by Bella J.
As he leaned closer, the warmth of his breath started to stir an array of sensations all through my body. My heart was now jackhammering against my ribs, my throat feeling like the damn desert.
When he lifted his arm, his gaze never leaving mine, I sucked in a breath. And then he reached behind me, his lips mere inches away, and pushed a button next to my head and said, “Monroe, open the door for Miss Valenti.”
I thought I died. I was dead. I died and collapsed into a giant puddle of pathetic womanhood.
The click of the door sounded behind me, and I was out of there faster than you could say “what the fuck was that?”
As my heels clicked down the hall, my heartbeat slowly returning to normal, I heard a second pair of footsteps behind me.
“You in town long, Miss Valenti?”
I took a deep breath, but I didn’t slow down. “You’re the detective, you tell me.”
“I’m guessing no more than a few weeks?”
“Is that you guessing or saying?”
He fell into step next to me. “I’m going to go with guessing.”
I stopped and turned to face him. “You’re good, Detective, I’ll give you that. But let’s say you’re right—and I’m not saying you are—but if I am the daughter of an Italian-American mafia boss, as you suspect I am, you’ve got real balls summoning me down here and then putting me in a damn interrogation room like a criminal. I’d say that wasn’t a very smart move, Detective.”
He studied my face, and I didn’t even blink. Heck, I didn’t even breathe.
“Are you threatening me, Karina?” Lord help me, but the way my name rolled off his lips was like eroticism on fucking steroids. It was like porn to my ears.
I took a step back and tried to ignore the tingles spreading through my bones like wildfire, and I squared my shoulders.
“Not at all.” I lifted my voice a single octave. “I’m merely stating that if what you said was true, you just made one hell of a rookie mistake.”
With my words hanging in the air like the threat it was meant to be, I turned on my heel and sashayed my curvy ass out of there. I could feel his eyes on me the entire time, until I exited the building.
The moment I stepped outside, I took a deep breath, letting the fresh air fill my lungs. The feeling that scratched against every bone in my body was too damn familiar. I’d experienced this before, the feeling of a man being able to electrify my body without even touching me. It was unnerving, yet exciting at the same time. But I learned the hard way that this feeling was also powerful enough to bring me to my knees. I promised myself I would never let a man affect me like that again. Too much was at stake, and I already had too many regrets because I gave in to that temptation once.
But, by God, my body felt like it was on fire just having Detective Stone’s eyes on me. He wasn’t even touching me, or close to touching me, for that matter. There was sweat running down my back, for God’s sake. That was how he managed to affect me within less than twenty-five minutes.
It was the eyes. It had to be those dark goddamn eyes. Devil eyes, that was what they were. Dark windows into the demonic world where he could make you offer up sweet, innocent little puppies with a single glance. Damn, I was pretty sure he would make you want to toss in a tiny kitten as well, just for good measure.
I exhaled and looked up to the sky. Was this the universe’s way of playing one sick joke on me, showing me no matter how hard I tried to put the past behind me, there was no way of escaping who I was? A woman drawn to the forbidden, charmed by the prospects of breaking rules, and resisting authority by walking on the edge?
No. Not again. Never.
Chapter 3
LORIK
In life, you got two types of women. You got the women who thought they were hot, pretending like they knew how to use their bodies to get a man’s attention, but, in fact, they didn’t. Sure, they would probably end up getting a man’s attention—or his responsiveness—every now and then, but only because seeing how pathetic they were guaranteed a quick and easy lay. Not a good lay, just an easy one. You know, like a good jerk off in the shower. It didn’t satisfy you completely, but it was sufficient to get you through the day.
And then you got the kind of women who didn’t need to use their bodies to get a man’s attention at all. They didn’t walk around thinking, “If I sway my ass a little to this side, and then a little to that side, I’ll get the men drooling.” No. They walked the way they walked, and they talked the way they talked. And without even trying, sexual energy seeped through every pore, sensuality emanating from their every move, and they wore eroticism like a second skin.
Guess which kind of woman Karina Valenti was. Yup, she was the kind who managed to get my balls aching and my cock twitching in a matter of minutes. And while I was staring at that gorgeous, curvy ass hugged tight in her black pencil skirt as she walked out of the station, all I could think about was seeing those cheeks jiggle while I pounded into her from behind. And those legs, those calves—good God, I wanted them wrapped around my neck, squeezing the fucking air out of me while I feasted on the sweetness tucked away between her legs.
The second she was out the door, I pulled my hand through my hair, trying to get my raging hard-on under control. The way her lips moved when she talked, the way confidence leaked from her every word, it was like everything she just did during the last twenty-five minutes had a direct line to my dick. That had never happened to me before—sober. All the other times women happened to have that effect on me were while I had more tequila and rum in my system than white blood cells and platelets. And it was usually those pathetic women—you know, the quick and easy lays.
“Stone!”
Ah, crap. Like one run-in with the devil wasn’t enough.
