He hadn’t thought to question it.
He should have. Maybe if he had, he and Crazy A wouldn’t have ended up here.
The phone buzzed in his desk again and this time Anteros slid open the drawer. Three more pictures, all just brief glimpses, teases—a hand over a breast, her legs spread open with her palm covering her pussy, the side of her showing the beautiful S curve of her body. The second the last photo came through, he was dialing her number.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Meet me,” Anteros growled before Frankie could say anything.
“I’m busy,” she replied but just as she finished, he got another message: a picture of her legs spread so wide it hollowed the muscles of her groin. There were no fingers inside her and, fuck, seeing her open like that just made him want to fill her. He undid his fly, pulled out his cock, and started stroking himself.
“Then I wonder why you answered,” he ground out.
“Maybe I’m also bored,” she said, but her words were breathy.
Anteros laughed darkly. “The longer you make me wait, the worse it will be.” The distance was fucking brutal. When she’d sent a picture of a man kissing her neck, he’d just had to sit and take it, couldn’t punish her, couldn’t fuck her until she screamed.
“What will you do?” She sounded breathless, needy.
“Take my time…punish you. You remember what it was like.” She made a high whimpering sound and he threw his head against the wall, letting the pain clear his thoughts.
“I miss it,” she said on an exhale. A grin twisted his cheek and he gripped his dick, pumping.
“What do you miss, Frankie?” When he’d had her at the penthouse he could punish her with multiple toys. Now all he had was her mind, but he liked the challenge. He was pretty certain it could be better than toys because he was pretty certain Frankie’s mind had dark areas that if he got her to explore, would make her explode.
“I miss. I miss…” Breathing was the only sound for a few minutes, hot, husky, stuttering with uncertainty.
“Be a good girl, Frankie,” Anteros coaxed.
“The knife,” she admitted. “Like when I cut you, only…” Her sentence vanished in a sigh and a slow grin spread across his face at her confession. This was a new turn-on, and he looked forward to torturing her with it.
“Dirty girl,” he purred. “Do you have a knife with you now?”
“No, I lost my only one after…” After Big O. Anteros reached down and pulled the knife out of his boot, placing it on the table.
“I picked it up that night. I have it with me.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, and if you were here, I would teach you a lesson about teasing me.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d slide the knife along your skin.” He slid the knife on the table, making it scratch loud enough so she could hear.
“And th-then what?” she stuttered. Anteros closed his eyes and stroked his cock, letting her sighs be his soundtrack. He could practically see her little hands spreading her pussy in his mind.
“Are you touching yourself right now?” Anteros grated.
“Yes,” she gasped.
“Stop.” When the only answer Anteros received was more panting, he said, “Maybe I should hang up.”
She groaned, but whimpered, “Okay, fine, I stopped. Will you tell me what you would do next?”
“I’d put the blade at your ankle, stroking your flesh until I reached your inner thigh, stopping just short of your cunt.” Musical, halting whimpers came through the phone, making him grip his cock so hard it was almost painful. “Send me a fucking picture,” he barked. “Get on your knees and show me your ass and cunt.”
“What would you do next?” she responded instead, voice wobbly.
“Send me a goddamn picture and I’ll tell you.” Voice coarse, Anteros rubbed the grooves in the blade handle, trying to clear his head. A minute or so later, picture came through, and all hope of a clear head vanished.
“Fuck,” he hissed. Frankie was on her knees as he’d instructed her, ass and pussy glistening. He wanted nothing more than to be behind her, licking her up, making her come until she cried for him to stop.
Then he would keep going.
Fuck.
He gripped his cock harder.
“Tell me,” she begged.
“I would slide the knife handle inside your pussy until you came all over it. Until you were dripping down my wrist. Then I’d clean the blade with your cunt juices. Even if you didn’t want it, you’d get fucked.” Anteros paused as Frankie’s dulcet sighs flowed through the phone. He focused on his own breathing, needing to get control before he shot his load.
