Jessica had been that kid. Leo was so on the money she almost laughed. “Where did you go to college?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Dartmouth freshman year, finished at Cornell.”
“So it’s true what they say about twins? Can’t stand to be apart.”
He tilted his head. “You really did do your research on us, huh?”
Jessica held back a curse. He’d never told her that he’d followed Val to Cornell. She’d just done so much research, she felt like she knew these people. She probably knew more about the Romanovskys than the Romanovskys did.
“Yes, I did my research. I wanted to be sharp for my interview.”
“There’s sharp, and then there’s stalking.”
“I am not stalking you, come on.” Change the subject, Jess, stroke his massive ego. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some women have stalked you, though. Four single, wealthy, handsome brothers? It’s a perfect recipe for limitless pussy.”
“You mean three single, wealthy, handsome brothers,” Leo corrected. “Val is off the market.”
“Females are heinous these days. An engagement ring on Val’s finger means nothing. A handsome millionaire is single until the marriage license is signed. And, to the especially heinous females, even then, he’s still fair game.”
“I’ve never heard a female call another woman a female,” he laughed. “I think you just broke every woman code in existence. Females? From the Xena: Warrior Princess of women’s rights, who dropkicked that grown-ass man back at the bar?”
Jessica cursed herself again. Growing up with a brother who’d been in and out of the prison system since he was ten had rendered her a chauvinist with a vagina by nature.
“I see you trying to deflect, but I’m right, aren’t I? About you being spoiled rotten? Pussy tossed at you from every angle?”
Leo leaned in, studying her eyes.
Jessica watched him right back, seeing the way his mind worked, and refusing to give him ammo.
“Yes,” he said. “Women are much easier to come by when you’ve got a little money in your back pocket. It’s the quality women that are hard to find.”
“You think I’m a quality woman?”
“I’ve been after you relentlessly. Moving in hard as shit, and I still don’t know what your lips taste like. How soft your tongue is.” His eyes fell to her lips. “So, yes, Ashley. That makes you quality. And that turns me on.” He squinted. “But I still can’t help but feel like you know everything about me, and I know nothing about you.”
“Ask away.”
“How ’bout that dropkick?”
“My brother is an ex-con. He’s been in and out of prison, basically, since the day I was born. My dropkick is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“You always go up against men twice your size in the name of feminism?”
“What can I say? I’m passionate about women’s rights.”
“Yet you call women females.”
She cut her eyes at him.
He smirked, scooting closer to her on the counter, careful not to knock over her wine. “How old are you?”
“Same age as you.”
“College?”
“Rutgers.”
“Major?”
“Criminal Justice.”
“Why? Because of your brother?”
“I declared my major two weeks after he was given an eight year prison sentence for drug trafficking.” She nodded. “Up until that point, he’d been catching a lot of breaks. The longest sentence he’d ever gotten was eight months. When the judge said eight years, my heart split in half, and he took his half with him when they cuffed him and pulled him out of the courtroom. So I declared Criminal Justice. I wanted to learn how to help him in any way I could.” The moment the words left Jessica’s mouth, she knew she’d just given Leo too much truth. Her older brother, Leroy, was the fastest track to her heart. A heart that broke every time she told that story. She could already feel the pain radiating out of her chest and into her eyes.
“What’s his name?” Leo asked.
“Leroy.” Her eyes widened. More truth. She could have made up some bullshit name, but the truth had slipped out before she could even think to do it. Being undercover, lies were harder to remember, but they were always a wiser choice than the truth.
She ran a hand through her hair and met Leo’s eyes, wondering why she was finding it so hard to lie to him. So easy to tell him the truth. Making up bullshit lies was usually her favorite part of the job, but whenever she found herself looking at him for too long, they became harder to come by.
Beer Belly Borgia.
She fixed that name in her head and waited for the anger, the resentment, the sting that always accompanied the thought, but even those didn’t come quickly or strongly enough anymore.
“And now you work as a graphic artist?” Leo asked, snapping her out of her thoughts. “That’s a pretty big deviation from criminal justice.”
“At some point in my life, I realized my true passion. What I always loved to do. What I wanted to do for the rest of my days. So I went against my Criminal Justice degree, against my parents, against everyone in my life, really, and pursued art.” She almost popped her own collar, relieved. That lie had come easily.
“You made a good choice,” he said. “You really are a beautiful artist. It would’ve been a real shame if the world had never seen it.” He licked his lips. “I might ask you to draw up my next tat for me.”
“Where in God’s name do you think you’re going to put it?” She reached out and touched his arm before she even knew she was doing it.
His eyes darkened at the contact, going almost black when her warm fingers caressed his skin.
He was still in his white button-down from work, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, buttons undone halfway down his chest. His entire body was covered in ink. All the way up both arms, and across each of his pecs.
The moment Jessica touched his forearm, she wished she hadn’t.
The arm was supposed to be the safest part of the body to touch. The part of the body that was universally touted, by friends and virgins alike, as totally polite, totally non-sexual territory.
The shockwave that rocketed through her felt anything but polite, and she yanked her hand away.
Leo caught that hand in its retreat, letting his fingers play against hers before he brought it back to his body.