I sighed before turning and watched as the commander came storming my way. Judging by the way his nostrils flared and the smoke poured out of his ears, I’d say he was pretty pissed.
“Commander Pipole.”
He stopped in front of me. “So, now you manage to get it right?”
“I guess my mental block just got unblocked.”
He stared at me with so much disdain that for a second I felt twelve again, standing in Principal Swinton’s office, listening to him telling me how wrong it was to trash the school hall, half of the classrooms, and the principal’s office with toilet paper.
According to me, I simply showed my extreme commitment to a classic prank. Unfortunately, Principal Swinton didn’t agree and kept repeating the phrase “you’re suspended” while he tried to remove the toilet paper from his fish tank—along with the dead fish. How was I supposed to know the little fishy fuckers would eat the toilet paper? And, in my opinion, if you were stupid enough to eat shit paper, you deserved to die.
“Detective Stone, was that Karina Valenti I just saw walk out of the interrogation room?”
Shit.
“No. That was, ah…that was Megan Jolie.” I thought on the fly, combining two of the world’s sexiest women, Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie. And what exactly made them the hottest pieces of ass to ever walk among us lower class humans? The lips. It was those full, beautiful, heart-shaped lips made for their awe-inspiring suction capabilities.
“I brought her in for a Bible full of unpaid parking tickets.” I continued the lie. By the way the commander went from a normal beige color to a ruby red, I’d say the lie was plastered all over my now very worried face.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Monroe smirk like an idiot as he witnessed the uncomfortable conversation between me and the commander. I made a mental note to punch him in the balls the next time I saw him down at Joey’s Pub.
Commander Pipole took a step closer, narrowing his eyes. “You’re suspended.”
I swear to fucking God, the way those words rolled out of his mouth, I was pretty sure he just came in his pants.
“Commander, that was not Karina Val—”
“Monroe,” the commander called, and Monroe instantly
straightened.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Who was that woman who just walked out those doors?”
“That was Karina Valenti, sir.”
Oh, my God. What a fucking dildo.
“Seriously, Monroe?” I turned to him. “Can you breathe up there?”
He looked confused. “Up where?”
“Up his fucking ass.” I pointed at the commander, and then his face turned all shades of red.
“Get out!” the commander yelled. “Give me your fucking gun and badge and get the fuck out of my department.”
I was appalled. Really. “Suspended? Just because I asked Karina Valenti to come in for five fucking minutes?”
“Twenty-five,” Monroe chimed in.
“Monroe, I swear to God, I will tear your dick off and shove it up your ass if you don’t shut the fuck up.”
The commander smiled wickedly. “Threatening a fellow police officer. Well done. You just signed your own fucking suspension letter.”
And then the asshole turned and started to leave.
“Am I the only one convinced the Valentis are responsible for the shithole this place turned into?”
The commander turned back around. “Unfortunately, you have no proof to back that up, Stone. Make sure you book in your gun, and leave your badge in my office. You have ten minutes to get your ass out of my precinct. You’re suspended for a month.”
A month? A fucking month?
“Are you serious? You want to take Lucy away from me?”
“Who the fuck is Lucy?”
I tap against the gun at my side. “This sweet little thang right here.”
“Well, that sweet little thang is no longer yours. Lucy and badge on my desk in ten.”
Goddammit.
“Way to go, dumbass.” Monroe sneered from the side.
I really wanted to smash his face in, but assaulting a fellow officer would be the final nail in my career coffin right now. Besides, I needed to act like a grownup, not letting insults get to me.
“I knew your Greek ass wouldn’t last around here.”
Ah, fuck. How was I supposed to act like the grownup now?
“It’s Albanian, you fucking tit-head!” I launched myself forward and punched him in the face, hammering that last nail into my now dead career. And since that career was already bolted shut with a fuck-load of nails, I punched the asshole again. Why? Because I fucking wanted to. It was like trashing the school with toilet paper. You didn’t know why the fuck you did it. You just did it because it was fun.
It took three other guys about twelve-point-three seconds to take my gun, my badge, and haul my ass out of the station and onto the fucking pavement.
Jesus Christ. Suspended for a month? How the fuck was I supposed to continue my investigation of the Valentis if I was nothing more than a damn civilian, unable to use all my detective perks to get the information I needed?
I kicked at the ground beneath me and pulled my hands through my hair, feeling like I was about to burst a damn aneurysm in my brain. It was when I looked to the left that I saw the hard-on triggering ass get into a black Mercedes. Karina Valenti.
She didn’t know I’d just been suspended and tossed onto the curb like a loser. Karina Valenti didn’t know I didn’t have any right to keep tabs on her, or to harass her anymore—not that I did in the first place. But so not the point.
If I had any chance of proving my suspicions about the Valentis were correct, and thus getting the commander and his damn suspension off my ass, I was going to have to go about this in a completely different way.
I took out my phone and grinned like the damn Joker as I slid my finger across the screen.
Hell, I knew this was going to be fun.
