Allister wasn’t going to win this game.
In the end, however, he won. He won everything.
I strode up to Charming, grabbed his tie, and gave him a tug toward the door. He smirked and followed me.
I turned my head in Allister’s direction. The brunette was still whispering something into his ear and his hand was still on her hip. But his gaze was on me. I swallowed as his eyes drifted to Charming, a lazy flicker passing through the blue before disappearing into vicious depths. Heartless. The look was full of the promise of retaliation. And then he dismissed me, giving all his attention to the brunette, as though I couldn’t be stupid enough not to listen to him.
Anger flared in my chest. I wasn’t going to let him scare me into losing. What could he possibly do, anyway? He was just a lackey of my family’s, and he wouldn’t even touch me.
“I’m not sleeping with you,” I told Charming. “I’m merely using you to make my ex-boyfriend jealous.” The truth would have been a little hard to explain.
“Whatever, baby.”
His slimy response grated on my nerves. Now, I could see this man’s charm was dropped in a vat of oil.
My apartment was only a couple blocks from the club, and I continued my trek, hoping Charming would just drift away. Unfortunately, he followed like a lost puppy.
I stopped in front of the lobby doors. “Well, it was lovely to meet you. Thanks for all your help.”
I turned to open the door, but he grabbed my wrist.
“Wait a minute. I think you owe me a drink, at least.” He grinned. “Or maybe a line or two. I’d like to know what kind of stuff the Russos are shipping out.”
A line of blow was like a glass of champagne in my world. Unless we were at a family dinner—then you didn’t even know what the stuff was. But I couldn’t stop an eyeroll. He’d have known what my name was if he was familiar with my family.
But I did upend his night, and he was obviously more interested in getting his hands on my family’s drugs than me, so I opened the door and let him in.
“Gianna,” greeted the concierge. The seventyish Irishman had called me Ms. Russo until I’d nipped that in the bud.
“Hello, Niall,” I responded. “This is Charming.” I patted the man’s chest beside me.
Niall sized him up. “Charming,” he murmured, but I couldn’t tell if he was greeting him or mocking him. I loved Niall.
“He’s not very deferential, is he?” Charming asked, an edge of disgust in his voice.
Charming was a total loser.
“He’s Irish,” I responded, like that explained everything.
I let us into my apartment, leaving the door open a few inches so he wouldn’t get any ideas about staying. Heading to my room, I grabbed a baggie off my dresser. When I returned to the living room, it was to find him touching my things. “Here,” I said, tossing the 8-ball to him. “For all your trouble.”
He practically rubbed his hands together. “Let’s find out if it’s as good as I hear.”
“It is.”
I groaned internally when he dumped some powder on the marble counter.
Under the bright lights in the kitchen, it was clear his suit was worn, his shoes scuffed. He didn’t have any money and was hard-up for blow. Ugh, why had I let this idiot into my apartment?
His eyes were bright when he lifted his head.
“Told you,” I said, slipping my heels off. “Now, take it and go. A rerun of my show is on in five.”
“Where’s the rest?”
“You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”
His eyes narrowed, but I wasn’t too worried. If he touched me, he’d be found skinned alive in an alleyway by six a.m. tomorrow. And he knew it.
“Fine.” He tried to scoop every last fleck of powder off the counter, and I grimaced at the unattractive show.
My gaze caught on someone walking down the hall through the crack of the door. Black suit. Broad shoulders. Straight lines. My heart cooled before icing over. His gaze was lowered as his hands twisted a silencer onto the barrel of a gun.
My throat tightened, and panic bit at my veins.
He looked up. His eyes were cold enough to give me frostbite.
“No,” I breathed.
But it was too late.
He pushed the door open, and his lazy, heartless gaze found Charming. A muffled pop hit my ears. Blood splattered across the counter and cupboards. White powder dusted into the air as Charming hit the floor, cloudy blue eyes wide open, a bullet hole in his forehead.
