And then, it happens. He grabs my hips and pushes his cock deep inside me, penetrating me to the hilt. I can feel my pussy clenching around him and I cry out, grabbing for the pillow to hold myself steady. I’m trying so hard to keep myself from coming. I want to do what he told me to do.
“Don’t come yet, baby,” he says, even as his hips start to move and his cock slides in and out of me while he reaches around my thigh to gently rub my clit with his finger. By now, I’m an incoherent mess. Every last thread of my focus is centered on not giving in, not climaxing. But it’s so hard.
“Oh God,” I groan as he starts to fuck me deeper, but slower. “Bruno, I-I’m gonna come, I can’t take it. It feels so fucking good!”
“Yeah? You want to come for me, sweetheart? You want to come all over my cock?” he teases me, circling my clit with his finger and sending shockwaves of unbearable pleasure through me.
“Please, oh fuck,” I whimper. He slaps my ass again, hard.
“You want me to fuck you harder, Serena?” he asks.
“I need it, I need you,” I answer breathlessly. I’m hanging on by a mere thread. “Please!”
And with that, he starts to thrust harder, his cock hammering at my g-spot while his finger works my clit, fucking me hard and fast. “Are you ready? I know you want to come.”
“Oh God! Please, I need it!” I cry out, my fingers twisting in the sheets.
“Come for me, baby. Come all over my cock. Now.”
Instantly, my body seizes up in an overwhelming rush of pleasure. Wave after wave of electric bliss rolls over me and I let out an involuntary shriek, feeling my pussy pulsing intensely around his cock. Bruno doesn’t let up for even a second, fucking me harder and faster until I’m coming again and again, lost in a sea of extreme pleasure.
“Good girl, very good,” he groans, and I can tell he’s gritting his teeth, trying so hard to keep his own climax in check. I decide to take business into my own hands. He’s not the only one who can play at this game. I begin to roll my hips back, impaling myself on his cock hard and fast, clenching as tightly as I can.
“It’s. Your. Turn,” I manage to mumble, and I can tell by his increasingly erratic thrusts that he’s about to blow. He’s almost there. The fact that I have this power to make this beautiful, amazing man feel so good is intoxicating.
“Fuck, Serena,” Bruno groans. “Just like that.”
He thrusts a few more times quickly and sharply and then holds me still, his fingertips digging into my hips as he shoots his thick honey deep inside me. His deep voice thrums through my body as he cries out, and he shudders through his orgasm.
We’re both still panting as I feel him lean forward to kiss a gentle line up the arch of my back before withdrawing. We fall on our backs side by side, and his hand finds mine underneath the tangle of sheets. I look over at him, beaming uncontrollably, to see an identical look of bliss on his face. Warmth. Everything about Bruno is comfortable. Everything about him feels like home.
“Well, that was definitely worth being late to work for,” I laugh, turning over to get my phone from the nightstand. The battery is nearly dead, as I forgot to bring my charger last night, but it can still show me the time. Nine-thirty-eight, and then my phone dies.
“Shit,” I mumble, wriggling out of bed and whipping Bruno’s huge t-shirt off. I hop into the bathroom, pulling on my socks which I’m pretty sure are inside out, but that’s a problem for future me to sort out. “I don’t have clean clothes!” I call out, staring around the bathroom in a mild panic.
Bruno comes shuffling in behind me, totally naked and unreserved. He wraps his arms around me and presses a kiss to my cheek. “You can borrow one of my shirts again.”
“Uh-huh, and it’ll look like I’m a grifter who just wandered into the shop one day,” I giggle, rolling my eyes. Then, I get an idea. “Actually, could you bring me your biggest, longest, most stretched-out shirt?”
Bruno gives me a skeptical smirk but nods. “I feel like that’s the opposite of what you’d want, but your wish is my command.” He steps into the walk-in closet attached to the bathroom suite and starts poring through his surprisingly meticulous wardrobe.
“Any luck?” I ask, reluctantly slipping back into yesterday’s bra, panties, and leggings. I can’t just walk into the shop wearing the same dress as yesterday. Too obvious. Even if nobody else notices, I would still feel icky all day.
