by C. D. Reiss
“Saw that,” he said, cutting a strip of lemon peel. “You looked sexy as hell. I wanted to fuck you all over again.”
If he was trying to get my body to turn into a puddle of desire, it was working. “Everyone saw it.”
“Everyone want to fuck you as bad as I did?”
“My ex-fiancé showed up.”
“The Candidate…” He dropped a yellow curlicue into my saucer. “Bet he regrets what he did, no?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
I reached for the espresso, but he stopped me again, plucking the rind from my saucer and rubbing it on the edge of my cup.
“Do you want Sambuca?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He reached back, plucked a bottle from a line of them, and unscrewed the top. “In Napoli, the men point their pinkies up when they drink espresso to show their refinement. Once they’ve been here long enough, they drink like Americans.” He poured a little Sambuca into our cups.
“How do the women drink?”
“Quickly, before the children pull on their skirts.”
I sipped the drink. It was good, thick, rich. I took a bigger mouthful but didn’t gulp.
“So there’s a picture in the paper of us, and let’s not play tricks with each other,” he said. “It looked like we’re intimate.”
“It did.”
“Next to a picture of you and him.” He picked up his cup.
I followed suit. “Yes.”
“And he runs to your office, how many hours later? One? A half? Or are we measuring in minutes?”
We looked at each other over our cups.
“I don’t see that it matters.” I blew on the black liquid, the ripples releasing the licorice scent of the Sambuca.
He smirked. “Maybe it doesn’t. What did it take him one to sixty minutes to tell you?”
“That you run an organized crime empire.”
He said nothing at first, just put his espresso to his lips and drank. He kept his pinky down, holding the demitasse with his curled fist. “I’m very impressed with me.” He clicked the cup to saucer. “Less so with him. I might have to vote Drummond.”
“I looked into it after he left, once I knew what I was looking for. You’re being investigated for all kinds of fraud. Insurance. Real estate. And you don’t want me to ask questions, so what am I supposed to think?”
“Is that your question?” he asked. “What are you supposed to think? I have an answer for that one.”
“I don’t have an actual question. I know you haven’t been convicted of anything, and I know what we had was just a casual screw.”
“It wasn’t casual.”
“We can’t make any commitments to each other. And that’s fine. But I don’t sleep with strangers. If you’re going to continue to be a stranger, then I can’t do this.”
He closed his eyes and cocked his head left, then right, as if stretching before a boxing match. “I have a history, and it followed me here.”
I sat back. “Go on.”
“My father didn’t exist to me. My mother shooed off the idea of him. Like she made me herself, out of nothing. I didn’t know who my father was until I was eleven. I had some business, and he was the man one went to with business.”
“At eleven? What business did you have at that age?”
“It’s a different world over there. Things need to be taken care of. If the trash wasn’t getting picked up, you went to Benito Racossi. If the delivery boy was stealing from your mother, you went to Racossi. My mother rarely left the apartment, and my sister… Well, I’d never send her to a man like that. But once I met him, I saw it.” He made a quick oval around his face. “Like looking in a mirror, but older.”
“He was your father?”
“He didn’t deny it. Took me under his wing. Gave me work. Legal work. Anything he had to keep me out of trouble. My mother? It nearly killed her. She didn’t want me in the life. She never believed I didn’t do anything illegal. Neither did the polizia. Neither did Interpol. Neither does Daniel Brower, who’s going to make my life hell if he’s mayor. But as God is my witness, every business I have runs because I watched how my father did it, but I’ve never imitated what he did. So I’ll tell you this once and swear to it, I’ve beaten every charge against me and I’ll beat everything they put on my back because I’m clean.”
“I believe you.”
“Don’t put me in a position where I have to defend myself against this again.”
He was so definite, so stern, so parental that I didn’t think I could spend another second in his presence. I stood. “If asking you questions turns you into an ass, I’ll be sure to only make declarative statements on the infinitely small chance I ever see you again. Thanks for the coffee.”
I spun on my heel and walked out of the kitchen, winding up in a room I hadn’t come through. Then I found another with a broken stone staircase. I didn’t feel him following me until a second before he grabbed me and pushed me toward a leaded glass window.
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
I clawed at his hands as they fondled me, going under my shirt and bra without prelude or hesitation. The flood of arousal was painful.
“Stop,” I said, trying to get his arms off me.
“Next time you say stop will be the last.” He placed my hands on either side of the window. The stone was cold, and the pressure of him on my back was harder than the wall. “What do you want to say?” He shifted behind me, unmistakably getting his dick out. I heard the tick of a condom wrapper hitting the tiles. Was he wrapping it up again? God, I hoped so.
I wanted to say stop. No. Don’t. But I needed him to relieve my ache, and I knew he meant that my next objection would send him away. “Do it.”
He yanked down my pants. I saw his reflection in the window, broken by curved strips of lead, looking at my ass. He put one hand on my throat, his thumb resting behind my ear, while his other hand yanked down my underwear and drove into where I was wettest.
“I’m going to fuck you so fucking hard.” He tightened the grip of both hands.
