Carmine looked over at Furio, still flat on the floor, and back to Luka. “How would you say that she handled herself?”
“Mr. Monreale, I wish you could have seen her. We could have used someone like Alexa in Afghanistan.”
Carmine said quietly, “Bruto. You had better go find a chair for Alexa.” Then he added, as Bruto dragged himself out of the chair, “Come to think of it, who put you at the head of the table, anyway? Give your seat to Alexa like a gentleman and go find yourself another one.”
I’d won a place at the table, although I was sure none of these men would let me have a say, not even Carmine. Perhaps they’d ask me what I thought and maybe they’d listen politely. That was the most I could expect, but that was enough. I’d established that I wasn’t going to be traded or handed over like a used car.
I wished I could have sat near to Luka. I wanted to feel some strength from him. As it was, I couldn’t even look at him without turning away from the table, and I knew that would have been unwise.
Carmine said, “What our friend here says,” his hand indicated Luka, “seems reasonable to me. Vassily’s crew don’t need to be let into any more of our business. They know Alexa and they’ve seen her represent our interests. I think it might be sensible for her to see this thing to its end.”
I felt a dull thud in my stomach as he said that. I had extracted myself from an obviously dangerous situation, but at what cost? What was I going to have to be a part of?
Carmine said, “Any views? Bruto?” Bruto’s lips were tight as he shook his head. “Massimo?”
Massimo shrugged as he said, “It’s your call, Carm. I’m good with whatever you say.” His voice was the quietest it had been and his eyes were narrow.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FURIO PASSED NEAR me when the meet was done and Massimo was leaving with his men. Quietly, privately, I told him, “I know you were only doing your job.” He nodded. I made a little shrug and said, “All the same. Sorry about it.”
He kept his face out of view of the others and his eyes forward. “No hard feelings. I know you were working, too.” As he left, he said under his breath, “Cool jackhammer, though,” and we shared a smile.
We seemed to have an understanding, and I was glad of that. I’d sensed that he was going to be a professional about what had happened, and I’d really hoped that I was right. Situations like the ones I was beginning to foresee developing, you couldn’t ever have too many friends or good contacts.
Before Carmine said goodbye to Bruto, he drew me aside.
“I understand you go back a way with Bruto.” I nodded. “Much sentiment involved there?” I straightened as I understood what he was asking me.
“I’m hired as protection for Alexa, Mr. Monreale. All the allegiance that I have here is to her.” I was surprised how much it took for me to keep my feelings out of my voice. Keeping it level took some effort.
He patted my shoulder. “That’s good. See that you take care of her. You’re on my payroll now, so be in touch if you need anything.” I figured he meant anything in the way of instructions. Then, almost like it had just occurred to him, he said, “We may have to do something about Massimo.” And he looked into my eyes.
He turned to Alexa, hugged her, and kissed her. Made sure she had his number. Said something about Tony, how it was “for the best.” I thought she was trying to contain her enthusiasm as she nodded.
After extravagant hugs with Bruto, Carmine left. Coming back into the room, Bruto looked hard at me. “What was Carm saying to you?”
“You better ask him.”
Bruto narrowed his eyes. Alexa said it was late and went to her room. As well as the fabulous view of her ass as she left, I was thinking about how she faced Bruto and Massimo down. She was like a child that knew no fear. But I knew, I had already learned, that she did. She’d had plenty to fear in her life, especially in her recent past, so it was all the more impressive.
Bruno took me over to the window, way out of Alexa’s earshot. He was big. An inch and some taller than me. He squared up close to me and said, “Okay, Luka. I don’t care if you took a fucking jump of her. I would have.” He was using his officer tone from the SEALs. “Line in the sand. Doesn’t matter what went before. But she’s my cooz now. Got it?” Like he was just laying out facts.
I said, “My job is to protect her. Carmine confirmed that’s still my job.” His chin tipped up a notch as I looked him in the eye. “I wondered for a while about whether I would have to protect her from Tony. Glad I didn’t need to make that choice.”
A leer pulled at the corner of his mouth and he pushed his nose closer to mine. “And I gave you the job, remember? You thinking you might protect her from me?”
I didn’t move as I asked him, “You going to force me to make that call?” His face was still.
He said, “Look, we got work to do. Don’t cloud the issues here.”
I told him, “Don’t let your dick get in the way of the job, man.” It was rash. I can be that way. But I needed to let him know, the old commanding officer thing, it wasn’t so cut and dry now we were out.
