Dimitri (The Italian Cartel Book 1)

by Shandi Boyes

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Roxanne

  The zealous gleam in Rocco’s eyes catches the dimmed lights above our heads when he slants his to the side to get a better look at the sketch I’m undertaking. The shy bob of his head would have you convinced his arms aren’t double the width of an average man’s nor covered with a range of interesting tattoos.

  He has everything you could think of when it comes to art. Popeye with a can of spinach. A seahorse. He even has a half-naked gypsy with one of her eyes gouged out. His array of body art has had me scratching pencil to paper nonstop for the past hour. I usually only sketch nudes when I’m drawing the human form, but I’ve mixed things up tonight. It’s nice focusing my attention on something other than the sting on my backside.

  While drawing the top half of Rocco’s body, I’ve barely had a minute to think about the bruise my ego got from Dimitri leaving me stranded in the middle of a sex-scented room on the brink of ecstasy. It was almost as painful as the spanking he gave my backside. I’ve channeled the energy into something more cathartic, purging it from my body in a way that won’t get me killed.

  Well, I hope it won’t.

  Dimitri’s response to Mitis’s stalk didn’t end well, so I doubt he’d appreciate his second-in-charge sprawled on the bathroom floor of his room without his shirt on, and I won’t mention how authentic the bumps in Rocco’s midsection look on paper. Considering I’m using pencils designed to enhance my face, they’ve done a mighty fine job outlining all his good points. My drawing is so realistic, I’m fighting the urge to fill in the parts I can’t see with my vivid imagination.

  With my cheeks burning, I peer down at the eyeliners teetering between Rocco and me, seeking a better color to match his unique-colored eyes. When I find one with just the right amount of golden, Rocco’s lips tuck in the corner. “What did I tell you? Just like shop-bought ones.”

  He grabs a green eyeliner from the pile of many before holding it up to my face like I did his. He’s also drawing on the paper he stole from a cleaner during our silent journey to my room. He hasn’t commented on my punishment, but I’m reasonably sure he witnessed it. His eyes are as telling as mine. I also think it’s the reason he chose to host our art lesson in the bathroom. The cool tiles are a godsend to my burning backside, although the hardness isn’t as welcoming.

  I float my eyes up to Rocco’s when he asks, “How did you get the spinach to sparkle like that?”

  He’s not happy with the grassy green coloring he’s selected for my eyes, but since lime green went out of fashion many moons ago, he doesn’t have a better option for my eye coloring. The makeup kit Alice shoved into his chest before our flight four days ago is massive, but it doesn’t have the endless color palette artists generally work with.

  “It’s all about getting the right mix of colors.” I pick up a gold eyeliner I wouldn’t use in a hundred years before snagging a pair of eyelash curlers off the vanity sink. “A little bit of contrast will pick up the color you want.”

  With his skills a mix between novice and a first-grader, I shave the slightest bit of the gold pencil onto the circles of green in the middle of his picture, hopeful they’re my eyes.

  Rocco’s laugh is a nice thing to hear in a dark and dreary place. “That was supposed to be your hands, but I guess it’ll work.”

  “Sorry,” I say with a grimace. “You have a Jackson Pollock vibe going on.”

  “Is that your way of saying my drawing is shit?”

  His question is laced with humor, but I still shake my head, mortified he thinks I’d pick on him when he’s been nothing but kind to me. “One day, people will pay good money for that.”

  “Of course they will.” Because I’m leaning close to him, the faintest smell of toothpaste lingers in my nose when his tongue darts out to replenish his lips with spit. “It’s a picture of you. That makes it priceless.”

  I stagger backward with a squeak when the rough and gravelly voice of Dimitri fills my ears. “Not as priceless as you’ll be when I weigh you down with bricks before dumping you in the deepest ocean.”

  When Rocco’s smile switches from a smirk to a full-blown grin, I stare at him like he’s mental. Dimitri’s voice didn’t have an ounce of amusement behind it. He sounds really mad like he’s on the verge of killing someone.

