by Selena
“If people find out you’re sniffing around…” I start.
“Whoa,” she says, holding up a hand. “What do you take me for? I’ve been in the Life longer than you have. I’m not stupid.”
“I know,” I say. “But there’s no reason for you to get involved.”
“You think it was my family,” she says. “It’s too late not to get involved. If I can’t prove it’s not them, your uncle is going to kill my father. You expect me to sit back and let that happen?”
“No,” I say grudgingly. Truth is, she’s already involved. In this line of work, there’s no real way to keep her out of it. Sometimes the mafia will kill a man’s whole family just to make an example of him to others, to show them what could happen if they cross us. Still, the less she knows, the better.
“I know you want to protect me,” she says, laying a hand on mine. “But it’s too late for that. I’m not sheltered, King. I grew up around all this. You didn’t. Did you ever think maybe that’s why Al picked you?”
“What?” I ask, drawing back.
“I can help,” she says, her face earnest. “I’m part of this. I know you think you’re protecting me, but you’re just pushing me out. I’m an asset. Treat me like one.”
I just stare at her. I’m not trying to push her out. I just don’t want her killed. Al keeps telling me to use her knowledge, and I know she has plenty, but I can’t. I’ve already lost one person I love because I didn’t keep her out of this side of things. I won’t do it again.
“No,” I say. “No fucking way.”
Eliza threads her fingers through mine. “King. I know that you feel lost sometimes, that you’re frustrated about knowing less than everyone. Let me be your eyes. I grew up doing this shit. I know the families inside out. Don’t shut me out. I can help. Please let me.”
It’s true. I’m at a disadvantage in every fucking thing because I didn’t grow up here. I don’t know anyone outside Manhattan unless they’re related to me. Even my wife knows more about this than I do.
“I’m not going to put you in danger,” I say, picking up my fork and turning it in the overcooked spaghetti Eliza made in her first attempt at cooking dinner.
“Fine,” she says, going back to her food, too. “But reading the news is allowed, right?”
“Yes…”
“Well, dead men don’t talk, and you killed all the ones who attacked,” she says. “They haven’t released a couple names because the cops haven’t been able to get hold of their families. But the rest of them were on the news or in the obituaries.”
“Anyone on your dad’s payroll?”
“No,” she says. “They’re from the Bronx, though. Which means they should be either my dad’s men or Al’s. But they weren’t.”
I frown and push my plate away. “They’re not mafia?”
“Nope,” she says. “But it’s almost like they were chosen because they were from this area. Except if you look close enough, you can see that they were only born here. They’d all moved away.”
“Someone wants us to think they were Pomponio men?”
“Exactly,” she says, taking a sip of chianti. “It was a set-up. But not by my dad.”
“Then who were they?”
“Well, a couple of them look like they were just hired goons, hence the masks. But a couple of them were living in Brooklyn at the time.”
“Fuck,” I say, remembering Al saying something about that family being sloppy. “Luciani?”
She nods. “I think you guys should check it out.”
“Did you feel out Bianca about it?”
“Fuck no,” she says. “I’m not stupid.”
“She’s your best friend.”
“Yeah, we’re not that kind of friends.”
“What kind?”
“You know,” she says. “The kind that trusts each other.”
This goes a little beyond that, but I don’t want to criticize her friends. I know from my sister that female friendships are complicated. If I didn’t trust a guy with my life, I wouldn’t call him a friend, but obviously she sees things differently.
“And you think it might be one of Luciani’s men? Why would they want to start shit between our families?”
“They probably benefit. They can keep the prices up to both our families if we won’t deal with each other. They could have spies feeding both sides info. All that money disappears if we’re not at war anymore. This union is great for our families, but for the other families? I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a few attempts to start shit again.”
“I’m sure Al’s already found that if it was on the news,” I say, turning my wine glass on the table. “If we’re not moving on it, that means they have reasons to believe it wasn’t the Lucianis.”
“There’s… One more thing,” Eliza says, biting at the corner of her lip. “And this one could get me killed, so don’t be too mad.”
I stiffen, my voice coming sharper than I meant. “What?” I demand.
“The day of the ambush, I went to the salon with Bianca,” she says.
“And?” I grit out. “You told her where we were meeting?”
“No,” she says quickly. “I wouldn’t. I didn’t know, anyway. You hadn’t told me where you were meeting, but you told me to call my dad. I called while we were there. He told me. It was loud with all the dryers going, and I didn’t repeat it, but you know how voices carry through the phone sometimes. I really don’t think she could have overheard, but I want you to know in case…”
“In case you’re accused of breaking the code of silence,” I finish, my blood running cold.
“I didn’t tell,” she says. “And Dad didn’t say the time. I’m sure she couldn’t have overheard. But we can’t completely rule it out.”
“You know this could get your friend killed.”
“I know,” she says, staring straight at me. It strikes me how fucking tough this girl is. No wonder I considered her as a suspect for setting it up. She’s ruthless enough to sentence her best friend to death for betraying her.
“Do you want me to talk to Al?” I ask carefully.
She swallows. “They might see it as talking.”