Chapter 4
KARINA
My heart still wasn’t beating normally. And my skin still felt like it was on fire, all because of one arrogant, overly confident, egotistical male with devil eyes and a smirk that could melt panties everywhere. For the last half hour, I’d had a constant prickle of warning in the back of my head. Detective Stone was a temptation I needed to stay clear of.
I leaned back in the seat of the car and inhaled, counting to four, and then exhaled. Maybe if I did a few breathing exercises, my heartbeat would normalize.
I tried it a few times, and it actually seemed like it was helping since I no longer felt the overwhelming urge to make a slut out of myself.
It was about half an hour drive back home, so I grabbed my phone, thinking it might be a good idea to interact a little with my one hundred and eighty-two thousand, three hundred and twenty-two followers.
One thousand, two hundred and nineteen notifications in under forty minutes. How was that even possible? Did these people sit around waiting for public figures to update their status so they could comment and like—and poke—to their little hearts’ content?
Were these people even aware there were things like world hunger and global warming? Things that were way more important than what I had for lunch, or what Kim Kardashian wore to the damn beach.
I opened the Facebook app and clicked on my notifications bar, marking all as read. If I replied to every comment made, I’d be here until next Tuesday.
Just as I was about to close the app, I paused.
I wondered…
Scrolling to my list of followers, I started typing in “Stone.” I had no idea what his first name was, but if he’d managed to get my latest status update back at the station, he must be following me.
And, sure as shit, there he was—Lorik Stone. Lorik. Was that Greek? No, then it would be Lorikos, or Lorikaras, or something with an os or an as at the end. Maybe it was Albanian?
If it weren’t for me recognizing that sinfully gorgeous face, I never would have guessed it was him.
I knew I shouldn’t—I really shouldn’t—but I clicked on his profile anyway.
As I scrolled down his timeline, I noticed there really wasn’t much going on, since his last status update was two months ago saying, “I’m drunk. That is all.” That was so attractive.
I rolled my eyes and went to the About section. He had Self-Employed listed as his job, which made me snort since I knew that was a crock of bull. But it did make sense he wouldn’t go put Detective on something as public as Facebook, especially when he was apparently investigating my father.
My stomach turned at the thought. Not that it was anything new. The police had been investigating my father for as long as I could remember, but they’d never managed to get any concrete evidence against him.
Lorenzo Valenti was as intelligent as he was cunning. Hell, I was his daughter, and if it weren’t for a conversation about the Cosa Nostra, which I just happened to hear between my parents ten years ago, I never would have suspected my father was a mafia boss. Back then, I didn’t even know what that meant, what it entailed. And when I heard my dad say the words “managing protection rackets,” I knew it meant something bad. I was too young to understand back then, but I did now.
About five years ago, the heat on my father and his activities was pretty intense. Until the Mancusos moved in on what my dad called our territory. Then the heat got worse as the Mancusos started wreaking havoc on the streets. I wasn’t exactly sure what they did, but by the way my dad and brothers always cursed whenever the subject of the Mancusos came up, I’d say it was pretty bad shit.
Still scrolling down Lorik’s page, I decided there wasn’t much else to see—or to stalk. So, I went back to my page, contemplating whether I should remove Lorik Stone as a follower. He was probably using it to keep tabs on me, watching me, waiting for me to slip up so he could get what he wanted—incriminating shit on my family. Plus, now he knew ninety percent of my status updates were bullshit anyway. What if he called me out on it?
While I stared at the screen, a notification popped up saying Lorik Stone commented on your post. Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
I slid my finger across the screen and read his comment o
n my check-in at the Skin Spa in New York.
Was it worth it?
What the hell did that even mean? I knew I shouldn’t, and I hardly ever replied to comments, but I couldn’t help myself.
Quickly I typed, Was what worth it?
About three minutes went by before another notification popped up.
The twenty-five minute treatment.
I knew he was talking about the twenty-five minutes I was stuck down in that damn interrogation room with him. The urge to reply to his last comment was so overwhelming, and my fingers started to burn with the need to type a snotty reply…something like fuck you! But I didn’t.
Instead, I opened my messenger app and started typing a message to Lorik Stone.
Karina: I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t put my public image in jeopardy. Karina.
First, why the fuck was I doing this? Why was I even dignifying this asshole’s lame attempt at contact with giving him exactly what he wanted—contact?
And second, why the hell did I put my name in the end? This was Facebook Messenger, not a damn text message. Besides, something told me if it was a text message, Detective Stone would know it was from me. He probably had my phone number memorized.
There was a soft sound of bubbles popping, and I looked down, staring at the little text bubble appearing just below my message. Lorik is typing a message, and I am struggling to breathe. Seriously.
And in popped his message.
Lorik: I’m not trying to do anything. You’re putting your public image in jeopardy yourself by lying about your whereabouts.
My fingers flew over the screen quicker than you could say “arrogant son of a bitch.”
Karina: I’m giving all my followers what they want.
Lorik: And what’s that?