  I realize that someone is more likely to be me when Rocco stands to his feet. “I guess we’ll finish this later.” His ‘this’ was much too throaty for my liking. He made it seem as if we’ve done more than drawing the past hour and a half.

  With a wink of a man not in fear for his life, Rocco twists on his feet and stalks away from me. I try to keep my eyes on the mess next to my thigh, but I can’t help but gawk when Dimitri halts Rocco’s departure partway through the door. His clutch on his Rocco’s arm makes his knuckles go white, but it doesn’t dampen Rocco’s grin in the slightest. Anyone would swear they’re playing a game of chess, and Dimitri just fell straight into Rocco’s well-thought-out game plan.

  My eyes drift past a set of well-splayed thighs, a belt that’s more haggard than new, a crisp, recently laundered dress shirt, and a stern set of lips when a pair of polished black shoes enter my peripheral vision a few seconds later.

  After dragging his eyes over my semi-nude sketch of Rocco, Dimitri asks, “Have you showered?”

  I shake my head, shocked. “No. That would be a little hard to do with Rocco babysitting me, wouldn’t it?”

  My breathing shortens when he asks, “I don’t know, Roxanne, would it? You two seem very comfortable with each other.”

  When his jaw tightens after taking in Rocco’s shirt dumped under the vanity sink, checkmate rings in my ears on repeat. I just unearthed Rocco’s game plan, and for once in my life, I feel as if I’m on the winning team.

  “I prefer sketching people au naturel. Wet hair doesn’t allow that.” Still salty about how he left me hanging after my spanking, I snatch up Rocco’s drawing as if I can’t bear to part with it before making my way into the main part of my room. “It’s a pity you arrived back earlier tonight than the previous three. I can’t finish my sketch now.”

  I realize exactly who I’m messing with when Dimitri’s hand darts out to seize my wrist. His hold isn’t close to nice, and it has my heart rate climbing as high as it did when he spanked me in front of an audience—even more so when I notice the splatters of blood on his hand. They’re proof his shirt is new because there’s no way he could have got that much blood on his hands and none on his shirt. He’s changed since our exchange in the sex chamber, and for some reason, that annoys me more than the aggression of his hold.

  “Let. Me. Go,” I seethe through clenched teeth.

  My show of jealousy doesn’t faze him in the slightest. He’s too bristling with his own idiosyncrasies to pay mine any attention. “You need to shower before going to bed. I can smell Rocco’s aftershave all over you.”

  “That isn’t aftershave. Just like the hairs on his chest, Rocco’s smell is au naturel—” My last two words leave my body in a grunt when Dimitri pins me to the main wall of the bathroom with his heaving, he’s-going-to-kill-someone form. I went one step too far, and he’s more than happy to call me out on it.

  He crowds into me so profoundly, I’m blanketed by his big, brooding frame in less than a second. The contrast of our heights is undeniable. He literally towers over me as he did in my dreams many times the past year, except now, I don’t just feel his hot breaths on my neck, I also see his sexy, yet angry face.

  “Shower. Now.”

  He stops the shake of my head by gripping my face in a determined hold. It’s an aggressive clutch that has me wondering if my childhood affected me more than I realized. Instead of being scared by his dominance, I’m turned on by it. His mouth is an inch from mine. I can smell the whiskey he was drinking earlier on his lips and feel the hardness my closeness is inspiring. This could only be better if we were kissing.

  “I wasn’t asking, Roxanne. Whether I ho
ld you under freezing-cold water until you’re drenched through or dump you into a scalding-hot bath, you will shower before you’ll ever enter my bed smelling like another man.”

  He steals my chance to reply by gripping the front of my dress and shredding it off me with the strength of the Hulk. Buttons fly in all directions as an unexpected moan leaves my lips. That was fucked, but it was also exhilarating. It has me truly unsure how to respond.

  I’m not wearing a bra, so there’s no hiding how hard his aggressiveness made my nipples, but my hands are itching to slap him across the face. I’ve never felt such a conflicting array of emotions. I want to kiss and hurt him at the same time, and I’m not the only one noticing this.