I shake my head. “Like I said, Al owes me one. And you didn’t talk. You were sloppy to ask about it there, but Anthony shouldn’t have told you on the phone. If anyone is to blame, it’s him.”
Eliza nods, looking nervous. “Okay.”
Now it’s my turn to hold her hand, turning it over in mine and squeezing. “I won’t let this come back on you,” I say. “You did the right thing telling me. If it really was Luciani’s men, you deserve a fucking medal.”
She smiles, and I can tell she’s pleased.
“Want me to clean up the dishes?” she asks.
“We’ll get them in the morning,” I say. “Let’s go to bed.”
Eliza pushes back from the table, a little grin on her face. It’s nice to see her excited about going to bed with me instead of nervous. She’s learning to trust me with her body, even if she’s still moving slow. I’m okay with that. She’s worth the wait.
“Come here, my bride,” I say, scooping her up in my arms with a growl.
She gives a little shriek and kicks her legs, but she’s laughing as she links her arms around my neck and leans up to kiss me. I carry her to the bedroom and lay her down on the bed.
I’ve never been selfish enough to get off without making sure I got the woman off, too. I thought that meant I wasn’t a selfish lover, but with Eliza, I realize that’s not true. Making a girl come has always been a point of pride to me. I was doing it for my ego, to prove that I was a good lover. Or because I knew she would tell her friends, or I wanted her to tell her friends, that I was good in bed. But I was still doing it for myself.
With Eliza, I don’t think about myself. She makes me take things slow, think about only her—what she wants, what she needs, what feels good to her and what is triggering.
For the past week, we’ve gone s
low, and it’s hard to see progress, but we’re intimate in the ways she’s comfortable with. We kiss, and I let her explore my body, which she likes so much it kinda goes to my head. I’ve never been with a girl who was so painfully innocent, so curious, so fascinated by my body, not just my dick. Maybe the girls I’ve been with were as selfish as me. We were always both just thinking about getting off.
But Eliza isn’t thinking about that. Whenever she gets close, she freezes up and backs off. She seems more interested in me, which I have to admit is hot as hell. She’s fascinated by things no one else has ever paid attention to, like the fact that guys like their nipples played with, too, or how to touch my balls. She likes to lie her head on my belly and breath on my cock and watch it get hard. And she seems pretty intent on learning to excel at blowjobs and hand jobs both.
Still, it’s frustrating. As much as I love seeing her pretty mouth open for me or her lips all swollen and shiny with my cum after sucking me off, I want to offer the same pleasures to her. I want to touch her the way she touches me, with freedom and wonder. I want to spread her open and sink my fingers into her little pink cunt and make her moan for more. I want to taste her, to fuck her with my tongue until I push her over the edge, and I want to feel her lose control and cum in my mouth. And I want to fuck her hard and deep, to cum inside her while she screams my name.
But we’re a long way from there. Instead, I spend a lot of time with the nudes she texts me.
I set her down on the bed, and she squiggles out of her loose tank, tossing it onto the nearby chair and pulling off her bra. Her tits are mine for the taking, so I push her back and suck on one and then the other, running my hands over the incredible smoothness of her skin until she’s panting and squirming against me. I move up to her lips, sliding my tongue into her willing mouth as she pulls up my shirt to run her hands over my abs.
“Take this off,” she says, breaking the kiss to tug at my buttoned shirt. I undo the top few buttons and pull it off, followed by my undershirt, so I can press my bare skin to hers. When we’re back on the bed, lying face to face, I slide a leg between hers as our mouths meet again. After a while, she rolls over onto me, pulling her knees up to straddle my hips as she runs her nails over my skin, making goosebumps rise and my nipples harden. She smiles down at me, and my cock throbs against her.
Leaning down to kiss me, she covers my pecs with her palms, and I reach for her tits again. I roll her nipples between my fingers until she’s squirming against me, her hips rocking on mine. I sit up, holding her body against mine with one arm while I keep squeezing her nipple with my other hand. She throws her head back, riding me in a way that makes me imagine the clothes between us gone.
The sensation of the softness between her thighs against the hardness of my erection makes me want to come in my pants like a fucking virgin. But this is for her, so I ignore the ache in my stiff cock and let my lips play over her throat in that way that always makes her sigh with pleasure. I help her keep rhythm, gripping her hip as she moves faster, her hips rolling against my cock.
I massage her tit, pinching her nipple a little harder. She gasps, tensing like she’s going to jump off me the way she always does.
I release my grip on her nipple and wrap my arms around her, cradling her close but not too hard, so she’ll feel comforted, not trapped. “It’s okay, you’re safe,” I say quickly, stroking her hair back from her cheek. “We can stop if you want, but you can let yourself go with me. I’m here, baby. I won’t hurt you. Can you keep going?”
Her eyes clear, and she relaxes. I begin to move her against me, adding a little motion in my own hips to rub my cock right at her center. After a minute, she closes her eyes and drops her head back, her beautiful hair falling in waves down her bare back to brush my hand that holds her hip. I watch her rock, her tits rising and falling, the little freckles that dot her skin like a constellation on full display. I take her nipple between my fingers again, squeezing it gently while I massage her breast with my palm. When I apply pressure, a stitch pulls between her brows and her pink lips part in a little “o.” Her fingers dig into my skin, and she tenses up, but this time, it’s not fear gripping her. I can feel her cunt throbbing against my cock, and I have to think of horrible things just to keep from exploding with her.