He made an ugly grin. “You sure that’s me you’re thinking of, Luka, letting his dick get in the way? You sure you ain’t falling foul of that yourself?”
My balls were still aching, and it was making me angry and impatient. I wanted to bang Bruto’s face into the toughened glass. See if I could find the fracture point.
Even after Carmine Monreale pretty much telling him flat-out to back off, he still thought he was going to be able to take Alexa as a right. That told me something important, and I needed to keep a cool head.
He got the medals when I should have, and I got the dishonorable discharge. I was over that. But one good thing when they threw me out of the service, that was the end of my taking orders. I’d do what I was hired to do, or I’d give the money back, but I didn’t have to work under any asshole regulations.
Uncle Sam’s regulations gave me a lifetime’s experience. No need to ever return to that pump again.
Codes, honor? That’s another thing.
Alexa came back out in a short, black leather skirt with a big belt and a loose, cotton-candy pink jersey. Bruto looked her up and down, and I was about ready to poleax him right there.
She leaned against the breakfast bar and pouted. “I’m going to get a drink before I turn in.” She looked at Bruto, then at me. “Fix you something?”
Bruto called over, “You can fix me your sweet ass, honeybuns, and I’ll shake it and stir,” and he laughed.
She blinked slowly at him. Her voice was flat. “That’s never going to happen.” I got a charge watching her lay it out for Bruto like that. Then she looked back to me. “How about you, Luka? Join me?”
“He’ll join you, all right. Join the two of you by a connecting pole. That right, Luka?”
I kept my voice quiet. “You looking to start something, Bruto?” He didn’t say anything.
I told her I’d have a bourbon. She fixed us both one. She looked back over her shoulder. “Ice, Coke?” I told her no, I’d have it straight. I could have watched her a whole lot longer, though, leaned over, peeking back at me like that.
As she brought the tumblers with the bourbon, Bruto said, “Get me a beer.”
She handed me my glass and told him, “Waitress is off her shift now.” As he drew breath to say something back, she said, “Get it yourself.”
I lifted my glass to her and she raised hers back. As she took a sip of her drink, she watched Bruto. He went to get himself a beer. In her eyes, I could see the same thoughts I was having.
She was going to be in the master bedroom. I’d be in the guest room across the hall. We were both thinking about where Bruto was going to be, that was for sure.
But ahead of that, more pressing at the front of my mind—and hers too, I was certain—was: how can we get to be in the same room without Bruto knowing about it? And I knew that was what she was thinking because I watched the way her
teeth tugged at the inside of her lip.
Her eyes gleamed and the charge went straight to my cock. There was no way we were going to be together again that night. Not without a confrontation with Bruto, and I knew neither one of us wanted to go through that. Not now. Maybe at another time, if we had to.
And that was the thing that set me reeling. All that we and us. I hadn’t thought that way about anyone since the service. And the only time I ever thought it about a woman was another SEAL, and it was because we were on a mission together.
Alexa’s eyes twinkled as she looked at me over the rim of her glass. She had a look, a way of making things seem like they were naughty. Like she was thinking something wicked. Which I was sure she was.
At that moment, I was thinking something very wicked myself. I was remembering the sweet tug of her pussy lips on my tongue and the taste of her as her clit stretched up in its hood and vibrated. And the sound of her as she stretched and moaned when I gripped her sweet buns and slid my tongue up high amid her eager, tensing folds.
The way her lips pressed together and her eyelids lowered, I was pretty sure she was thinking of something very similar. Especially when her cheeks colored. My pulse hardened just looking at her, seeing her twist her hip and let her eyes amble down the front of my shirt.
When her gaze slipped below my belt, my back straightened. I wanted to hurl Bruto through the window, just so that I could have spread her right there and then across the table. The urge was strong enough that I had to grip the glass and keep my other hand jammed in my belt at the back of my jeans.
Bruto made a noise on his way back, and we both watched each other as we heard him come near. I was thinking of her telling him, That’s never going to happen, putting him down flat. No kidding around to dress it up. I had to control the grin and stop it spreading over my face.
Alexa was fighting to keep her face straight, too. Now I looked harder to try and see if I could tell what she was thinking. We broke off as he came near, or he would have seen the two of us locked together.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT HAD BEEN a long day, and nothing about it was going to improve now. I thought about ways I might be able to arrange it so that Luka could come into my room. That was what I wanted. At that time, it was almost everything I wanted.
