“We’re going in circles.” He kisses my forehead, my cheek, the edges of my lips. “Answer your own question, Dani: does this feel fake to you?”
“No,” I admit. “It doesn’t. But I’m scared, Angelo. I can’t fall for you. I’ve got too much going on. With my career, with my life. With my little brother. And you’re a—you’re not the person I thought you were.”
He laughs darkly. “We’ve been living together for weeks now. I know you’ve seen things. I know you’ve been looking the other way. You can’t pretend you’re innocent and I’ve just been deceiving you. You’ve been deceiving yourself, too.”
I place my hand on his chest, meaning to push him away. But I end up pulling myself closer instead. “That’s not true,” I lie. “I just …” I stand on my tiptoes, bringing my face close to his. I feel his breath on me. I feel his eyes, too, like they’re penetrating me, baring me. I’ve never felt so seen in my life. “I just want us to be something, I guess. I want this to make sense. But how can it, now?”
“You’re confused.”
I laugh drily. “Yeah, that’s one word for it.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” he smiles. “I’ve never met anybody who confuses me as much as you. But I know something, too. Felice was my friend and he died today because he was driving and I wasn’t. I was miserable, depressed. I still am. But every time I look at you, I can’t stop smiling.”
We pause, just looking at each other. Then this flicker moves across his face. It’s like he’s scared he’s said too much. I get the sense that he wants to take the words back.
His hold on me gets weaker. Then he lets go and turns away. He turns off the faucet and I get it. It’s like a signal: enough real talk.
When he turns back to me, he has a wicked smirk on his lips.
“I’ve got an idea.”
“What?” I say. Because it’s too easy to just let go of all the serious stuff and have fun with Angelo. That’s the conundrum. I want to stay mad, but when he smiles like that, I feel myself melting. “You’ve got this mischievous look on your face. What the hell are you thinking?”
He takes my hand. “Do you trust me?” he asks.
“Stupidly, I sort of do. Why?”
“Because I’m going to need to blindfold you.”
Okay, so this is probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done in my life. This guy basically tells me all my worst fears about him are true, and what do I do? I agree to be blindfolded in the back of his car.
But the thing is, I don’t believe Angelo would ever let anything happen to me. I saw the way he put himself between me and those thugs in the parking lot, the fierce protective streak in him.
We drive for around an hour, bantering the entire time. “So are you going to shoot or stab me?”
It’s the sort of dark humor I use in my EMT work, a way to stave off my real, bone-chilling concerns. Angelo laughs. “Neither, Dani.”
Finally, the car comes to a stop. When I make to take the blindfold off, Angelo touches my hand softly. “Not yet. There’s a few things I need to arrange first.”
“You were on the phone for half an hour arranging a few things.”
“I want it to be perfect,” he says.
“And what is it, exactly?”
But he’s already stepping from the car. When he returns to the car, he helps me blindly step out and then—big reveal—removes the blindfold.
I feel the breath catching in my throat even as it fogs the night air. I can see my breath because huge floodlights have been set up all around the race-car track. Off to the side, I see two cars and two drivers’ mates. They look a little tired, but they’re both sipping coffee. Angelo clearly woke them up in the middle of the night for this.
“What do you think?” he says. “Shall we?”
I let it all sink in. Memories of Dad and me at the track move through me with powerful emotion. Then I turn to Angelo.
“I think,” I say, “that you just signed your own death warrant. Are you really gonna challenge me to a race?”
“No, I’m going to beat you in a race,” he says.
“Oh yeah?” I chuckle. How can I be laughing right now? How can I be smiling like a fool? But I just love this man so much. No, no. That was a mistake. I love being around him so much. That’s what I meant. “Care to put your money when your mouth is?”
Suddenly, he loops his arms around me, pulling me close. “What’re the terms?” he growls, kissing me passionately. I clasp my hands to his face. It’s like our passion is even hotter, deeper now that I know more about him.
When we break off, I say, “If I win, you’re my personal slave for an entire afternoon.”
“And if I win?” he asks.
“You only have to be my personal slave for an hour?” I offer.
“Ha, ha,” he grumbles. “No, if I win, you’re my personal slave for an afternoon. But think carefully before you agree.” He brings his lips to my ear, whispering. “Because if you’re my slave, I might get a few ideas. Like dressing you in a sexy maid’s outfit and having you dance around the place, underwear not fucking permitted, sliding my hand higher and higher up your legs as you bend over to dust our apartment. I might tie you up, but for real this time, strap you to my bed and spank you until you’re so wet you’re begging for me to move inside you. And only when you’re pleading… only then will I slide my cock inside your wet, aching pussy.”
“Fuck,” I whisper. “I might just throw this race if I wasn’t so damn competitive. Let’s go, playboy. Let’s do this.”
23
Angelo
Two Days Later
When we drive up to the corner, I feel like there’s a devil in my belly. An angry, vengeful, ready-to-do-damage devil.
It’s a cold, wet day on a cold, wet corner in Hell’s Kitchen, miserable and drab, but it doesn’t slow down the Albanians’ trade. I watch their drug-dealing process: a kid rides up on a bike, nods to the junkie, takes the cash. Further up the street, another kid emerges from an alleyway, palming the drugs from inside his cheek.
It’s not the corner kids that I’m interested in. It’s the three Albanians watching from the car on the other side of the street.
I think about Felice and his mother, about his daughter on the West Coast. It doesn’t matter that the Family is going to take care of them, because he’s dead. That’s how a man dies—seemingly okay, then the bleeding gets worse, then they realize too late his internal organs are fucked and … I grip the steering wheel so hard I feel my knuckles pressing through my skin.
It doesn’t even matter that I feel closer to Dani than I have to any other woman in my entire life. Or any other person, really. Two nights ago, when I took her to the race track, we drove like demons. Out of the infinite kindness of my heart, I let her win.
The next morning, she made me her slave, but each order was something I wanted to do. Lick that whipped cream off her nipples? Eat her pussy until she came all over my tongue? Fuck her until the edge of my pleasure, pause, and then fuck her again? Yes, yes, fucking yes.