“Uhh, how do you feel about, um, vintage?” Bruno says, making me laugh.
“How vintage?”
“Let’s just say I had to dig back through my sort of nostalgic section of clothing for this one,” he explains, giving me an apologetic shrug. “All my clothing from recent years has been tailored. I have a guy. So there’s not a lot of wildly oversized stuff in here anymore.”
I hold my hand out. “Alright. Just give it to me. Let’s see.”
He hesitantly hands over a faded, well-worn gray t-shirt with some kind of brand logo that has nearly been washed blank by the years. It’s a little threadbare, but it will do. I tug it on, then knot the hem at one hip so that it falls almost like a stretched-out, slightly off-kilter shift dress.
Bruno laughs. “Wow. That is real ingenuity.”
“Shut up,” I giggle, swatting at him playfully. “Well, no time to really do my makeup now.”
“Can you do it in the car?”
I raise an eyebrow. “While driving? No, I value my life just a little more than that.”
“As a passenger, of course. I’m driving you to work,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“You sure? I could always get a cab.”
“I’m going to work with you anyway, so we might as well carpool. Save the earth and all that,” he adds, emerging from the walk-in closet again, this time fully dressed and looking like a million bucks. He’s only wearing a white button-down, black pants, and gray blazer, but he looks like some kind of secret agent about to crack a case or steal a diamond or something.
“Wow, way to show me up,” I comment, crossing my arms and eyeing him up and down.
“Well, I do have the advantage of my entire personal wardrobe here,” he says, walking over to envelop me in his arms. He smells wonderful, like a mix of fancy cologne and his own particular, musky, delicious scent. “And besides, you make everyone in every room you walk into look terrible by comparison. Anyway, let’s get you to work. Bath emergencies wait for no man.”
We pile into his car and head out, with the mid-morning sun beaming joyfully overhead. Everything is so bright and crystal-clear today, with the kind of bright blue skies and puffy cotton-ball clouds that seem better suited for a painting than real life. It’s hard to determine whether the beauty of the world is actually intensified today, or if I’m just seeing it this way because of the gorgeous man beside me in the driver’s seat.
“This is gonna be a good day,” I say softly. “I can feel it.”
“Every day with you is a good day,” Bruno adds, squeezing my thigh gently.
As soon as the words leave his mouth, there is a sudden flash of gray across the windshield and Bruno hits the brakes. I look out my window to see that there is a pillar of smoke blowing down from an alleyway next to us at the stop light. “What the hell?” I murmur, rolling down my window to look.
“Smoke,” Bruno says.
“From where?” I ask, squinting into the occasional clear spots. Then it hits me.
I know where we are.
Before the car can start rolling again, I unlock and hop out the door, taking off down the alleyway. Bruno somehow manages to pull over and park, halfway on the sidewalk, and run after me. I burst through the alleyway and across the street to stand in front of the source of the fire.
Room With A View is in flames, a clamoring crowd gathering in a messy semicircle out into the road. There’s a fire truck out front, its siren wailing while the firefighters run in and out of the burning building. I dart around, looking for Nico or Rafaela, my heart pounding in my chest. Br
uno catches up to me and takes my hand, pointing to an area closer to the front line. Police are blocking the crowd from getting much closer, and luckily Bruno can see better over the crowd from his height than I can.
“Up there!” he says, pulling me along behind him as we push through the crowd.
I shove past lots of angry spectators, caring only about locating my friends. If they were inside when the place caught on fire…
“Rafaela!” I shout, catching sight of my best friend and wiggling past a couple of cops to reach her. There’s ash on her skin and she’s crying, but there’s a hardened expression on her face. Rafaela is not the kind of girl to cry over just anything. She’s incredibly tough, and even with the tears clearing a path down her sooty cheeks, she looks about ready to fight someone.
She turns to pull me into a hug, and I can tell she’s been needing this. As strong as she is, I know that she can be vulnerable, too, with people she trusts. Like me.