I’d made him angry. That was clear in every vowel. I shouldn’t like that. It shouldn’t turn me on. But as I stood with my ass jutting out, my bra and shirt pulled up until my breasts swung, and a man’s dick at my opening, I could only wonder how to make him angrier.
“You’d better make it worthwhile,” I said. “I have no time for sweet talk.”
“You’re such a rich little princess.” He pressed my neck down and pulled my hips toward him with the fingers he had inserted in me.
“Fuck you,” I whispered. “You’re a worthless street punk.”
I thought he would put his dick back in his pants and walk away. Instead, he jammed it in me with animal brutality. I cried out not because it hurt, but because the way he did it, plus the raw physical pleasure it created, pushed the wind out of me.
“You like this?” he said, thrusting with every word. “You like this. Worthless. Street. Punk. Fucking. You?”
His arms constricted around me. His right squeezed a breast, his left had four fingers on my clit, shifting like tectonic plates with every thrust. I grunted. I didn’t think I’d ever grunted during sex, but that wasn’t sex. That was two animals mating under a bush.
He pulled out and yanked me up. I saw us in the reflection in the window.
“Look at you. That face. I want to see you when you come.” He growled it. “Since the minute I saw you, I’ve wanted you. I’ve wanted to open your legs and take you.” As if his words were fingers, they drifted down my body, fondling me, arousing me. “I’ve seen women come. They forget to look beautiful. They forget who they are. I want to see you when you lose yourself and all you know is my name.”
He sat on the windowsill, holding his hand out for me. I straddled him, lowering myself onto him. He guided me by the hips.
“This is good?” he asked as if he already knew the answer.
“So good. Fucking
you is so good.”
“Look at me.”
He pressed me down, pressing my clit against his root. I gasped, trying to keep my eyes on him.
“Let me see,” he whispered over and over. “Let me see you come.”
He fucked harder and faster, and I lost myself.
“Oh God,” I gasped. “Coming. Coming.”
“Give it to me, Contessa. Show me.”
He put his hand under my chin, pushing it up until my vision was filled with him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My lungs constricted around my heart, and my joints stiffened. I felt held up by his dick, but his arms and hands bound me to him as I came, watching him.
I pressed my forehead to his shoulder and put my hands on his biceps, and without an ounce of tenderness, he pulled my hair back and down until I was on my knees with the slick head of his cock against my cheek, and he stood over me.
“Take it. Now.”
He pulled the condom off. I opened my mouth, and he guided himself in. I choked, and he pulled out. I prepared myself, holding down my reflex and pressing the back of my tongue down. I put my hands at the base of his shaft and put his cock in my mouth, sliding the bottom of it against my flattened tongue. As he slid it out, I sucked, tasting my fluids on him.
“Yes, Contessa, that’s it. Suck my cock. All the way.”
I took him into my throat as far as I could, making up the rest with my hands, and sucked as he pulled out.
“Look at me,” he said.
We made eye contact, and he pushed forward. I opened my throat, but he was a lot of man for one mouth. I paused and, again, took him far down. His lips parted, and I knew I’d done it right. He thrust into me. He felt good, tasted good. I wanted him to come hard, and my desire to please him rattled the back of my throat.
“I’m coming in your mouth.” He grunted. “Take it. Take it all in your throat.”
His eyes closed tight, and I watched him as he thrust and came, flooding my tongue and throat with bitter, sticky lava. He muttered something in Italian, spitting curses through his teeth. I’d never seen anything so hot, and I swallowed every drop of him.
When he opened his eyes and saw me beneath him, he took a sharp breath. “So sweet.” He brushed my hair away from my face then pulled my head to him.
I didn’t even understand my reactions. “Not casual. I know what you mean.”
“But no questions. It means I have to defend myself. I don’t like it.”
“Okay. No more questions.” I didn’t know if I could keep that promise, but I could definitely put it on hold to have sex like that again.
I turned, wrapping my arms around his legs, and I turned to watch the image of us, me on my knees before him, with his hands at my back, in the window.
I screamed. Like a glowing mask floating in the night, a woman’s face sat framed in the window.
fourteen.
ntonio had me behind him so quickly and smoothly I didn’t even realize he was protecting me until I tried to stand. My pants restricted my thighs, and I nearly fell.
He held me up. “Marina!” he shouted.
I straightened my shirt and pants. Antonio zipped himself up and ran for the door.
He turned and held up a finger to me. “Don’t go anywhere.”
And he was gone. I still had the sting of his spunk in the back of my throat.
I straightened, breathed, and went outside. His admonition to stay put had fallen on Teflon ears. I didn’t know who Marina was or what she was doing outside his window. She could be a sister or cousin or the local convent rep, but she was young and attractive, and my blood went a familiar shade of green. I didn’t like feeling that way, especially about a man I had no claim to.
I intended to get in my car and drive away. Around the bend, I found the balcony. I knew how to get back to my car from there, but I heard voices. A Mercedes was parked in the rear drive, lights on and engine running. The woman stood by the open driver’s door. She was upset, hands flailing, voice squeaking. Antonio shouted recriminations in the spaces between hers.