Jessica held her breath when he placed her fingers into the dip of his shirt, running them over his hard pecs, across a tiny expanse of skin that remained untouched by tattoos.
“I was thinking, right here.” He licked his lips as he glided the tips of her fingers across his chest. He kept them there, letting her feel his rapid heartbeat, his skin as it warmed under her touch, and his chest as his breathing picked up, making it swell. He let her feel what she did to him. What she’d been doing to him since the moment they’d met. Then he moved her fingers up, inhaling when they brushed the dip in his neck. “Or here…”
Jessica tried to speak, and then realized it was a lost cause.
She wanted to taste the moisture his tongue had left shining on his lips. She wanted to feel those lips running along the folds of her pounding pussy. She wanted her clit suckled between them.
When she finally found her voice, all control had been lost. She reclaimed her hand but didn’t pull it away from his body, fingers retracing the path he’d just made, trickling over the deep, solid valleys, the smatterings of dark hair, stopping just short of his nipples, which were hidden behind the collar of his shirt.
Leo clutched the counter as she brushed the backs of her fingers across his skin, up his neck, and behind his ear.
She watched his eyes flutter shut. Saw a chill race across his body.
“What about here?” Her voice had lowered to suggestive levels without her even having to take it there. “Behind the ear? It’s a great spot because…” When his eyes opened and met hers, she was pulled in like he had a rope aro
und her neck. “You can expose your darkest secrets, but still keep them hidden away, all at the same time. The only people who would ever learn them are the ones you allow to move in close enough to see.”
He let her come in close, waiting until he could feel her breath on his lips before he found the courage to lean in too.
“I don’t have any secrets.” His fingers disappeared into the hair at the back of her neck.
Jessica gasped at his touch. “Everyone has secrets.” Her lips fell to his as their noses brushed.
“Yo!”
Jessica and Leo broke apart, stunned, as Gary came stumbling into the kitchen.
Leo slammed his hands back down onto the counter, arms flexed to the point of bursting as he shot fire at Gary with his eyes. If he took that granite countertop right off the hinges, Jessica wouldn’t be surprised.
“Get out, Gar,” Leo seethed.
Gary stumbled to a stop, holding his hands out. “Hold on now. This is the kitchen, folks. This is a community space. If you two want to get busy, have some decency and do it in a place that isn’t teeming with all the food and water. People need that shit to live. Selfish.” Shaking his head at them, utterly unapologetic, Gary walked to the fridge and threw it open, burying his head inside.
Jessica covered her smiling mouth with her hand. It seemed like every lie that left her mouth was immediately replaced with a truth spilling out of Gary’s. Maybe that was why she enjoyed him so much. He created a nice balance in the fraudulent world of Ashley Williams. A world Jessica could already feel spiraling out of control.
Leo met her eyes, shaking his head and matching her smile bashfully. He nodded toward the hallway. “Do you want to…?”
Jessica followed his nod down the hall, and saw he was motioning to a guest bedroom.
“Oh.” Her wide eyes met his, realizing what he was insinuating. “No.”
“Oh.” Barely surviving the blow, his head fell in an attempt to hide the blush on his face.
Jessica bit back a laugh. Even now, she loved shooting him down more than pretty much anything. She could already feel it becoming habit forming, taking him down bit by bit, peg by delicious peg.
She grabbed her purse from the kitchen island, backing away.
“Actually, Leo… I think it’s best that I call it a night. I don’t want to be that employee.”
She willed herself to give him a sexual look. Still coming down from their almost kiss, it was easy to accomplish.
Taking the bait like the dog he was, Leo hopped off the counter and followed her, reeled in by the dark promises in her eyes.
Jessica knew she had to flirt a little to recover from the hurting her rejection had just put on him. She couldn’t shatter his ego too much.
Not yet.
She still needed him.
“You don’t want to be what employee?” he asked.
Every step she took back, he took a bigger one forward, staying close until they were alone in Val’s foyer.
“I don’t want to be the employee who sleeps with the boss her first day on the job.” She pushed her purse onto her shoulder. “I prefer to keep my workplace rendezvous a little more subtle.”
He nodded as she spoke. “Tomorrow.”
Jessica’s back slammed against Val’s front door, and she pushed a piece of hair behind her ear in embarrassment.
“Tomorrow?” She slammed back against the door with more force when he came in close, smelling his soap, his aftershave, and a scent that was simply him.
“I can’t wait until Friday,” he said. “Have dinner with me tomorrow.” He wet his lips. “Please.”
Jessica reached for the handle of the door behind her as fast as she could. She had to get away from him. Away from the distant memory of his heartbeat under the pads of her fingers, his solid chest, his breath on her lips, so close to tasting him she could almost taste him right then. Her eyes went to his lips, down to his chest, and she noticed he was breathing just as hard as she was. She’d do anything to get away from him, so she agreed.
“Tomorrow,” she said, getting a hold of the door handle in her shaking hand, opening it just as he brushed a soft kiss to her cheek.
“Goodnight—” The door slammed closed behind her before Leo could finish saying good-bye.