After a few moments, he continued pumping his cock and said, “When bad girls get my knives dirty with blood, they don’t get a say in how I choose to clean them. I’d slide that handle into your tight cunt and force your orgasm.”
“Please let me touch myself,” she begged. “Please.”
“You can fuck yourself,” he allowed, “but only with one finger, and don’t touch your clit.” Frankie groaned, but seconds later her fast sighs and sweet, staccato moans echoed through the line. “Is your finger deep inside your cunt?”
“Yes, but it’s not enough.” Her words were stretched thin by longing and Anteros laughed low as he imagined her fucking herself, trying to get release with just the one finger. “I want you, Anteros,” she groaned. “I feel so empty.”
His humor vanished, replaced by carnal hunger as he imagined Frankie spread out for him on the four-poster bed. Her fingers would open her glistening pussy, show how ready she was to be fucked by him. The image was enough to have him clenching his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
“If I was there I would fill your cunt,” he growled. “Feel you tighten around my cock. You’re always so fucking hot and wet, fucking begging to be taken.” Frankie groaned long and slow at his words, and Anteros stroked himself faster to the sound, gripping the blade handle with the other. His dick was so hard it could punch through a wall. “Are you ready to be fucked, Frankie? Ready to take my cock like a good girl?”
“Yes,” she responded, the word disappearing in her gasp.
“I wouldn’t be gentle. I’d fuck you until your throat was sore from screaming. Until my cock bottomed out in your tight pussy and you lost your words because the pleasure was too fucking intense.”
“Anteros I’m—I’m—” She couldn’t finish, words seized by a sweet, breathless cry as she came. It had him shooting his load into his hand like a fucking teenager. Even after he’d finished, hands sticky and wet, Anteros didn’t move. He listened to Frankie’s heavy sighs as she came down, imagining her glazed expression and flushed face—the way she got when she was utterly sated.
Then he reached for a tissue from his desk and wiped himself up as he growled, “Put your fingers in your cunt right now.”
“Okay,” she said in that lilting, submissive tone she got after he’d thoroughly fucked her.
“Now put them in your mouth and tell me how you taste.”
“A little salty,” she said. “Kind of…sweet.” Anteros groaned, all at once turned on and pissed that he couldn’t taste her.
“Will you send me a picture?” Frankie asked. “Please, Anteros. If you can’t be inside me I want to see you.” Anteros focused a minute on taking a good picture—not some shitty downward angle popping out of his jeans cock shot—then sent it. It was maybe a few minutes before Frankie said anything, and Anteros wondered if the connection had died.
“Frankie?”
“I miss you,” she said. The lust in her voice was gone, seized by a hollow sadness. The way she wobbled when she spoke wasn’t because she was trying to contain her desire, but because she was trying to hold back her tears. Anteros had been telling himself it was still just games between them, that the war didn’t matter, but hearing her choked voice exposed the lie. He couldn’t hold her or comfort her. There were no words t
o assuage the distance between them. He was powerless.
He fucking hated being powerless.
Anteros quickly shoved his cock back into his pants and, with a cough, changed the subject.
“Who helped you escape?” Silence met him on the other line. Up until then, Anteros and Frankie had been keeping their worlds separate. She lived with Lucia, wanted her as family, while Anteros was determined to destroy her and Lucia was determined to do the same to him. Once they opened up that line of communication there was no going back.
“Answer me, Frankie.” Anteros could hear her breathing on the line, like wind through an old house.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How did you escape the hotel?” he pressed, ignoring her lie.
“Why are you asking me now?” she whispered. Anteros wasn’t sure what to say. Opening up—sharing his fucking feelings—wouldn’t change a goddamn thing. They would still be at war.
“Typical,” Frankie sighed on the other line. “You want everything from me but if I want something in return, you stonewall. What if I asked you to tell me why you killed Dubois? Why you sent that box to Lucia?”
“That was for you and you fucking know that,” he snarled. “But he’s dead because he betrayed me, and if someone betrays me, they die. Simple.” Silence followed. Breathing. He placed a hand over half his face, rubbing his closed eye, cheek, jaw…waiting for her response.