Bile rose in my throat, and I hunched over, covering my mouth.
I looked at the door to see a stare of dark indifference as Allister twisted the silencer off and put it in his pocket.
His apathy filled me with an anger so deep I saw red.
“Figlio di puttana!” I spat. You son of a bitch.
As he turned to the door, cold panic flared in my chest.
“Wait,” I pleaded. “Please don’t leave me with this! Allister!”
He didn’t even look back.
“Ace . . . he’s dead.” My hand shook around the burner phone I was supposed to use for issues like this. “Really dead.”
“Who?”
“Charming,” I mumbled, eyeing the body on the floor. I wasn’t making any sense, but the blood was about to soak into my area rug.
“Where are you?”
“My apartment.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “What the fuck did you do?”
I paced the living room. “I didn’t do anything! Allister shot him and then just left!”
A long pause. “For fuck’s sake.”
“There’s blood all over my kitchen,” I whined. I heard Nico talking to someone, and while he did, the blood reached my vintage area rug. “I’m going to kill him,” I admitted calmly.
“You’re going to tell him thank you, and then shut your damn mouth.”
“I’d rather throw myself from my balcony.”
“If you fuck my relationship with Allister, Gianna . . .”
I frowned. “What do you mean? I thought he was just one of your men?”
He laughed. “He’s his own man. It took my father a long time to convince him to work with us, and if you’ve fucked it up I’m gonna strangle the shit out of you.”
Oh. No wonder Allister always looked at me like I was simple-minded when I’d talk to him like he was the help. I swallowed. “I’m one measly girl. What could I have done to ruin your relations with the dirty fed?”
He grunted. “You’re only ‘measly’ when it’s convenient to you. Do not go anywhere. Do you understand me?”
“But his eyes are open—”
“Nowhere, Gianna.”
“Fine.”
I hung up and tossed the phone on the couch.
Twenty minutes later, Lorenzo and Luca entered the apartment. Lorenzo whistled, giving Charming’s leg a kick. “He’s dead, all right.”
I grimaced. “Could you not kick a dead man?”
Luca dropped to his haunches beside the body. “Gianna, do I want to know why this douchebag was in your apartment?”
I was trying to win a game . . . and lost so hard.
“No,” I sighed.
Lorenzo rubbed some blow from the kitchen island onto his gums. “I know this guy,” he said. “Knox, I think. Real slimy dude, been visited by our enforcers a couple times for gambling debt. Still owes some money.”
“I don’t think you’re going to get it from him now,” I muttered, heading into my room. I took a shower and then blow-dried my hair and pulled it up. I dressed in Daisy Dukes and an off-the-shoulder top that showed a few inches of my midriff. When I came back out, the body was gone but blood still coated every surface of my kitchen. Anger grabbed me by the throat and squeezed.
Lorenzo and Luca walked through the front door, laughing at some joke.
“Where does Allister live?” I asked, not able to control the venom in my voice.
Luca snorted.
“What do you think you’re going to do to him?”
Lorenzo shook his head. “He’s not someone you fuck with, Gianna.”
“Where. Does. He. Live?”
Luca shrugged. “Sometimes, little girls need to learn a lesson or two.” I gritted my teeth at his response but forgot the vendetta as soon as he rattled off the name of an apartment building.
“Call a couple men in. I ain’t cleaning up this shit.” Luca’s voice trailed off as I slammed the front door behind me.
Rage vibrated in my veins the entire drive to Allister’s place.
The high-rise was nicer than any special agent could afford. It touched the sky, all sleek lines and dark glass.
Since Allister wasn’t expecting me, I had to charm the woman at the front desk with every ounce of sweetness in me. I might have convinced her I was Allister’s long-distance girlfriend and that I suspected he was cheating on me. A tear made its way down my cheek.
Shaniqua sighed in sympathy. “Oh, honey, you go on up there. And if you don’t beat his ass, I will.”
Allister’s apartment was one of three on the forty-third floor.