Alone in the foyer, he looked into the kitchen and caught sight of Gary in the middle of it, swallowing back a slice of cold pizza while watching him with amused eyes.
“Yo. Leo. Remember that sexual harassment meeting we had this morning, an hour after that one was hired?” Gary motioned to the door Jessica had just stumbled out of. “We told everyone that it was just some random meeting. It wasn’t. It was just for you. So, just in case you’ve already forgotten the PowerPoint presentation we put together just for you, allow me to refresh… propositioning our new hires for sex?” Gary nodded. “Definitely sexual harassment.”
“I can’t stand you,” Leo said.
Gary smiled around the pizza. “I love you too.”
9
“This is going to get hard,” Jessica said to Chet the next night, staring off into the empty mansion. “I might have to fuck him.”
“I’m starting to wonder if you would even mind having to fuck him.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Watch your mouth there, Ashley Williams.”
Jessica groaned, burying her head in her hands. “Please don’t call me that.” Her head popped up, hair flying back and fanning down around her shoulders. “Can I please not be Ashley Williams for two damn seconds? How do I hate a bitch that isn’t even real? I hate Ashley Williams. I hate this bitch.”
Chet chortled. “I have to give you credit. You’re doing a nice job of taming that nasty mouth of yours.”
“Ashley Williams doesn’t swear,” she chirped.
“I activated the cam you set up. Nice job getting one in Val’s kitchen.”
“It was a shitty job.” Jessica made a disgusted noise. “And I have a feeling Angie lost track of the mug shot she swiped from me.”
Chet nodded. “You got that feeling too? Yeah, when you mentioned it, she had no idea what you were talking about. She tried to play it off, but…”
“She lost it,” Jessica confirmed. “Worst-case scenario, Roman has seen it and shown it to Val.”
“Don’t let Harp find out—”
“The only way Harp is going to find out anything is if you tell him.”
“It’ll never be me.”
“Then shut the fuck up already with all this ‘don’t let Harp find out’ bullshit.”
“You seem mad.” Chet smiled.
Jessica looked away from him. “If Val knows the mug shot is in circulation, he’s going to be on eggshells, even in his own home.”
“That could actually work to our advantage, though. Break him down even faster than we anticipated.”
“True.” She scoffed. “Man, I could’ve gotten a camera in every room if Leo hadn’t been trailing me the whole time.”
“He likes you.”
“He likes Ashley Williams. And, honestly, he doesn’t even like her. It’s a game to him. Even in high school, he treated his girlfriends like trophies. The utmost respect for their bodies, zero respect for their minds. Whenever one tried to tell him they were more than a set of ass and tits, he’d trade her in for the next one in line.” She cut her eyes at him. “And there was always a next one in line for Leo. He is not interested in Ashley. He’s interested in winning. The more she tells him no, the more he wants to win. When one strategy doesn’t work, he shifts to the next. I can almost see him working out the plays in his head when he’s talking to me. It’s a game.” She scoffed. “He’s going to be eighty years old and still playing this tired-ass game, wondering when his balls got so saggy, and why the big-titty twenty-year-olds don’t look at him anymore.”
“He’s a multimillionaire. The big-titty twenty-year-olds will never stop looking at him.”
“Touché.”
“It doe
s seem like you’re thinking about him a lot.”
“I’m working.”
“From what I heard, it seems like he’s genuinely into you.”
“Until he gets it in. And then he’s out the door.”
“Are you going to test that theory?”
Jessica cut her eyes to him. “There’s nothing I won’t do to solve this case. Now that Angie’s life is on the line and that mug shot is missing, I’m going to do everything in my power to close this as soon as possible.”
“Even sleeping with the brother of the prime suspect?”
Jessica thought about the fear she’d seen in Angie’s eyes, how hard she’d fought to hide it, and her heart lurched. “Even that,” she said.
“Borgia… you’re a machine.”
***
Zoey gritted her teeth and held back a guttural groan, cringing at the painting on the bedroom wall. Val slept soundly on the other end of their bed, and she shot him a disdainful look over her shoulder. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since that bastard had knocked her up, while he snoozed deeper than ever.
Lips puckered, eyes falling to her belly, Zoey regretted her thoughts. Massaging her stomach with her hand, she shifted from where she lay on her side, moving onto her back.
Her gasp floated into the night air when Val curled around her from behind, his weight nudging her back onto her side.
“Not on your back, Zo.”
“It’s the only way I can get any real sleep. I’m so uncomfortable.”
He set his hand over hers so they were both covering her belly, sliding his other arm underneath her body, cocooning her in his arms. The world fell away as she was enveloped in his hold. He nudged her in close, bodies curling until every inch of them was touching, even their wiggling toes.
“I can’t sleep,” Zoey whispered, feeling his breath on the back of her hair. “Your kid is ruining my life. Rolling around in my uterus like it owns the joint.”
A few silent moments passed. She wondered if he’d gone back to sleep.
“What’s your favorite place in the world?”
She smiled at the question. “That’s random.”
“When you think of a place that brings you pure bliss, what’s the first place that pops into your mind?”
Loving Leo (The Romanovsky Brothers Book 3) Page 10
