by Renee Strong
His other hand was planted on the wall behind me and I relied on him to keep us both upright. My knees, as traitorous as my heart and sex, were busy debating whether to work and they shook a little more with each movement of his lips on mine.
And then, he pulled back from the kiss, catching my bottom lip between his teeth and tugging gently on it. When he released my lip, it tingled with sensation.
He put his thumb into my mouth and I just kind of went with it, sucking it hard, until he pulled it from my lip. He leaned into my ear again.
“I had to have you,” he breathed and my nipples hardened more with the warmth of his breath. They were so hard, they chafed against my bra and I wanted desperately to rip it off—to rip all my clothes off—and to tell him how much I wanted…no…needed him inside of me.
I had no idea where this extreme lust was coming from. It was completely out of character. If I had been in my right mind, I might have stopped a minute to talk things out.
But I still couldn’t speak, couldn’t catch my breath, and as he reached into my waistband, my soft, expectant moan was the only sound I could make.
“I’m going to finger you now,” he said into my ear and I moaned again. There was something in his tone that was commanding; I instantly knew that this was a man who wasn’t used to taking no for an answer. He brushed my cheek with his warm, soft lips. “Nod if you understand.”
Against the side of his cheek, I nodded vigorously, and cried out as one finger plunged inside of me.
From inside of me, he worked his finger in a beckoning motion against the wall of my vagina; on the outside, his thumb gently rubbed my clit.
“You’re so wet,” he said, a tinge of victory in his voice. “I knew you wanted me but now I’m sure. You want me, don’t you?”
The rhythm of his fingers exploring my sex from inside and out gave fresh power to my voice and I cried out, “So fucking much.”
Seemingly pleased with that answer, he with no warning pushed a second finger in and my vision started to swim.
I had been touched something like that before—by both other guys and myself—and never had I felt such pleasure as I was feeling right now.
Something crashed in the distance—maybe an alley cat knocking a flowerpot over or someone knocking against the metal trash cans at the top of the alley—and I felt the urge to look to make sure we weren’t being watched.
But as the pleasure started to come in waves, pulsing through me, the thought slipped away. If someone was watching, let them watch, I decided defiantly. I wasn’t about to put a stop to how he was making me feel. I deserved to feel some pleasure in life and I was going to make the most of it. I could worry about what it all meant after.
For just this short time, I would let myself enjoy his touch without questioning the reason or the repercussions.
His fingers seemed to find parts of me I didn’t know existed and to caress them, cajole them, command them to yield to him.
He pressed his lips to my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, and finally my lips, dotting delicate kisses on them. Then he leaned into me again and nibbled on my ear, while whispering, “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anybody.”
With that, he crushed his lips onto mine and pinched my clit ever so gently with his thumb. I came hard and fast, the orgasm wracking my body until, spent, I slumped against him.
It was stupid of me to be anywhere near that bar again. It’s pretty much criminal 101: never return to the scene of a crime. But right when I should have been getting my ass as far away as possible, I thought of Lexi—the way she curved just right in all the places a woman should: the shape of her lips, her belly and hips, her round ass. But mostly, I thought of the glimmer in her eye when she’d put me on the spot in the G-String earlier that night. I wasn’t used to anyone challenging me—at least not unless they were carrying or had a death wish.
It got tiring to be surrounded by sycophants—people who would cut me as quick as they looked at me if they thought it would gain them the slightest bit of power. My reputation meant that people feared me. Outside of a close group of friends and family, I never trusted anyone. In my line of work, even if someone was treating me with respect or admiration, I never knew whether it was because they feared me or really respected me. If they did fear me, they were right to do so. I’ve done some shit that would stop most people sleeping at night. I, on the other hand, sleep like a baby.
But that night, it wasn’t what I’d done that played on my mind. It was what I hadn’t done that wouldn’t leave me alone.
I hadn’t made a woman who caught me by surprise feel good. And I couldn’t go home until I’d done that.
As I was sitting into my car to drive back to my condo, after tracking down and beating the man I’d come to find, I turned the key in the ignition—and then promptly turned it off again. I had spent hours breaking the guy who had been my target. Sleep was the sensible option right then. But the urge to go back to see Lexi, to put a smile on her face, was too hard to resist. I couldn’t shake it off. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I turned and went back to her bar again.
It was supposed to be a one-time deal. I would go, make her scream out for me, and then never see her again. That’s what I decided on my walk to the bar. I didn’t even want her to return the favor. Everything about her body language told me that she needed the release of a good, hard cum. She needed a guy to make the ground move under her feet.
I wanted to do that much for her and then to disappear back into my dark little world.
When you live a life like I do, you can’t commit to one woman. It’s not fair or smart. You bang them once and then you move on. That’s the way it was supposed to go with Lexi.
But, that’s not the way things played out.