What the fuck was taking so long?
“I can’t,” Frankie eventually said. She sounded so pained that Anteros sat up in his chair, dropped the hand from his face. A few seconds later she amended, “I just…I mean…it was someone I don’t know. Lucia sent him.”
“What did he look like?” Anteros asked.
“I guess…long black hair. I met him at the party.” Anteros remembered the “journalist” he’d met that night. Something had been off about him; he’d been too lethal. It made sense.
Leaning back into his chair, Anteros asked, “Was that so hard?”
Frankie laughed. “Fuck you.”
“When I see you again you’re going to regret speaking to me as you have.” He actually loved the changes he saw in Frankie. She was showing him the truth she’d kept hidden at the penthouse. Her clothing, her unabashed swearing and sarcasm, it was what he’d been wanting—to get deeper, to burrow into her soul. He wasn’t driven to break her as he’d originally thought. He wanted her mind the way it was—sharp, lethal, cutting. He wanted her unbroken, only broken to him.
“Who says you’re going to see me again? Maybe I’ve moved on. You’d probably like him. He’s called Monster and has an unnatural fetish for tank tops in winter.”
A smile came to his face and just as Anteros was going to say something in response to her insolence, the door to his office burst open. With cool ease, Anteros hung up the phone without another word. Everyone—the Wolves, Levi—stood in the doorway.
“You’re being accused of murdering Lucio Pavoni,” Levi said somberly. “People are calling for Emilio to take your place.”
“Emilio is a little busy losing his reelection and getting high,” Anteros said smoothly.
“We are losing what little De Luca support we had,” Little O hedged. Anteros stood up and leaned against the wall, inky strands of hair falling over his eyes.
Before Anteros, Emilio had been a useless, visionless, bag of blood. A skin sack of nothing but thoughts of sex and spending money earned by others. With the help of Rhys, Emilio became a senator. With Rhys dead, Emilio had fallen back into his old habits. Now people wanted that fucker to take Anteros’s job? Anteros was the one who’d turned the Pavoni Family into an empire, made the name into something fearsome. He’d be fucking damned if he lost that because his last name wasn’t Pavoni.
Anteros couldn’t help but think of the complete hypocrisy. The way Lucio had gained the seat of Don in the first place was by killing his father-in-law. He wasn’t surprised, though. Lucio had already been family when he cut the crown, and no matter how many years he spent in the Family, he would always be estraneo.
“Is this legitimate, Boss?” Pretty Boy asked.
“Would it matter?”
“Not to us,” Pretty Boy quickly answered. “I wouldn’t give a fuck if Princess Di herself rose from the grave lookin’ to be Boss.”
“I would care about that,” Little O said. “I will always choose hot zombies.”
Ignoring that inane comment, Anteros continued to think. He had no doubt that they would choose him as their Boss. Hundreds of legitimate Pavonis could come out of the woodwork and they would still choose him. Like Anteros, Pretty Boy and Little O came from shit blood. They saw no reason to pledge fealty to a monarchy they could never hope to influence.
Crazy A was different. If the Pavoni mafia was truly a monarchy, then Crazy A came from noble blood.
“I don’t give a shit,” Crazy A’s cool, callous voice drifted back.
“This needs to be dealt with immediately,” Anteros said. He couldn’t fight a war on two fronts. He thumbed his lip, meeting everyone’s concerned stares.
Emilio would have to be killed.
There was just one problem.
“How do we get to Emilio up in DC?” Little O asked. “We don’t exactly have anyone to spare.” Yeah, that. He was already stretched on all sides. War was not conducive to running a business.
Anteros exhaled and walked to his desk, pressing the call button. A short few minutes later, Nikolai’s shaggy, titan gold curls popped into the room.
“Boss?”
“Call a soldier off the docks,” Anteros said. “Doesn’t matter which.” Anteros wasn’t thrilled about the idea. He needed the docks guarded, especially with all their shipments being hijacked by Lucia.