I watch her cum, and it’s everything I thought it would be. Breathtaking. Triumphant. Agonizing.
When she relaxes at last, I can’t help but grin.
“Holy shit,” she says, letting out a shaky laugh. “Is that what it’s all about?”
“Yeah,” I say, cradling her head and rolling over, laying us both on the pillows. “That’s what it’s all about.”
She looks at me, her big, luminous eyes magnified as they fill with tears.
“Hey, whoa,” I say, stroking her cheek. “What’s wrong?”
In answer, she covers her face and begins to sob.
twenty
Eliza
Sometimes, I know I’m doing something stupid, and I can see that as if I’m my future self or an outside observer, and I know it’s not helping, but I keep doing it. I know that crying like an idiot after my first orgasm is stupid. I know the thoughts clashing in my head are irrational and self-sabotaging, but I can’t stop them. I’m terrified by what just happened, by what I felt for King in that moment.
I’m past thinking he’s the enemy, but I realize as he’s holding me that he’s something much more dangerous than an enemy. He’s a lover. And a lover can destroy you in ways an enemy can’t even begin to imagine. You know better than to let an enemy in, after all. A lover is already in. They may not even mean to cause you harm, may not hold any ill will toward you. And yet, you can see their soul like the trap that it is, open and ready to pull you and swallow you whole, drown you in pleasure, trap you in bliss like a fly in amber.
It’s everything I always feared about sex. I’ve never even had full sex, but one orgasm and I know I was right. It makes me weak, makes me need it, craving it already like a junkie needing a fix already after the first hit. I knew it could trap me, I just didn’t know how fast it could happen. Maybe that’s why I kept holding back, why I stopped every time King got me right to the edge. I knew once I went over, once I felt orgasm and knew what it was like, I’d want more. Less than that would never be enough—never again.
I knew it was a trap, but it felt so good that I let myself be caught. And now he holds me in his arms so gently, as if they aren’t teeth waiting to snap shut on me, consuming my life until I don’t even remember what it was like before, until I want to stay home and make him spaghetti and clean his house, and one day I’ll look back on the big dreams I never had a chance to even imagine, and I see that all that’s left on the path behind me are little shards of bone that he picked clean and spit out.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, smoothing my hair back and looking at me with those dark eyes like wells I could fall into and no one would ever find me. His brows furrow with concern that could drown me.
I push him away and roll toward the far side of the bed, trying to get away from his clinging hands.
“Why’d you do that?” I demand. “You know I didn’t want to do that.”
“I asked,” he protests, sitting up. “I didn’t make you do anything.”
I jump up from the bed and turn to face him. “You made me want to do it!”
He gives me a look that says I sound just as crazy to him as I do to myself. “You didn’t want to orgasm?”
“No,” I say, throwing my hands up. “I knew once I started to believe in this marriage, once I started to feel something, I’d never get away. I don’t want this tiny life as your maid and your cook and your sex slave. I want my own life, my own freedom. And I can’t have that and this, too.”
“Eliza,” he says, looking so earnest it makes my heart twist. I turn away so I don’t have to see him when I hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him. I already care about him way too much. But I know this is my last chance, and it makes me d
esperate. I came so close to falling in a way I’ll never get up from.
“What?” I snap, hating the sympathetic tone in his voice. I don’t want pity. I want a life where I’m in control of my own choices. Why didn’t I run when he gave me the chance? Why didn’t I realize that this was where it would lead? I think I love him, but it doesn’t feel good. It’s terrifying, and even though I know I’m sliding backwards into the way I was at first, I can’t stop it. The instinct for self-preservation is too strong inside me.
“I never asked you to be any of those things,” he says. “After everything that’s happened over the past few weeks, you’re really going to accuse me of wanting you for a sex slave?”
“That’s what marriage is,” I say, repeating the words I’ve been saying since I was too young to understand their meaning.
“Obviously it isn’t,” he says. “And I don’t want it to be. Our marriage can be whatever we want, whatever makes you happy. Only we can define what it will be.”
I don’t want to hear his promises because they sound too rational, and I’m not rational right now. I’m shaking with emotion. I don’t want to think about marriage as protection and support, the way it’s felt lately, because then I’ll need him, and what happens when he walks away from me then? It’s easier to fall back into the ingrained ideas I’ve held so long.
“It’s the end of freedom,” I say, clinging to the empty words I heard so many times, and now I’ve repeated so many times like a mantra.
“What do you want the freedom to do?” he asks. “If you want to go to school, or get a job, or travel… Eliza, I’m here to support you in that, or work through whatever you’re going through, or figure out what you want to do. Just let me be part of it.”
“I don’t know what I want, okay?” I say, fresh tears springing to my eyes. “I just want to be free.”
“As long as it’s not the freedom to fuck other guys, you can still have whatever freedoms you want. Just talk to me, Eliza. You seem obsessed with this idea, but I don’t know what you want the freedom to do.”
