“You’ll use mine from now on.” His tone was non-negotiable as he put his watch on.
Translation: I own you now, not your papà.
I nodded, but then stilled when the pad of his thumb pulled down on my bottom lip until it escaped my teeth. “Don’t tempt me,” he said with a harshness that touched my skin. It wasn’t lost on me that he spoke of the kissing variety of temptation.
My breath caught somewhere in my chest. How much I wanted to run my tongue across his thumb, to pull it into my mouth. It was an itch I could hardly stop, and I knew he saw the desire on my face.
His eyes burned like coal, and his thumb brushed across my lips, daring me to do it. A shiver rocked through me. I wasn’t that brave and we both knew it. He took a step back and slipped his hands into his pockets, leaving a warm imprint on my lips.
He glanced at his cousin, who sat with his elbows on his knees watching the game.
“Luca will stay here with you. In my office.”
Luca’s broad shoulders tensed under his white dress shirt. “Ace—”
“If you need to reach me, you can use his phone until we get you one tomorrow,” he told me, grabbing his keys from the counter.
Luca stood to his incredible height that had to be six and a half feet. “I’m not a babysitter, boss.”
I stared forward, saying a silent prayer that Nico wouldn’t leave this man with me.
“You are until I can find a gay cousin,” Nico returned dryly.
I closed my eyes.
It was safe to say that wouldn’t happen, considering the Cosa Nostra was a worse advocate for the LGBT community than they were for the women’s movement. It was a work in progress.
Luca’s jaw ticked.
Nico opened the back door, but then paused. “Elena?”
“Yeah?”
“Burn that shirt.” He then left without another word.
I glanced down at my pink Yankees t-shirt. I guessed Nico was a Red Sox fan.
We really wouldn’t work out now.
Luca eyed me like he wanted to wrap his big hands around my throat and squeeze.
Nerves played beneath my skin.
“There’s no TV in his office,” he said eventually.
I blinked, realizing he was asking me in the most arrogant way I’d ever encountered if he could watch TV out here, even though Nico had told him to go in his office.
I really didn’t want to spend my day around this man. He was that unnerving, but if he was going to be here for a while, I didn’t want him to have to hole up in Nico’s office. It would make me feel guilty all day.
“Well, I guess what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Instead of thanking me, he nodded toward the food on the counter. “What’s that?”
I sighed, grabbed my plate, and slid it across the island in his direction.
I sat back in my chair and cracked my knuckles. It wasn’t until then that I recognized the restlessness that ghosted under my skin.
I didn’t know how I was going to get through the work day with Elena in my home, willing to take off her clothes whenever I asked her to. The idea was a constant in the corner of my mind, and it was the exact reason I didn’t want to marry her. I sat in front of five men who would kill me if they could, in the conference room of my club, and I couldn’t think about anything but how she had looked naked in my kitchen, how smooth her skin was, how she’d tasted.
She tasted better than hustling.
I hadn’t planned to do it. I was going to get something else out of Salvatore for fucking me over, but when he’d said Oscar Perez . . . the irrational burn concerning Elena had seared through my veins. So, I found out where he resided and then I shot him in the goddamn head. I’d tried to pacify myself with that, but Salvatore would just pawn her off to someone else, and I knew for God only knows what reason I couldn’t fucking handle it.
“Here’s an idea, why don’t you—”
“Here’s an idea,” I cut Rafael off, my voice remaining impassive. “Why don’t you get the fuck out.”
A tense air crept through the room on hands and knees. I couldn’t listen to his stupid proposition for one more second.
The Mexican drug lord’s tanned complexion turned red and blotchy. “It was only business advice, from one man to another,” he seethed, standing.
“If I wanted business advice from a man poorer than me I would have asked for it.”
Rafael slammed the conference room door before the three of his men could make it out behind him.
“Are we done here?” I asked the table.
With tight countenances and some shifting gazes, the men all got to their feet and headed out of the room.
“Well,” my uncle Jimmy said from the seat beside me, “someone needs to get laid, and it ain’t me.”
An understatement if I ever heard one.
It’d been close to two weeks now and the urge was beginning to burn, to bubble over until it became an absolute necessity. Even I knew I became a jackass when I abstained from sex. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d gone this long. There was no particular reason for the lapse, except for the annoying notion that I’d acquired a sudden hard-on for long black hair and, lately, I’d only come across one who had it.
“Not good business, going and pissing off our suppliers,” Jimmy said, lighting a cigar and leaning back in his chair.
“It was a stupid venture and you know it.”
“Bad deal, what you did to that Perez, Ace.” He shook his head.
So the man was a little more prominent than I’d first presumed. There would be people who’d miss him. “The only thing I regret is that I didn’t make it last longer.”
I glanced down the table to see three pairs of eyes on me. Lorenzo rocked in his chair, looking at me like I’d kicked a puppy, while Ricardo and Dino—a capo of mine—sat beside him, their keen attention on me as well.
At that moment, Gianna breezed into the conference room. My eyes narrowed, taking in her tight black dress that all club waitresses were mandated to wear, but she violated the dress code with her choker necklace and high pigtails.
She stopped by Lorenzo’s side, holding out her palm. Without looking at her, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a wad of bills, setting it in her hand. She licked her finger and then began counting it like Lorenzo would short her. He was a Russo—he would.
“And what was this bet?” A dark edge crept into my voice.
Lorenzo scratched the back of his neck. “Whether or not you’d marry Elena instead of her sister, boss.”
My jaw tightened.
Gianna pursed her lips and held out her hand again. Lorenzo sighed, reached back into his jacket and dropped the rest of the bills in her palm.
“Thanks, Lo.” She spun on her heel to leave.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
She stopped in front of the door, her shoulders tensing.
“You’re not working here.”
She turned around, glaring at me. “Why not?”
“Because you’re a train wreck, that’s why. Once you can pass a drug test, then I’ll think about it. Return your uniform before you leave.”
I should have known not to give her a choice of who to marry after my papà passed. The capo was too old for the business, let alone to control Gianna. Which was undeniably the reason she’d chosen him.