“Oh, Serena, it’s fucking horrible. Everything we have—had—it’s all gone. This bar was our everything. I-I don’t know how this happened. But I have an idea who,” she says, her eyes flashing with anger.
“Are you okay? Where’s Nico? Is there anybody inside?” I ask, panicked.
She shakes her head. “Not anymore. The firefighters got everyone out, but two of our boarders are already en route to the hospital. It—it doesn’t look good,” she adds, looking horrified. “But Nico is over there. The cops keep trying to talk to him but he doesn’t want to say anything to them yet.”
I glance around her to see Nico and Bruno huddled together, several feet away from the line of policemen. Nico looks unscathed, and I silently thank the heavens that both of my friends are okay. I link arms with Rafaela and walk her away from the cops, trying to look unobtrusive.
“So, what do you think happened?” I ask quietly. She shakes her head, blinking back tears.
“I think it was one of those fucking gangs, chica. Probably the same shitheads who graffitied your shop and hurt those dogs,” she says bitterly. “I just feel like this is my fault. I should’ve been here more. I’ve just been so distracted with school lately and leaving Nico to look after the Room by himself. I should’ve done something ages ago. Mierda. I fucked up.”
I give her another tight hug. “No. No. You can’t blame yourself for this, Raf. You’re not a superhero. Nobody could’ve prevented this.”
She sighs heavily and tucks her hair behind her ears like she does when she’s nervous. She fixes me with a sorrowful look. “I just know there’s something else going on here. No sé. I think—I think I’m a little out of my pay grade, you know? Like, maybe I should’ve just stayed in Harlem. Maybe I’m reaching too far trying to make it in this neighborhood.”
I squeeze her hand supportively. “Hey, don’t say that. You’ve achieved so much. Seriously, you know what I said a minute ago about you not being a superhero? I was wrong about that. You are a superhero, Raf. And you’re gonna get through this just fine. Like you always do. Just don’t blame yourself, okay? It’s not like you set the fire.”
“How do you know I didn’t burn it down for insurance money or whatever?” she pipes up, a flicker of that old attitude flaring through.
I grin.
“There’s my girl. Just, not so loud, the cops might hear. Now, let’s go find Bruno and Nico and regroup, okay?”
We weave through the crowd, gingerly avoiding eye contact with the cops. Rafaela is right. I may not know the details, but I’m pretty sure this fire is no accident. Somebody did this, and I have a feeling things are about to get worse before they get better. When we reach the guys, Nico puts his arms around Rafaela and points out a man in slightly nicer clothing than the rest of the crowd.
“Babe, that’s a detective. We’re gonna have to make a statement to him. No big deal. Just tell the truth, and nothing else. Everything is gonna be fine,” he tells her. Then, looking at Bruno and me, he gives a quick nod. “Thanks for being here.”
“Of course,” I say.
The two of them make their way down the street to the detective and Bruno turns to me, giving me a quick kiss before staring into my eyes emphatically. “We need to get away from here. Now.”
“What?”
“We’re being watched. I’m sure of that. Let’s go. Back to the car.”
We quietly sneak back through the masses and down the alleyway to the car. Once we’re inside and driving away, Bruno continues. “The two men who were injured are mafiosi. They’re in critical care. I do not expect that they will live through this.”
“Oh my God,” I murmur, my head starting to spin. “So, this is a gang thing.”
“Essentially,” he agrees. “The Cleaners are responsible for this, no doubt. I don’t know if you were aware of this, but your friends have been running a kind of halfway house there. Mafia guys in hiding, a place for newcomers to blend into the city, a place to lay low when things get heated. Well, they just got too hot.”
“How in the world… are you serious? Room With A View. A mafia den,” I mutter, raking my fingers back through my hair. I never would have expected it. Rafaela can’t possibly be involved with this stuff. But Nico—well, I don’t know as much about him as I probably should.
“Nico is one of our guys. A casual. Low profile. But he does what he can,” Bruno explains. “This is a hit by the Cleaners. Everything up until now has just been a test run, trying out our limits, making plans. Now, the war is started. There’s no telling how long the bar has been compromised. They could’ve had eyes on us for months, just waiting for the right time to strike.”