The moon was still bright as we exited the alleyway. The man in the suit—or, the grand bringer of the orgasm as I was referring to him in my sex-craving mind—asked me where I lived. I told him the exact neighborhood I lived in in Angel City (officially titled Arthur Banks’ Street, after an old mayor, but most everyone in the city called it Shanks and Shanks Street). When I said the name, his eyebrow shot up and he insisted he walk with me.
My mind was still a muddle of lust and confusion as we strolled the trash-strewn streets to my tiny apartment. Confusion firstly because it had been a long time since any man had walked me home but also because I knew I shouldn’t like this guy so much.
He was everything I told myself to stay away from; everything I’d been burned by in the past. He was cocky to the point of arrogance, cheeky, and far too handsome to be wholesome. His dominant personality was something that should have made me hate him. It was what had raised my hackles when I’d met him in the bar earlier that night.
But here I was, burning with desire for him, debating whether it would seem a bit forward to grab his hand as we walked—minutes after he had just given me the cum of a lifetime. An orgasm that I felt punch drunk after. The feeling in my legs was only starting to come back now. None of this made a lick of sense.
Why had he come back to the bar? And why had he not looked for anything in return from me? I would have happily done whatever he asked me to in the moments after he’d brought me close enough to heaven to glimpse Saint Peter staring down on us, a judgy look on his face. I wanted to ask him outright but I was still too busy arranging my thoughts to be able to put them into one coherent question.
“You really live around here?” he said as we walked. His eyes were watchful, subtly darting to dark corners and laneways—not frightened but incredibly aware. I wondered if he had military or police training; he acted like someone who was used to assessing threats.
On Shanks and Skanks Street, that was a definite plus. I assessed the dangers every time I walked down the street. But now, as we walked together, I was even more aware—embarrassed, I realized—of my usual surroundings.
I knew what my neighborhood looked like to everybody else—the graffiti on the wall, the boarded-up
windows, the sounds of sirens and couples screaming at each other even at this hour of the night.
“It’s not too bad,” I said with a shrug, “once you know the place. I grew up here.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and we continued walking silently.
“Anyone ever give you any trouble?” he said suddenly.
“No,” I assured him, surprised at the question. “No trouble once you know how to handle yourself.”
He shook his head, curling his lip in disgust as we passed a particularly, let’s just say, erotic piece of graffiti. Let’s me real here—it was a hastily drawn stick man holding his own massive and surprisingly detailed giant dick.
“It’s not right that a woman like you has to be in a place like this—that you have to handle yourself against the creeps out here.”
He stopped suddenly and turned to me.
“Anyone ever gives you any problems, you let me know.” His tone was dark and his features clouded with menace. It made me shiver to think what he would do to someone on the receiving end of that sort of malevolent expression.
Startled, I just managed to say, “Okay.”
He nodded once, businesslike, and then turned to walk again. I kept quiet pace beside him, just enjoying his company, his strong presence, and just the occasional scent of his woody aftershave on the breeze.
A thought occurred to me and I let out a short laugh.
“I wouldn’t know who to tell if I did have any trouble,” I confessed. “I’ve just realized that I don’t know your name.”
He stopped again and chuckled. I laughed a little more, too, largely because my awareness of what a bizarre situation this was growing by the second. Girls like me do not have random encounters with nameless hot guys. We’re the girls who slog away in the background, breaking our backs and working our fingers to the bone, without anyone noticing us or giving us much time. We do not get the handsome prince or the glass slipper or even a good fuck from a guy who bought us so much as a coffee beforehand. And yet, here I was, still weak at the knees and walking with some breathtakingly handsome and mysterious stranger I’d met earlier that evening. And I didn’t even know his name.
He put his hand out and I took it. His palm was warm against mine as he gave my hand a single shake.
“Dominic,” he said. “Dominic De Luca.”
The name kind of rang a bell but for what reason, I couldn’t quite recall. I pushed it out of my mind.
“Lexi,” I said. “Lexi Wilson.”
He smiled at me, the warmth of his smile sending electricity ricocheting through me. His eyes crinkled at the edges; his features softened and lost their cockiness.
“Pleased to meet you, Lexi Wilson,” he said.
He rubbed his thumb—The same thumb he rubbed me to orgasm with earlier? I tried to figure out—against my fingers a second before letting the handshake drop.
I instantly missed the feel of his touch, as silly as that sounds. I wanted to never stop touching him, even though a little voice kept telling me he was bad news.
We’d reached my stoop by now and I had to make a decision. I did some quick emotional calculations in my head. Should I invite him in? Send him on his way? Ask him nicely to fuck me on the steps in front of all the neighbors?
If I spent any more time with him and then I never heard from him again, I’d be devastated. The walls that were around my heart were there for a reason. I didn’t have the time or the strength to be taken for a ride.
On the other hand, I’d never felt as wanted or sexy or free as he’d made me feel in that alley. If that’s the way he could make me feel with his fingers, I couldn’t even fathom what he could make me feel with his cock.
Like a drug addict, I was already looking for more—a bigger, better high than the one I’d just felt. I could feel arousal start to course through me again. My sensible (or at least my occasionally sensible) nature was threatening to flee as other more animal instincts took over. I was torn on what to do next.