That wasn’t a fight between cousins. I stepped back, and my foot shifted a loose tile. The scrape was louder than I would have imagined. They looked up at me. I backed away then turned and ran to my car. I managed to get in my car and get it started before he got to the window. He knocked on the glass. I waved good-bye.
He got in front of the car. “Open up.”
I cranked down the window. “That only works during, not after.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Is she a blood relation?”
He came around to my side of the car.
“Yes? No? What is it, Antonio? Oh, I’m sorry. Did I phrase that as a question?”
I put the car in gear, and he threw himself through my open window. I screamed from the shock of having him between me and the windshield. He yanked the emergency brake.
“Don’t make me drag you out of this car,” he said.
“If you have something to tell me, just tell me. I’m not asking anything.”
“Come inside.”
“No.”
Still leaning through the door, he held the bottom of my face. “I want you. First, I want you.”
“Thanks. I’m glad I’m not a second. You know what? I’m tired of playing in an orchestra. I want to go solo. Now.” I pulled the brake down. “Get out of my car, or half of you is getting torn off when I drive away.”
“It’s not what you think.”
I put the car in drive. “You have no idea what I think.”
I let go of the brake, and even though I couldn’t see through Antonio’s gorgeous body, I drove. He cursed and pulled out of the window. I turned onto the street and left him behind.
fifteen.
hat’s your problem?” Katrina asked three days later.
We were on set in Elysian Park from seven a.m. to three p.m. on a weekend, and the light had been consistently softened by clouds. I shrugged. I had no idea what she was talking about. I still had to go through the other script supervisor’s notes.
She put her knee on the park bench where I had set up my files. “You got a frown.” She formed her hand into a claw and pivoted her wrist as if turning a knob on my face. “It needs an inversion.”
Pam had called it a sourpuss, and I’d given her the same answer. “I’m fine. Just a cold.”
“Bullshit.” She was fatigued. The days were very long, and she had confided that she was losing faith that it would ever be a movie. It was a common malady at the seventy-five percent mark. “I don’t have time to needle it out of you because in two minutes, someone is going to come here asking me which shirt Michael should wear, and I’ll have to convince them I care. So tell me.”
I slapped the clipboard on the table. “The Italian guy. He gave every indication he didn’t want me close. I slept with him twice, neither time in an actual bed, and I’m an idiot for being shocked that I wasn’t the only one he was with. So no, I expected nothing from him. But maybe once, for kicks, I’d like someone to be exclusive for fifteen minutes.”
“Ah.”
“Fuck it. I don’t care.”
She stood still for a second then said, “Did you just say what I think you said?”
I flipped through my pages without looking at her. “Go direct a movie. You make me crazy.”
She stepped away from the table, walking backward to the camera. When she was far enough away, I checked my phone. That text was the first I’d heard from Antonio since I almost tore him in half with my car.
—I’d like to speak with you—
—I’m all out of questions—
—I’ll do the talking—
What was he promising? More non-answers? That game was old. Either he would be forthcoming or he wouldn’t, and the more he promised to reveal who he really was, the less appealing he became. I needed overall sincerity. I needed intimacy. I didn’t need a sex doll, no matter how good the sex was.
—No.
I’m sorry. I’m done with this—
—But I’m not—
I shuddered and pocketed the phone. I wasn’t going to encourage him.
Michael threw himself into the chair next to me, his lithe, tight body encased in a henley and grey jeans. “Heard that conversation back there.”
“And you have the answer?”
“I have an answer. Wanna hear it?” He raised his eyebrows as if he was offering candy. He was a handsome guy, and twice as fine on camera.
“Sure.”
“It’s not you, it’s him.”
I laughed.
Michael leaned forward. “I mean it. Look, I’m… let’s say active. It’s not the girls. Some are real nice. Good people. Make someone a great wife. But I’m on set until the wee hours. I can’t do the maintenance a guy’s gotta do. So we’re clear on that in the beginning.”
“You’re a charmer, you know that?”
“Any time. And if you want to be clear about something, some time, we can be maintenance-free. You and I.”
“I’m this close to taking my pants off and jumping on you. I mean, you can really sell a girl.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “All right. But friend to friend, it’s not you. You’re very cool, very beautiful, very smart. Just unlucky so far.” He bounced up and gave me a salute. “Remember all that. And if you’re ever looking, let me know.”
“Thanks. I mean it.”
He strode off to makeup. I checked my phone. Antonio didn’t send a follow-up, and I didn’t answer. Michael had cheered me up somewhat. He was all right, and maybe if I wanted something forgettable sometime, I’d call him.
The park shoot bled into Sunday, and I collapsed on my couch with a duffel bag full of binders and notebooks at my feet. Katrina dropped her head on the kitchen table with the TV on.
sixteen.
ur Monday meeting had been a drone of problems and the same processes to manage them. Then we talked about implementing new processes to manage the same issues. Then we had new discussion points that were just shades of the old ones. The agency collected money on behalf of clients, deducted ten percent, and sent the rest. Anytime money moved, there were the twin matters of how much and how fast it moved. Nothing else really counted.