“Is that the best idea?” Little O asked, as if on cue. “We need the docks guarded.”
“The Institute is threatening to pull out if another shipment is hijacked,” Pretty Boy added.
“A soldier can’t pull off this job,” Crazy A mumbled.
“I’m all ears for a better fucking idea.” The silence thickened as everyone realized there wasn’t one.
“I can do it,” Nikolai said, breaking the quiet. “I’d like to prove myself.”
“You’ve got enough on your hands checking blueprints,” Pretty Boy said. Anteros almost agreed. It was one thing to have the boy double-check blueprints, another thing to give him a hit. He had been much younger than Nikolai when he decided to start proving himself, though, and as far as Anteros was concerned, Nikolai had proven himself the night at the hotel. In his clear, green eyes Anteros saw eagerness, confidence, a willingness to prove himself—all things he’d had at that age, but Anteros didn’t want to make the same mistakes as Lucio. If Nikolai wanted to be in the Family, then he could be in the Family.
“Have it finished by next weekend,” Anteros said.
“Yes, Boss.”
The door closed behind Nikolai and Anteros looked out the two-way painting into his club. Anteros had waited his entire life to be Boss, but maybe he’d had it wrong. Maybe he shouldn’t be Boss of the Pavoni empire, but Boss of his own fucking empire.
Lucia could have the Pavoni Family; when he was through with them, they’d be nothing but ashes.
Six
It had been two days since I’d said a lie I couldn’t take back. I never imagined myself as the bad guy. Anteros was always the Beast, the terrible thing that went bump in the night. As I continued to live in this world, though, the lines got blurrier.
If someone betrays me, they die.
I fingered the pendant on my neck, the one I never took off, not even to sleep or shower. Before that phone call, we’d never acknowledged that we were on opposite sides of a war. When he’d asked me about the hotel, I’d had the opportunity to tell him the truth, to tear down the lines and stand in the middle together.
I’d fucking cowered.
Now I sat in the kitchen, reading the same book for the
fifteenth time, wishing he would text me. There were no cameras in the kitchen and people rarely came in. When they did, I could always hear them coming, which made it the perfect place to read and stare at the phone.
This was the only place in the entire building that felt remotely normal. The table wasn’t made of expensive wood with intricate carvings. There weren’t mirrors dripping from the ceiling to hide insidious acts. It was far enough away from the club that the music was muffled and almost quiet. It was just a simple kitchen, with a white fridge, and a circular table.
At least, until that day.
With a sigh, I set both the phone and book down and placed my head on the table, feeling the cool paint against my forehead. Lucia only had three books in the entire building: The Count of Monte Cristo, And Then There Were None, and Our Lady of The Flowers—which was the only book I’d never read, but it was in fucking French. I knew that was on purpose. Lucia wasn’t unread, she just didn’t want others to be.
There was no escape from the silence on the other end of the phone. Two days had gone by and Anteros hadn’t spoken to me. Not a text. Nothing. The phone sex we’d had was explosive, world bending. It broke down another wall inside me, flooding my brain and corrupting my body with pleasure, making me a zombie to sensation.
A normal person would think it was wrong to crave the things we said over the phone.
I didn’t want to be normal anymore, but I couldn’t feel the way I did alone. The blank inbox reminded me that just because we’d shared lust, it didn’t change shit. That was all we ever were: lust and lies. I wondered if he knew I was lying. I wondered if it was a test I’d failed.
I felt like a fool again.
I rolled my head to the side and stared out the window above the sink. All the windows were tinted so no one could see inside, but I could see out to the people who didn’t know I was here. Fluffy floral curtains adorned the frame and I wondered what the point was.
“Killing two birds with one stone,” Lucia’s voice drifted through the swinging door. Quickly grabbing And Then There Were None, I stood from the table and was at the door on the other side when I paused. I should have left, should have run anywhere else, but instead I parried into the walk-in pantry. I shut the door quietly as Lucia came into the kitchen.
Beauty, a Hate Story the End Page 10