To buy myself a moment to think, I stepped up one step and then reached out to grab him again. I pulled him in and in a second we were kissing deeply again. Every single one of my nerve endings was on fire and my whole body yearned for him to be inside of me. My brain was no longer putting up any resistance. Since the moment it had anticipated him kissing me, it had fallen in line with my heart and sex—let this man conquer you, they all screamed at me in unison.
And then I stopped and looked at him a moment and at his crisp white shirt, taking in the shape of him beneath his suit. As I tried to picture what was under his shirt, the hard muscles beneath, my eye stopped on a stain. There were dots of red on his shirt. Sprayed across the breast just under his jacket. My tongue started to feel dry as the desert at the sight. It was blood.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, panicked, but as the words left my mouth, I already knew that the blood wasn’t his.
For the first time that evening, he looked unnerved.
“I… That’s just…”
Bile rushed to my cheeks and I stepped back up another step.
“Whose blood is that, Dominic?” I asked, shrinking back.
He said nothing—he couldn’t even look me in the eye.
“What were you doing in my bar, Dominic?” I demanded, my voice high pitched and breaking. And as I asked him that question, my brain found the answer I’d been searching for since he’d told me his name.
His name—his name had sounded so familiar. He was a De Luca—as in a member of the big mafia family, the De Lucas. Everyone in this neighborhood—hell in the whole of Angel City—knew who they were and that you didn’t mess with them. That wasn’t quite an answer to my question about why he was in my bar but I could guess what he was doing there—and how that blood got on his shirt.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, my brain screamed at me. How could I have been so stupid? My instincts had told me something was different about this guy. He wasn’t just cocky, he was dangerous. Something inside me had been trying to warn me that he was a criminal—a killer even—and I’d shut down that little voice because I was horny. I’d let my attraction to him override every bit of good sense I possessed. All because he was the sexiest man I had ever been in the vicinity of.
“I have to go now, Dominic,” I said quietly and he started to protest. I didn’t let him get the words I could see him trying to form out. “I have to go,” I repeated numbly.
I rushed to the door of my apartment building and fumbled as fast as I could with the lock. Without looking back, I shut the door firmly behind me and threw the deadbolt into place. I pressed my back against it, listening for him to start hammering on the wood, but he didn’t. Instead, I heard the sound of those expensive shoes retreating. I didn’t know whether to be glad or distraught to hear him go.
Chapter 3
Dominic
“What’s with the face?”
I kept staring out the window, through the gaps in Ma’s lace curtains.
“You don’t like this face?” I said while chewing a hangnail and without looking around. “Tough. It’s the only one I got.”
I’d been sitting in the same position, staring at nothing for maybe twenty minutes now. Maybe thirty? I’d honestly lost track of time.
I was doing my best to ignore my brother and our men yammering away but they weren’t make it easy.
Bobby would keep digging until he got to what was wrong with me, I knew that much from long experience, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to him shit talk me and what I was feeling in front of his boys. We’d come to my mom’s house specifically because we were supposed to be talking about business. What I was feeling in the pit of my stomach was no one’s damn business but my own.
The day felt like the shittiest day I’d had in a long time—like a giant storm cloud had rolled in and made everything grayer. Still, Bobby, Vince, and Tommy didn’t seem to feel like anything was off with the day. They had just finished off a plate of food and were supposed to be
talking about when their next shipment was going to arrive.
I didn’t even know what was on the shipment—drugs probably, though for some reason, they had been dabbling in counterfeit goods recently. Nor did I care. I wasn’t a fan of drugs so counterfeit was easier to deal with. It’s not like it could mess you up like some of those poor junkie bastards that hung out in the alleyways and on the stoops of neighborhoods like Lexi’s.
The thought of her stung again. I’d been working on pushing her out of my mind all day but I wasn’t exactly having great luck.
I didn’t even know why I was here, in Ma’s house. I didn’t give a shit about the shipment. Truth be told, I’d rather stay out of that side of the business. My job was to fuck up the guys who needed fucking up. That it was it. Nice, clean, and simple.
I don’t bother getting too much under the hood of what my brother got up to on the organizational side of things. I cave in the heads I’m told to cave in, fuck up the people who need to be fucked up. I’m the last resort—the last line in enforcement. Put it this way: If I’m at your door, there’s no second chances. Your boys, your boss, even God isn’t going to help you—I’ll take what is owed to my family in your blood and tears.
It’s a job that had always suited me and my skills. There are two things I’m good at: fighting and fucking. Usually fucking comes in second to fighting—the job and family always came first to me. But that afternoon, things were different. I felt different.
Business was the last thing on my mind. For Bobby and the guys, it was like any other Sunday. They’d met up to shoot the breeze about business operations over a plate of Ma’s meatballs. It was a regular appointment I always looked forward to. But this time, it was all just noise and irritation to me. I was too cut up about the fact that the hottest woman I had ever met had literally turned her back on me when she realized who I was and what I did.