught up in it for the rest of your life. You can’t ignore it, Leo. This is something that you have to wrestle; it’ll be more than you can ever possibly face, but it’s what’s demanded of you.”

  Leonardo’s voice quivered with pain when he acknowledged what I’d told him. He moved his hand to grab mine, and he held it ever so tightly.

  I didn’t shy away from squeezing right back.

  That was when a whole other side of the man began to reveal itself.

  “What happened earlier,” he said, getting up from the bed and cinching his arms all around me. “I should apologize for that.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because that’s how I normally do things,” his voice became low, intimate. “I take what I want, how I want. But you’re not normal for me.”

  I brought my hands to the bone of the man’s hips. “None of this is very normal,” I told him.

  “With you,” he growled, his eyes searching mine, a hand going down to my ass and squeezing hard. “I want it to be right,” he said. “What do you say, hm?” He moved his hand to the other cheek and pressed me against him.

  I could feel the hardness of his cock pushing up against my belly through his clothes.

  “If I wanted to I could rip those clothes right off of you,” he threatened, sending waves of ecstasy through me. “One night to kill our darling little urges.”

  “To give you a taste would be cruelty,” I brought my hand to his crotch, “one night. No strings. Not a word about it afterwards.” Every nerve in my body was alit with spectacular fascination. I wanted him.

  And I wanted him bad.

  “There’s a good girl,” his voice was dark as dusk, and it sent a ball of need between my legs. In that moment, all I wanted to do was take away his pain – wanted to be eaten by a singular moment of utter passion.

  I wanted to forget.

  Was it even possible, I wondered, if only just for a fleeting moment, to rid yourself of all those terrible demons? The ones that are buried beneath the pavement; with wings and fangs and horns, their dark whispers that rise from beneath your feet.

  Leonardo cut down the darkness in me in an instant, and he crashed his lips against mine.

  It was a kiss that no books or movies could prepare a girl for. No. There wasn’t anything that I’d ever tasted quite like it.

  This was a transfer of energy. His mouth was daring, exquisite, and had great bravado to its every movement. With soft lips, he kissed me. Hard, searching and full of lust – his tongue played with mine and all worry sank into peaceful oblivion.

  When he pulled away from me and we looked into one another, I think we both recognized the terror behind such displays of passion – and perhaps, perhaps for a moment he considered the same thing that I was. That doing this was a mistake.

  Curiosity was the killer of all things.

  Not nearly satisfied, I moved in and greedily sucked at his lips – taking his face in my hands and holding him as tight as I possibly could. I kept my body pressed against him, letting him feel my breasts and my warmth and all that I was. Even if I thought that I’d never be with another man; I was determined to make this dalliance mean something. To somehow make up for all that I lost.

  My pussy was well and aching with need at this point, and in my head I could already see myself riding this, although amoral, glorious god of a man.

  Oh yeah.r />
  Before I could indulge my internal fantasies any further, Leonardo lifted me up into the air and, naturally, I let out a frightened noise at the suddenness of it. We assaulted one another with our mouths, kissing jaw and chin and neck all the same – our bites coming in flurries. We wanted to mark one another, like we were property or something. It was animalistic. Raw.

  And hot as fucking hell.

  Warmth rushed through me effortlessly, and I felt a burning ache between my legs, an ache that only being filled by his cock could satisfy. It was then, that Leonardo threw me down to the bed, and God I could see the look in his predatory green eyes.

  They were eyes that said: I’m going to fuck you.

  I’m going to make your body shake with pleasure.

  And I’m going to make you oh so delightfully sore.

  “Wait!” I called out in a flustered breath, trying to stymie the desires of wanting to have my breasts cupped, and my ass squeezed, and my pussy dominated.

  Leo stopped dead in his tracks, his impressive chest rising with him. “What?” He asked, seemingly trying to understand what he did wrong.

  I brought my fingers to my glasses and took them off, placing them on the neighboring nightstand. When I looked back over at Leo, I couldn’t help but give him an embarrassed little smile. “I didn’t mean to kill the mood.”

  Leo started to remove his clothes, unbuttoning his shirt. “Darling, when I’m looking at you – there isn’t a chance in hell you could make me go soft,” he said, and then returned a laugh. Within a hot moment, Leo’s drool-worthy chest was there in the flesh for me to behold. His inked up pectorals were exceptional, gazing at them kind of made me want to oil them up and massage them.

  Not that I’d ever had the opportunity to do so on a boy before, let alone a man.

  He had a king of spades tattoo along his left shoulder and there was a Demon Jester tattoo around his bellybutton, done up in dark green ink. Names of people in and out of his life, I presumed, around the start of his Adonis Belt, that little V section leading to his… well, just thinking about that got me exceptionally wet. The names were done in a stylistic, gothic, grungy sort of font: Lenore, Connifer, Raphael, Ramona.