My hand shook with anger as I pounded on the door. After the first three knocks came up empty, I raised my hand again, but the door opened before I could make contact.
Without looking at him, I marched past him and into his apartment. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I’d rather not do it in front of the security camera in the hall.
I didn’t take in a single detail of the space because all I could see was red soaking into my vintage rug. I tensed as the door shut with a small click, and then turned to see him leaning against it. His arms were crossed, white dress shirt pulled tight across his biceps. A single light above the kitchen island lit the space, and a shadow caressed the side of his face. Darkness loved him—I knew without a doubt they were on good terms.
I couldn’t help but think this was a man all other men aspired to be. He was the perfect prototype, and everyone else had just gotten the small details wrong.
As he watched me with a dark, half-lidded stare, I became abundantly aware that I stood in his domain. With his large form blocking the door. With the oxygen in the apartment burning up like fuel.
His eyes dropped, almost unwillingly, to coast the length of my bare legs, from the frayed hem of my shorts to my sparkly-painted toes. His attention came back up and, like the glide of a drop of sweat down my back, it brushed the diamond piercing in my navel, over my breasts and my throat, before reaching my eyes.
My heart raced with an edgy beat. I didn’t understand it—not him, or my reaction to him—and that made my blood flow with pure anger and frustration.
I strode toward him, and just as my palm was about to make contact with his face, he caught my wrist, spun me around, and slammed my back against the door. It rattled under the contact, and a breath of air escaped me.
Anger heated my cheeks, and I tried to fight him off, to twist out of his hold, but, calmly, he held my wrists in a vise grip against my chest and I couldn’t escape. The struggle was fruitless, and eventually I went still, my heavy breaths filling the room. And because I could do nothing else, I growled, “I hate you.”
Animosity felt heavy in the air, though I could almost hear the strike of a match as something else sparked to life.
“I warned you, Gianna . . .” It was soft and gentle but underlined with the slightest clench of his teeth. I knew he meant the warning he’d given me about being alone with him.
“You don’t scare me,” I breathed.
He pressed my wrists against the door on either side of me and slowly slid them above my head. I panted, a languid sensation pulling on my muscles. His grip was like fire, though his presence was intimidating and cold to the touch. A shiver rolled through me as his lips pressed against my ear.
“You never were very smart.”
His hands were like shackles holding my wrists above my head as he looked at me—from my eyes, to my lips, to my breasts that moved with each inhale and exhale. I became hyperaware of every breath. The slow, melodic puffs of air. Confusion battled with the warmth making a path beneath the waistband of my shorts.
His gaze met mine. Blue. Cool silk sheets beneath a darkening sky. Although, there was something else. A flicker of something bright and full of life. Like the reflection in a neurotic person’s eyes. It was madness. It was obsession.
A tremble rocked me as he pressed his face into my neck. Inhaled. And then made a low sound of satisfaction in the back of his throat. The deep, rough noise thrummed between my legs, and instinctively, I tilted my head to bare more of my neck. My ponytail skimmed across my bare shoulder as it fell to the other side.
His grip on my wrists tightened, and my eyes grew half-lidded from the pressure.
So, this was what it felt like to be touched by him . . .
Addictive.
He held my wrists with one hand as the other slid down to my throat. Stepping closer, he pressed his front to mine. Until we were flush with one another. Until my breasts burned under the heat of his chest. Sparks lit beneath my skin, sizzling every time he shifted enough to brush my nipples.
His heart, it was beating so hard. And it wasn’t from exertion. I wasn’t fighting him. I didn’t know what this was, but I didn’t have a single thought in me to analyze it. I’d never felt more alive.
He stepped away from me so suddenly my entire body screamed in protest. A draft hit my skin, but it couldn’t cool the fire in my blood. It was so quiet I could hear the thrum of my heart and the ticking of a distant clock.
His eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them, as though the black of his pupil was bleeding into the blue. He blinked like he was trying to clear his head.