  Dimitri brings his lips so close to mine, I get drunk off the whiskey fumes in his breath as much as I do the knee he wedges between my legs. His closeness makes me dizzy. I’m panting, hot and on the brink of begging for him to kiss me.

  I hate how weak he makes me, but it can’t be helped. He’s as brutally beautiful as I imagined in the alleyway all those months ago, and he has my head void of a single thought that doesn’t include him.

  Desire pulses through me when he shoves my head to the side so he can drag his nose down the throb in my throat. It has me all types of excited until he growls in my ear, “I should have killed you in the alleyway like I did the guard. Gunned you down like you thought I was going to. Then you wouldn’t have me so fucking confused.”

  When I push him away from me, too angry to let his hurtful comments slide without protest, he crowds me even closer to the wall. “It would have been awfully convenient for me if your boyfriend achieved what he set out to do, then I wouldn’t be wasting my time chasing ghosts, years too fucking late! Do you have any idea how much time I’ve wasted on you this week? How many hours you’ve added to my daughter’s captivity? Even now, instead of working on pinpointing her location, I’m here, dealing with you… again.”

  “No one asked you to do that. I was perfectly fine with Rocco.”

  My shouted response agitates him the most. He doesn’t speak a word, but I can see the last four ones I spoke filtering through his head on repeat. He works them over and over and over until the tension crackling between us turns dangerous.

  Confusion draws my brows together when Dimitri takes a step back, unpinning me from the cool, tiled wall. For how worked up he is, I hadn’t expected him to give in so easily.

  I realize I still have a lot to learn about this man when he says, “I wonder how ‘perfectly fine’ Rocco will be when I remove his scent from your skin with more than water?”

  Not giving me time to decipher his cryptic message, he yanks me forward by a rough tug on my wrist, throws an arm around my thighs, then hoists me onto his shoulder.

  When he moves me in the opposite direction of the washing facilities, I fight him with everything I have. I slap, kick, and bite at him, aware he has a gun in his bedside table, a big scary gun I have no clue how to use, much less defend myself against.

  When I’m dumped onto the bed with the same aggression Clover used only days ago, I spring onto my feet. I make a dash for the door, but Dimitri’s grab-sweep-yank routine on my ankle sends me toppling on the mattress.

  With one hand pinning me to the mattress, the other works on undoing the buckle on his well-worn belt. Instincts scream for me to protect my face when he drags the battered material out of the loops of his trousers, but its quick clatter to the floor halves my efforts, and I’m not going to mention the lowering of his zipper, or you’ll accuse me of being mental.

  This sucks to admit, but I’m more petrified I’ll miss Dimitri’s unexpected strip than worried he’s going to beat me like my father did my mother any time her moans seemed too authentic for him. He was happy to humiliate and degrade her, but at no time was she to get pleasure during his quest for happiness.

  Twisted emotions spiral through me when Dimitri’s painfully erect cock springs free from his trunks he yanks them down his thighs. He’s thick and angry, hard to the fact I’m worried he’s about to pass out.

  How is it possible to direct so much blood to one region of the body and not get dizzy?

  I suck in a quick, terrifying breath when the removal of his trousers is closely followed by him fisting my hair in a white-knuckled hold. He uses his leverage on my overbleached locks to drag my head toward his impressive cock he’s strangling like he is angry at it.

  I won’t lie, I’ve dreamed about this very moment for over a year, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t against my will. In my dreams, I sucked the dangerous and mysterious stranger’s dick because I couldn’t wait a second longer to discover how delicious he tasted. He didn’t force me. I did it willingly.

  I realize I have the situation wrong when Dimitri’s thick timbre breaks through the panicked breaths shrilling in my ears. “Look at me.”

  When my eyes immediately jump to the command in his tone, the flare of his nostrils mesmerizes me in under a second. He stares straight at me while frantically working his cock in and out of his clenched fist.

  A gleam in his eyes reveals the mammoth restraint he’s exuding, but for once, he’s not harnessing his desire to kill me. He’s fighting not to take what I’m unwilling to give, holding back the urge to finish what he started downstairs.

