The Kiss Thief

by LJ Shen

  “Put me down,” I slurred between drunken kisses.

  “I don’t give oral on principle, but you’re wet enough to fit a fucking shovel in.”

  What? Fright gripped my throat, tightening its claws on my neck from the inside. He was half-ready to maul me right there on the floor. We were already upstairs when I began to push him off me, untangling my legs from his waist. He let go of me immediately, watching as I stumbled out of his embrace, my back hitting the wall.

  “Nemesis?” He frowned, tilting his chin down. He looked more confused than angry. For all his shortcomings, Wolfe had never forced me to do anything physical with him.

  “I said I’m not ready!”

  “You also said it as though I personally escorted you to Hell’s gates. What’s the matter?”

  I was embarrassed by my behavior. Embarrassed by both my lie of being experienced and my virginity. Last but not least, I was ashamed of wanting it so badly. Was that all it took for me to forget Angelo? The hard length of Wolfe against my softness?

  “Are you a virgin?” His mouth nearly blossomed into a smile. So rare was laughter on my fiancé’s face, I was beginning to think he was incapable of true joy.

  “Of course, I’m not a virgin.” I slapped my thigh, turning away toward my room. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back to his embrace. I melted against his body like butter on a fry pan. “I just need a little time. You’re still more experienced than I am.”

  “It’s not a competition.”

  “I’ve seen the papers.” I narrowed my eyes accusingly. “You’re a Casanova.”

  “Casanova.” His chest danced against mine as he rumbled with a chuckle at my choice of words. “Shall I escort you to the nearest portal to take you back to the sixteenth century?” He faked a theatrical English accent.

  I knew I sounded like a prude. Worse—I knew I was raised to be one, and shaking off the chains of my dated scruples would be difficult. But I wasn’t nineteen. Not really. I had the manners of a fifty-year-old and the life experience of a goddamn toddler.

  “Forget it.”

  He sucked his teeth in, smirking. “Fine. No fucking. We can fool around. Senior-year style. A blast from the past.”

  That sounded equally as dangerous as going all the way. The mere idea of being with him in the same room with the door closed felt scandalous, somehow.

  “In your room?”

  He hitched one shoulder up. “Your call. One of us will have to leave after it’s over. I don’t share a bed with women.”

  “And men?” I slid back into my element, glad we were back in friendly territory.

  “Watch your mouth, Miss Rossi, unless you want to find it wrapped around my something long and hard that’d make your jaw snap.”

  I knew he was kidding this time, and even had to cover a grin, ducking my head down.

  “Is sleeping alone a principle, too?”

  “Yes.”

  So he did not share a bed with his partners, did not perform oral sex, and was not interested in forming a relationship with a woman. I didn’t know much about the world of dating, but I was pretty certain my future husband wasn’t a great catch.

  “I feel like there’s a Francesca question coming my way.” He scanned me, and I realized I’d been munching on my lower lip contemplatively.

  “Why do you not give oral?” I asked, pinking again. It didn’t help that we were having the conversation in the middle of the foyer where Ms. Sterling could hear us through the thin door of her room.

  Wolfe, of course, seemed anything but embarrassed, placing his shoulder on the wall and watching me through lazy eyes.

  “I actually quite enjoy the taste of pussy. It’s the bowing down part I have severe dislike to.”

  “You think it’s degrading?”

  “I will never kneel for anyone. Don’t take it personally.”

  “Surely, there are plenty of positions that would not require that of you.”

  What was I saying?

  He smirked. “In all of them, the person giving the pleasure looks like the peasant.”

  “And how come you never share a bed with anyone?”

  “People leave. Getting used to them is pointless.”

  “A husband and a wife are not supposed to leave each other.”

  “Yet you would be more than willing to turn your back on this, would you not, my dear fiancée?”

  I said nothing. He pushed off the wall and took a step toward me, tilting my chin up with his thumb. Wolfe was wrong. Or at least, not completely right. I was no longer hell-bent on running away from him. Not since I realized my parents weren’t going to fight for me. Angelo said we’d be together this lifetime, but I hadn’t heard from him since. With every day that passed, breathing without feeling as if a knife had been shoved into my lungs became easier.

  But I didn’t confess that to Wolfe. I didn’t utter aloud what my body spoke to him in my parents’ piano room.

  I stepped out of his embrace, telling him everything there was to say.

  I’m not ready yet.

  “Good night, Villain.” I ambled to my bedroom.

  The jagged edge of his voice ran like fingers over my back behind me, but he relented. Accepted my reluctance to be with him like that.

  “Sleep tight, Nemesis.”

  I WATCHED FROM THE BACK of my Cadillac as the private investigator I’d hired slammed his car door shut and walked over to knock on the Rossi’s door. Francesca’s mother answered, and he handed her the brown manila file and turned around without a word, just as I had instructed him to.

  Arthur Rossi tried to destroy the evidence against him.

  I was going to destroy him.

  I’d filled Chicago’s streets with more cops and moles. For the past three decades, he’d been ruling those streets with an iron fist. And now, in only a short few weeks, I’d managed to eliminate a lot of his power.