It hit me in a rush.
This man was hot for me—the proof had been pressed against me a moment ago—but now I knew he hated it. He ran his tongue across his teeth, turned, and moved away from me, tension radiating from every inch of him.
I wasn’t like any of the women I’d seen him with. He preferred classy, composed, and docile. I was the opposite. He wanted me, and he hated it.
I was his own little game.
If he touched me, he’d lose.
I suddenly knew, this was a game I wanted to play with everything in me.
He moved into the kitchen. With white cabinets and gun-metal countertops, the area was cool and sophisticated, just like its owner. He grabbed a bottle of vodka from a cupboard and, in my humble opinion, poured a little too much into his glass.
The anger from earlier had drifted away under the heat of his hands on me, and while I wanted it back, I wanted to play with him more.
I pushed off the front door. “Why, yes. I’d love one, thank you.”
His shoulders tensed the slightest bit before easing into indifference. “I don’t remember offering.”
“I know,” I said, slipping my sandals off and making myself comfortable. “Which was rude, by the way, but I’m gracious enough to forgive you.”
He turned to lean against the counter. “I’m relieved to hear it. Now, get out.”
I strode toward him, and his gaze watched every step I made. It sent the fire in my blood sparking with electricity.
I ran my finger along the smooth marble counter as I walked around it. “Where are you from, Officer?”
“Iowa.”
I pulled myself onto the kitchen island to face him, and a small smile touched my lips. “Not this again. Iowa has never seen your pretty face.”
He stared. Drew his teeth across his bottom lip. Took a sip.
I leaned back on my hands. “Such a secretive man,” I mused. “Don’t you know, sharing is caring?”
“If that’s your new motto, then you’ll tell me if you’ve let that prick Vincent touch you.”
My smile faltered at the animosity in his voice.
What would he do if I said yes? With the reminder of the blood that surely still dripped down my kitchen cupboards, I was
going to let that curiosity go.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell you, and then you can tell me how many women you’ve screwed. It’ll be like show and tell”—I feigned a pout—“without the showing, sadly.”
He wasn’t amused in the slightest.
I tried to imagine him with other women, what it would look like. I couldn’t picture him making out on a couch. That was my favorite: kissing, rubbing, grinding. Getting so worked up there was no return.
My next words were soft and sensual. I wished I could say it was all for the game, but even the thought of pressing my mouth to this man’s sent a shiver through me.
“Do you kiss, Officer?”
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t respond. He only watched me with a dry, half-lidded stare that conveyed I wasn’t worthy of a single word from him.
My heart pattered to an awkward beat.
I never had preferred large men . . . but, God, I wanted a taste of this one.
His eyes narrowed as I slid from the island and walked toward him. Stepping close enough to feel his heat, I grabbed his glass and took a sip.
I suddenly wanted to know how this man fucked—if his OCD tendencies came to the bedroom, or if it made him even dirtier.
I stepped on each of his shoes and then rose to my tiptoes. With a shot of vodka on my tongue, my lips hovered close to his. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to bite and lick. My breasts brushed his chest and heat shot straight to my core. When his lips parted, I let the liquor trickle from my mouth to his. Pure lust erupted inside me so violently I grew dizzy. I ran my hands up his abs, curled my fingers into his chest, as if I could claw my way through his shirt. He was so hard and warm, and smelled so good I could get lost in him.
Sliding a hand up his neck and grabbing a fistful of hair, I pushed the rest of the liquid into his mouth with my tongue.
Hot. Wet. Exhilarating. My stomach swooped and dived, stealing my breath. I knew without a doubt that sharing a sip of vodka with this dirty fed was the most thrilling thing I had ever done.
Butterflies on fire fluttered through my veins as his tongue slid across mine. With a rough sound from deep in his chest, he sucked the alcohol from it. And then he bit my lip hard enough I yelped and fell back a step.
The Maddest Obsession (Made Book 2) Page 8
