Spin Ruin: (A Mafia Romance Two-Book Bundle) (34 page)

The top was down, and Antonio was in aviators and snug jeans, his boots making a
clup-clup
on the pavement as he came around to open the door for me. “Contessa,” he said.

“Capo.”

“How was your afternoon out?”

“Thrilling.” I sat down, and he closed the door behind me. When he got behind the wheel I asked, “Short notice to give a girl.”

“Ten minutes is enough time to get down the stairs.”

“Maybe I was busy.”

“Were you?” He put the car into drive and twisted to see behind him before pulling out. His leather jacket stretched between his shoulder blades.

“Hardly the point,” I huffed.

“Exactly the point.” He pulled into the street and headed south with the wind in his hair, the sun on his glasses, and his skin a rich olive color. When he smiled at me, I forgot the point entirely.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Back to the east side.”

“You won’t give up over there, will you?”

“It’s mine. I never give up what’s mine.” He turned to me for a second. “Ever.”

“So, if you kept that territory, where did Paulie go?”

He smirked, eyes on the road. I wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but if he expected me to stick to that, he was sorely mistaken.

“Is he a businessman without a business?” I used air quotes.

“There is nothing more dangerous than a man who has lost everything fighting something he fears.”

“What does he fear?”

Antonio pulled onto the 10 freeway. My hair went nuts, spiraling like cotton candy in the wind. He put his fingers on my thigh, pushing my skirt up. I put my hand on it as he moved it deeper, grasping the flesh.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Your legs are closed.”

“I’m in a convertible on the 10.”

“Open them.
Adesso
. I want to feel if you’re wet.”

“Antonio, really.” A big rig came up on the right. If the trucker had been looking out his side window, he would have had a clear view.

“Pull your skirt down over my hand and spread your legs. One knee touching the door. All the way. Don’t argue, or I’m going to pull over and spank you for every trucker on the freeway to see.”

I was wet. I had to be. I pulled my skirt over his hand and put my bag on my lap. He grabbed his jacket from the back and put it over the bag.

“Good enough,” he said. “Open up.”

I spread my legs. The city streaked by in swashes of grey, blots of billboard colors, and flecks of palm-tree green. The only constant was the flawless umbrella of blue sky.

“You didn’t answer the question,” I said. He changed lanes, blinker and all, and slipped his hand under the crotch of my panties.

“
Dio mio
, you are soaked. What were you thinking about?”

He rubbed my clit gently, one stroke along the length.

“Paulie’s business.” I opened my legs wider.

“Really?” He leaned back and draped his left wrist over the wheel while drawing sticky circles around my opening with his right middle finger.

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“I was thinking about your mouth.”

“
Bene
. What about it?” A BMW came up close on the right, and I ignored it. If I looked at them, they’d look back. The car was red, and I was throbbing.

“Your lips,” I gasped. “Between my legs.” He moved so slowly I thought I’d explode from the rush of blood.

“More.”

“Kissing me. Sucking. God, Jesus Antonio. How can you drive and do this?” I could barely see past the nest of hair whipping around my face, but I saw his smirk clearly.

“The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.” He grasped my clit between his thumb and forefinger, changing lanes again so he could blow the speed limit that much better.

“God!”

“More,” he said.

“And you put your tongue inside me, and rub your teeth on my clit.”

“You are dirty, Contessa. And detailed. Do you want to come?” He let the pinch go and rubbed with the pads of his fingers.

“Please.”

“Sit still.”

I caught sight of him, between the spaghetti of red hair, glancing my way and smiling.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

“Keep your legs open.” He dragged all four fingers over my hard clit once, twice, the bumps and ridges of his fingertips a pulsing rhythm at seventy-five miles an hour.

“Yes.”

“Keep still. And no shouting.” He ran his fingers over me. Even though it was autumn, I was sweating, muscles clenching, nerves firing. My jaw went slack then tightened when he flicked his nails over me.

Without an outlet in movement or sound, I felt everything. My body connected with wires of pleasure, tightening with the orgasm, twisting, my ass clenching, my pussy pulsating for a cock to fill it, grasping for him in waves. The white noise of the freeway was consumed by my own vortex, and any cares about people seeing me disappeared.

His touch got lighter and lighter, prolonging my orgasm. It went on and on. I closed my eyes and got lost in his fingers, my silence, and stillness.

When I finally stopped coming, Antonio removed his hand from under the jacket and got off the freeway.

He put his fingers in his mouth, and when he stopped at the red light, he brushed his pinkie over my lower lip, painting me with our mingled juices.

“You know what made Paulie crazy enough to break everything he worked for?” Antonio asked.

“It was me, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Partly, it was you.”

theresa

e made a few more turns, but I more or less knew the neighborhood after the night Marina had tried to shoot me. We were probably five blocks from his burned-out auto shop. He was committed to the neighborhood, for sure. If I owned a business on the east side and someone set fire to it, I’d never want to cross the LA River again.

He didn’t say much after revealing that I was not only a target for Paulie because of the feud, but the reason for the hostility in the first place. As if he knew I’d need a minute to absorb the new information, he just drove and waited.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I’m driving around until you ask what you want to ask.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to.”

He stopped at a light and twisted to face me. “Go ahead.”