  He’s doing everything in his power not to make me his, even with his actions doing precisely that.

  My eyes return to the angry, red beast rocking in and out of his fist an inch from my breasts in just enough time to witness the final two pumps needed to bring him to ecstasy.

  He grunts when a stream of white cum jets out of his engorged knob.

  I moan.

  Watching him bring himself to climax is both thrilling and excruciating. Thrilling because it doubled the erotic tingles between my legs that haven’t quit since he spanked my ass raw, but excruciating because the cruel curl of his lips tells me this is as far as our exchange will go.

  This isn’t about getting me off. Even with his hand strangling his still-erect cock to ensure every drop of his cum is expelled onto my breasts, this isn’t even about Dimitri. He removed Rocco’s smell from my skin by replacing it with his as a reminder that I’m his property. His gimmick. His toy to fuck with time and time again.

  I am his, despite the fact he has no plans to fully claim me.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Roxanne

  I pull away from my bedroom door with a groan, appreciative of Rocco’s concern, but also mortified by it. I’ll never play a damsel-in-distress skit well. “He didn’t hurt me.”

  “Other than the occasional spanking, he won’t physically hurt you. That isn’t D’s way. Up here, though.” After joining me in my room, he taps on my temple still wet from a recent shower. I’m not usually a fan of showering late in the day, but Dimitri only granted me permission to wash off his cum twenty minutes ago. I thought it was so I could get ready to attend the fancy event he had a tuxedo delivered for late this afternoon. Silly me. He left our room within two minutes of me entering the bathroom, and my door remained locked until Rocco’s unexpected arrival thirty seconds ago. “That’s an entirely new ball game. You’ve got to play this game with wit, Roxie, or he’ll never let you in from the cold.”

  Still frustrated about what happened last night, I take my anger out on the wrong person. “Maybe I don’t want him to let me in. Have you ever thought about that?”

  With a laugh, Rocco flops onto my bed. It flashes up images of Dimitri doing the same to me last night, and for some crazy reason, it has my knees almost touching instead of my face screwing up.

  What did I tell you? I’m certifiably insane.

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t have invited me into your room.” After straying his eyes to the camera perched in the corner of the large space, Rocco asks, “Are you hoping my visit will have him ordering for his car to be turned around? Or are you praying for a re-run of last night?”

  My throat grows scratchy. He knows abo
ut last night?

  Upon spotting my shocked expression, Rocco hits me with a frisky wink before he props himself onto his elbows. “I don’t know exactly what happened, Smith cut the feed…” I smile at the immature roll of his eyes, “… but I got the gist of it when Dimitri arrived at my room late last night with these.”

  Mortified heat blazes across my cheeks when he digs a teeny tiny thong out of the pocket of his black trousers. They’re the pair I was wearing yesterday, the pair that were soaked through when Dimitri smeared his cum over my breasts, collarbone, neck, and lips with the same hand he used to stroke himself.

  Once my torso was coated with the sticky substance, he tugged off my panties before he demanded me not to move until he returned. I thought he was taking a breather to regather his bearings. I had no clue he went to hand my soiled panties to the man responsible for his blood-thirsty rage.

  I attempt to snatch my underwear out of Rocco’s grasp while asking, “Why do you have them?” I say ‘attempt’ as my efforts are fruitless. Rocco is too quick for my weary head. I hardly slept a wink last night. Not only was the smell of Dimitri’s cum keeping my heart rate high, once he returned to our room, his eyes burned a hole into the back of my head the entire night.

  I give up on my endeavor to free my underwear from the now insanity of my life when Rocco says, “He used them as a deterrent. Said if I don’t step back, then next time I see your panties, they’ll be smeared with your blood.”

  As unease treks through my veins, my throat works hard to swallow. “Then why are you here?” After calculating how many steps it will take to barge him out of my room, I triple it, aware his large frame will require additional shoves. “If you leave now, maybe Dimitri will go easy on me. Tell him you were bringing tampons or something. I’m sure you can make something up on the fly.”