  The investigator I’d hired reported back that Arthur had been drinking more, sleeping less, and raised his hand to two of his most trustworthy soldiers. For the first time in three decades, he was spotted leaving his own strip clubs, smelling not only like cigars and alcohol but also other women’s pussies. Two of the women, out-of-towners, were stupid enough to allow the investigator to take pictures of them with Arthur.

  I’d created more of a mess for him, and it seemed as though his Keaton problem wasn’t going to go away.

  I watched Francesca’s mother’s face crumpling as she slid the pictures out of the envelope. I simultaneously clutched a letter in my own hand. It was addressed to me from her husband. Containing anthrax, I was sure, if it weren’t too incriminating against him.

  Francesca’s mother started after the investigator’s white Hyundai, but he already took off before she could question him further about the things he showed her.

  I tore open the letter and skimmed over it.

  It was an invitation to throw his daughter and me an engagement party.

  It was suspicious, but a part of me gave him the benefit of the doubt. I figured he wanted to put on a show and make people think our marriage had his blessing in order to try and assert more power over the situation. Furthermore, staging the fire at Murphy’s didn’t serve him well. My briefcase (which didn’t contain the evidence against him, as he’d been tipped) was gone, but now he reopened a front with the Irish, who saw the fire as a direct attack on them.

  Saying Francesca and her parents ended their last encounter on a bad note with me would be the understatement of the goddamn century, and this could give them a chance to patch things up. Not that I had any plans to play The Brady Bunch with a mobster, but the last thing I wanted was a scandal-filled wedding with a tearful bride. And the future Mrs. Keaton, much to my disdain, excelled at turning on that Buckingham Fountain and crying her eyes out every time things didn’t work according to her Instagram-perfect ideas.

  Francesca was at church again. She’d been spending a lot of time at church, because on top of being a prude
and a crier, she was also—you guessed it—a closeted nun. On the bright side, it couldn’t hurt my chances of gaining more supporters. Everyone loved a good Christian family. They didn’t have to know the groom’s bride was more interested in banging the family’s friend.

  Today, Francesca had previewed the decorations for our upcoming nuptials. Since we’d agreed there was no need for a rehearsal dinner, we decided on a speedy event in the house of God, followed by a modest party at her parents’.

  Arthur also asked in the letter if we’d do the Rossi couple the honor of staying the night at their house and attend a celebratory breakfast afterward.

  It was a good opportunity to finally sit him down and lay it all out for him, play by play. How I was going to take away everything he’d ever worked for. Then break the news that none of the money, property, and reputation he’d gained over the years mattered and make him realize that none of it would help him one bit in his dire situation.

  Francesca and I weren’t going to give him any grandchildren.

  It wouldn’t hurt that my bride would get the chance to spend time with her mother. A reward for her sensible behavior.

  “Back to the house,” I told Smithy.

  “You have the pep rally at six o’clock,” one of my Executive Protection Agents (fancy name for a bodyguard, just as well—as there was zero chance of my remembering his real name) pointed out from the passenger’s seat. Usually, it was my PA’s job to remind me about social obligations. However, he was down with his fifth stomach bug for the summer and texted Smithy and my bodyguards relentlessly to keep me on schedule.

  I waved my hand. “Make it quick.”

  As we zipped by the Sears Tower, deep dish pizza parlors with cheap neon signs, and buskers performing their own version of Billboard’s current hits, I thought about my fiancée. Francesca had been growing on me like fingernails. Slowly, determinedly, and completely without my attention or encouragement.

  She waited for me every evening in her vegetable garden, an oddly attractive scent of mud, cigarettes, clean soap clinging on her body, and not wearing much more than a barely there long camisole that cleaved to her body with sweat and mist. She was always surprised and delighted when I lowered her on the wet soil, still fully clad in my suit, pressed my knee between her legs and devoured her sweet mouth until our lips were cracked and our mouths were dry. She always gasped when I rubbed her hand over my cock through my dress pants, and she even chanced a squeeze in the pavilion, somewhere exposed enough for her to feel safe but hidden enough for us not to have an audience. Her eyes flared in awe and joy when I flicked her clit through her panties not-so-accidentally. Every time I gave her a chance to pull away, she stapled her body to mine, making us one entity.

  I kept my word and didn’t initiate sex with her. Figured the day we’d sleep together was drawing close with our pending nuptials. She was receptive, syrupy and…fascinated. Long gone were the days of the jaded, experienced Kristens. Francesca, despite the fact she’d slept with men before, was raw. I was going to teach her all the dirty tricks the Bandini kid couldn’t and have fun doing so.

  I’d visited her room a few times when I knew she wasn’t there, always watching out for two things. The third note—she hadn’t opened the box yet. I knew because the tiny golden key was positioned precisely in the same place, not moving an inch between the cracks of her expensive, ancient wooden floors. The floor was due to be replaced before her arrival, but now that I knew where she kept her secrets, I decided to keep the cracks intact. The other was to check her phone for traces of Angelo. There were none. His messages were left unanswered, though she did not delete him from her contacts.