“Can’t you just say what you want without me trying to ask the right question? I’m not the lawyer in the car, here.”

“Apparently. And your hair is a mess. Your lips smell like pussy. Did someone just finger the hell out of you?”

“Antonio! You’re deflecting.”

“I am, Contessa.
Mi dispiace
. This has been obsessing me, and the only time I don’t feel obsessed with it is when I’m around you. When I’m around you, I want to pretend it’s all gone away.” He drove, but with purpose, not as if he was killing time waiting for my question.

“This is going to be a constant battle, isn’t it?”

He smiled a devil of a smile. His parents had skimmed from the very top of the gene pool to make that mouth. “If you make things into battles, yes, they are battles.” He pulled into a narrow alley and parked in front of a garage.

“Why was he scared of me?”

He opened his door. “Come.” He went around the car, keys jingling, and opened the door for me.

“I’m being really patient,” I said.

“Yes, you are.” He planted a kiss on my lips, and I tasted my sex on his mouth, from the fingers he’d licked. “Women scare him. Especially the wild, unpredictable ones.”

“Me? Wild and unpredictable?”

We put our arms around each other, and he led me out of the alley and to the street. The row of buildings was connected, and flush with the street in the old tenement style, with storefronts on the first floor and one story of apartments above.

“To Paulie, you are,” he said.

He stopped in the middle of the block. The storefront was empty. A large window had crusty bars in front and cracked glass behind. The door was original to the building, which looked as if it has been built just before the depression and not updated since. On the right of it stood another empty storefront that had been updated in a grotesquely ugly way, with chipped brown stucco and a poorly installed vinyl window. On the left was a store with a purpose I couldn’t divine, with hours posted and the sign in the door flipped to “Closed.”

“What do you think?” Antonio asked as he unlocked the front gate.

“I think it needs a coat of paint.”

The gates creaked, and he slapped them home with a metallic smack. “What color would you like?” He fingered a bouquet of keys.

“Capo, what’s happening? You can’t turn this into an auto shop. It’s in the middle of the block.”

He opened the door, turned, and flipped on the lights. He repeated a version of his previous question. “What would you turn it into?”

I didn’t answer but stepped past the door, onto a linoleum floor covered in grease and dust. Metal racks lined the right; stacked round tables stood on my left. I glimpsed a dark back room that looked like a place where unpleasant scientific mysteries waited to be solved. “A clean room, first,” I said.

“And then?” He jingled his keys. He seemed relaxed and happy, leaning on his right hip slightly, shoulders sloped, face waiting for something joyful, and I knew what our visit was about.

“Capo.” I took two steps toward him, with my arms out. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re sweet?”

His hands took me by the waist and drew me close. “No.”

“You are.”

His head tilted slightly, and his cheeks got narrow, as if he sucked them in. His eyes were hard and defensive. I remembered who I was dealing with and how little I knew him, but I refused to be scared.

“I don’t want a store.”

“The shop is close. I can watch you. And you’ll have something that’s yours.”

I wanted to protest that I had plenty that was mine, and I did. I had a condo. I had money. I had three-thousand-dollar shoes. And if I wanted a store in one of the worst neighborhoods in Los Angeles, I could have one very nicely arranged without his help.

I tamped back all of my resistance because the store was a gift, and a thoughtful one. Most men gave women flowers or jewelry; Antonio gave buildings. I didn’t need a dozen roses, and I could buy myself a diamond necklace, but I could see the value of Antonio’s gift.

But I didn’t want a store. I didn’t want to be handed a life.

“Can I think about what to do with it?”

“
Si!
It’s zoned for food, not liquor, but any licenses you want…” He held his hands out and said no more. I was sure I could get it zoned as an amusement park if I wanted.

That store was his dozen roses and box of candy. It was completely useless. Pointless, even. In a moment of peace, he’d tried to give me what he thought would make me happy.

“Thank you, Capo. Can I take time to decide what to do with it?”

“Of course.”

I reached up to kiss him, twisting my fingers together behind his neck. His tongue hit mine, filling my mouth with aggression and lust. His hands went up my shirt, shoving my bra out of the way with his fingers, thumb teasing my nipple as he pressed his hardness against my hip. Would he take me in that filthy store? Knock me against the metal shelves and drag me into the dark back room? Yes. Yes, he would.

He kicked the door shut. And that slam threw me off for a fraction of a second, so that when the other sounds hit, I thought they were echoes of the door. When Antonio threw me to the floor, I thought it was part of his seduction. I was primed for hard, lustful, thoughtless sex.

But the door kept slamming, and his weight on me was not amorous. His breath came in gasps on my neck, hot and sharp, and he held my wrists down hard enough to bruise.

Glass broke, plaster popped, and what I thought was the crack of a slamming door was no less than the constant
pop pop pop
of gunfire. And my body under his, with the threat of death a sudden stink in the room, was on fire.

antonio

t stopped. I didn’t know if the guy with the gun was reloading or getting out of the car to finish us off. So when I had a second, I let go of Theresa’s wrist and pulled her up. It was not graceful or chivalrous. I had no time to apologize, and she didn’t have a second to ask what the hell had happened. I pulled her into the back so fast she almost tripped. It would have been fine if she had fallen. I would have preferred to have dragged her.