I think about our night together in one of the boarding rooms and my stomach turns. All this time, they could’ve been watching us. Even that night, maybe.
“So, what the hell are we gonna do?” I ask, feeling like my entire world has been turned upside down. Bruno glances over at me, those green eyes lighting up in the sunshine.
“We’re going to bite back, of course.”
BRUNO
“Y ou’re sure?” I say into my cellphone, a frown on my face. I’m standing in front of a counter in the back of Bathing Beauty, looking at a row of about four small TVs with camera feeds hooked up to them.
All is clear on the video feed, but as I listen to Diego over the phone, my frown only deepens. He’s been helpful in giving me updates as they come in. The heat might be turning up with the Cleaners, but at least I can rely on my own allies to keep me informed. But the news isn’t good.
“I see. I’ll update the men. Keep your ass safe out there,” I end the call while running a hand through my hair. The piece of news I just got is the worst yet. Just as I’m about to make a call to the men I have patrolling the block, I hear the door to the back room open, and Serena’s face appears in the crack.
“Hey, you alive back here?” she asks, glancing at the flickering screens. I smile warmly at her. She’s been incredibly strong through all this. Her store has practically become the front lines of a battleground she never wanted to set foot on, but she still manages to keep the doors of the shop open as if nothing’s the matter.
“As far as I know,” I say, and I stride over to her to pull her the rest of the way into the room and wrap my hands around her hips. “How’s business?”
“It’s going,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “I’m not exactly advertising that there are mobsters patrolling the streets, so it’s business as usual.”
“Maybe you should try that,” I say with a playful smile. “Think about it: ‘Bathing Beauty, so fresh it’s a crime.’”
She bites her lip and stares at me lovingly. “I...think we should leave the marketing to me.”
“Probably,” I say, and I plant a kiss on her forehead. She giggles and hugs me after a quick glance to make sure the front of the store is quiet, then looks back up at me with a slightly more serious look.
“Really though, you look kind of uneasy. Is everything alright? The streets have been quiet all
day.”
I pause, glancing down at my phone, and I decide it’s best to be totally upfront with her. It’s never done her any favors to leave her in the dark about what’s happening in her own life.
“That was Diego on the phone,” I say. “We knew the Cleaners had cops in their pocket—that’s not unusual for any organization.” Serena nods slowly, and I go on. I squeeze her hips gently and give her the most reassuring look I can. “It goes deeper than I thought. They have someone on the take who’s higher up than I thought—a detective.”
Serena’s eyes widen. “A detective?”
“Detective Will Price. He’s a piece of shit,” I say, and that’s something I can say sincerely. “He’s been crooked from the start, but he deals with drug runners and traffickers—the kind of man that helps scum like the Cleaners thrive.”
“Is he going to be a problem for us?” Serena asks, but the look in her eyes tells me she already knows the answer. I run my hand through her hair, letting my strong fingers play gently with her golden locks.
“We don’t know yet,” I say. “Diego knows he’s in the area, and he’s making it easier for the Cleaners to do what they want, but none of our men have been in touch with him.”
Serena nods, and I hug her close to me, kissing her on the top of the head. “I’d take on the whole NYPD before I let any danger come too close to you, Serena. We’ll cross this bridge when we come to it. For now, we have enough on our plate.”
Serena looks up at me, pink lips smiling, and the sight of her smiling softly at me is enough to give me all the strength in the world. “I’m glad you’re here, whatever happens,” she says, and then she steps away from me, heading back into the front. “It’s about closing time, so I’m gonna start wrapping things up out front.”
“I’ve got an eye on you,” I say with a wink and a nod back to the CCTV feeds, and she blushes before heading back to the front.
Half an hour later, Serena is closing the blinds on the windows of the shop, and soon there’s nothing but the lights keeping the shop bright inside. I step into the front of the shop as she closes up some of the displays and finishes cleaning a few surfaces off, and she turns to quirk an eyebrow at the two long objects in my hand.
Bound for Life (Bound to the Bad Boy Book 1) Page 17