  “We’re here,” Smithy said as he parked by Lincoln Brooks High School. The place had produced more gang members than literate citizens, and it was my job to smile, wave, and pretend that things would be okay for the students. They were going to be—once I’d clean their streets of Francesca’s father’s employees.

  Protocol demanded one executive protection agent should open my door while the other positioned himself behind me at all time, so that was what we did.

  I walked across the yellow, uneven lawn toward the low, gray, depressingly square building, passing metal barricades with excited students and their parents who came to see an alumni rapper who was going to perform there later that evening. The kid had more ink on his face than a Harry Potter book and some questionable scars. I waltzed toward the principal of the school, a shapely woman with a cheap suit and an ’80’s haircut. She ran toward me, her heels stubbing the dry ground beneath us.

  “Senator Keaton! We’re beyond excited…” she started, just as gunfire cracked through the air. One of my bodyguards jumped over my body instinctively, throwing me to the floor. My stomach plastered to the ground, I twisted my head to the side, watching the barricaded crowd.

  People started running in every direction, parents tugging their children, babies crying, and teachers yelling hysterically at the students to calm down. The principal slid down to the grass and began to scream in my face, covering her head with her hands.

  Thanks for the help, lady.

  Another bullet sliced through the air. Then another. Then another, each of them getting closer to me.

  “Get off me,” I growled to the EPA on top of me.

  “But protocol says…”

  “Protocol can go fuck itself in the ass,” I snapped, the remainder of my previous, less-than-delightful life creeping into my language. “Call 911 and let me deal with this.”

  He disconnected his heavy body from mine reluctantly, and I sprang up to my feet and started running for the kid with the gun. I doubted he had more bullets in that thing. Even if he had, he proved to be a shit aim. He couldn’t put a bullet in me if I literally hugged him. I raced right toward him, knowing that I wasn’t brave as much as I was vindictive and stupid but not giving much damn.

  You took it too far, Arthur, I thought. Further than I gave you credit for.

  He played nice and sent me an invitation to an engagement party and suggested we stay at his place. He was building an alibi. I bet he was sitting somewhere in public right now. Maybe even pouring bowls of soup in a fucking charity basement.

  By the time I put a good dent on the distance between me and my pimply assassin, the crowd had evaporated, and he was exposed. He turned around and started running. I was faster. I caught the hem of his white tee from behind, yanking him back to me.

  “Who sent you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouted, kicking the air as I dragged him back, but not before prying the gun from his hand and kicking it to the side. Not ten seconds later, ten police vehicles were surrounding us from every direction, and armed and shielded, special unit officers came out, officially arresting him. I cursed under my breath. I needed a few more minutes with him. I knew, without a shadow of the doubt, that he wasn’t going to throw Arthur under the bus. But my EPAs and driver already escorted me to the other side of the building with two detectives and four officers tailing behind us.

  “What you did today is a very admirable thing, Senator Keaton. School shootings are a real issue these days, and I…” the principal started.

  God, woman, just shut up.

  “Any injuries?” I cut her words.

  “Not so far,” one of the officers said as we made our way to my vehicle. “But you will be the talk of the town for the next couple of days. That was heroic.”

  “Thank you.” I hated compliments. They made you lax and unguarded.

  “Zion says you’ll need to make some media appearances today,” my EPA—the one who shielded me from the bullets—stared at his phone.

  “Fine.”

  I took out my phone and texted Arthur’s number in an instant. The first text message I had ever sent my future father-in-law.

  Thank you for the invitation. My fiancée and I gladly accept.

  Tucking the phone back into the breast pocket of my jacket, I smirke
d.

  Arthur Rossi tried to kill me.

  He was about to find out that he was a pussy, and I was a cat.

  With nine lives.

  Two down, seven to go.

  The next few days were all about talking to the media, raising awareness about school shootings, and milking every second of the incident. Nobody suspected it was an attempt to assassinate me. The kid—an Italian school alumni and a Marine on vacation who got cold feet and forgot how to aim—was in custody now, and insisted that it was video games that made him do it.

  The day of the engagement party, Nem and I were to meet downstairs at seven o’clock. I took a shower and got dressed at the office but made it home in a timely manner. Leaving Francesca as prey for Arthur was no longer an option. Arthur was beginning to feel a lot like a loose cannon, and I didn’t want it anywhere near the smoothly operating machine called my life.

  When I arrived on time, Francesca was waiting for me in a tight white gown that made my cock jump in a standing ovation. God, she was beautiful. And God, I was going to fuck her tonight. Even if I had to give her the foreplay she loved so much until my tongue fell off. The woman was delicious and ripe. And mine.

  And mine.

  And mine.

  If I repeated these words in my head enough times, I could make it true.

  I walked over to my bride-to-be, yanked her by the waist, and kissed her openly in front of Sterling, who was fretting with the hem of Francesca’s gown. The old woman nearly swooned when our lips touched. She’d known me my entire life, and had never seen me kiss a woman, in public or otherwise. Sterling twirled to the kitchen with a spring in her step, giving us privacy.

  Francesca and I cocked our eyebrows in unison. Our bodies were mimicking one another, too.