To feel his weight and strength, to hold him and have him hold me, to drown my senses in the crook of his neck and scent of his chest. That was all that I wanted. Whatever I did to bring him to me, though, it would have set off a confrontation with Bruto, and that would have to end badly, one way or the other.
Bruto was on the couch with a beer. Luka sat up at the breakfast bar. He pulled a gun from the back of his belt, snapped the magazine out from the grip, pulled back the slide, and looked into the top. He looked back at me before he went on. I stood nearby and watched as he took the weapon apart.
In less than a minute, he had it dismantled with the parts laid out neatly in front of him. His fingers moved with a speed and precision that made my breath catch. He looked up and patted the stool next to him. I was eager to sit close and watch him.
Luka named each part of the gun as he put it back together. Then, slowly, he pulled it apart again. As he took off each part, he looked at me and I told him its name as I remembered them. He smiled and said, “There are different parts, different procedures for each gun, but the principles are the same.”
When he said that, I knew that he was telling me about my own gun, but without saying it where Bruto could hear him. He said, “Guns are supplied with a manual, and that has diagrams and a parts list.” He spoke normally but Bruto couldn’t have failed to notice that Luka and I were bonding over a firearm.
He assembled and dismantled the gun slowly a couple more times. At each step I said the name of the part, where it would go. Whenever I said something sooner or I was more confident, I got a tiny flash of his lightning smile.
He let me try. First I popped the magazine out, then pulled the slide to check there was nothing in the chamber. Slowly, feeling a little clumsy, I pulled the slide all the way back and locked it with the catch at the back. I turned the gun around and moved the lever to disconnect the slide. Then I had to pull the slide back and slide it forwards again and it was ready to take right off the frame.
I took out the recoil spring and took it off the tube that Luka called the spring guide, slid the barrel forwards to disengage it and then pulled it up and out. As I laid the parts out neatly as he had, he nodded and it made me feel good.
After I took a breath, I carefully repeated the steps backwards. All except for replacing the magazine. It was an effort not to shake. His eyes half closed and I got the tiniest flash of his killer smile as he said, “Perfect.”
With no prompts and no hints, I had taken a gun apart and put it back together. I could have loaded and fired it and it would have worked. I had to hold every muscle in my body still to stop myself from jumping on him.
Instead I let my hand run up his arm and across his shoulder as I stood. I whispered “Thank you.”
As I went to my room I was already thinking about where I had concealed the box with the paperwork for the Beretta.
My little gun had a catch that I needed to press at the start, rather than the levers for the slide, but otherwise the process was very much the same. I unloaded it, checked it, and then took it apart.
After I stripped the gun and reassembled it about six times, I put the manual back in the box and returned the gun to my clutch. For a little while I sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the glow of my sense of achievement.
The new skill that Luka had given me felt like a superpower. Luka and I, we were like the two sides of a coin, a kind of a yin-yang complement.
I locked the door to the room and took the key to bed with me. I wondered whether Luka would break Tony’s door open and burst in, the way that he had in the hotel room.
Whatever I thought of, I couldn’t shake loose from the idea that I was going to be trapped, just like I’d heard a couple of old mob guys saying long ago. My father brought them back to drink and commiserate after he’d lost God knows how much across Tony’s card tables.
The two old guys had style. Expensive, beautifully tailored suits and shirts, shoes of soft, supple leather, but all long past their prime. One of them gave his impression of Al Pacino’s Godfather speech: “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” Slack jaw and big, rolling eyes.
They all laughed, these two old guys and my father, but I saw in the way the guy who was doing the speech shook his head, it was funny to him because it was true.
Luka and I were a good team. Standing behind me in that club, facing the Russians, just knowing he was there, was like I gained a few extra inches in height. Then my breath caught as I remembered him busting through the heavy hotel door. The hungry look in his eyes as he panted, hot and crouching. The little key, still in my hand.
It seemed unbearable now, now I was alone in the empty luxury of Tony’s master bedroom, to think that I would have to wait until morning to see him again. And when I needed him so badly. Now.
My fingers had found their own way into the heat in my soaking panties. As I remembered him in the hotel room, they tried to find the places he had grazed and caressed me, the ways that his lips and his tongue had pushed and awakened me.
My back stretched and the cheeks of my ass clenched as the insides of my thighs quivered and shook. The thought of Luka’s lips on me, drawing me, coaxing me, carrying me through the tremors and quakes to a crest, so sure, so strong and so very sensitive, made me flex and tighten.
Perfectly Damaged: Luka : A bad boy mafia romance Page 10
