Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (28 page)

I put my hands on his face, letting the chain slip over my thumb and dangle. “Don’t walk away from me. It kills me when you do.”

“This life, it’s impossible to pay every debt and go straight.”

“Pay what you can.”

He took the chain and opened it. I leaned into him so he could put it around my neck and fasten it.

I laid my head on his shoulder and pulled back. “Ow. My ear.”

He turned my head to get a good look. “It’s barely a scratch.” He kissed my neck, moving the chain to put his tongue on the skin where my neck and shoulder met.

“I have a headache,” I said, pushing his ass forward until I felt his erection at my hip.

“I’ll fuck you gently. You’ll come long and slow. Your head will forget its ache when you shed tears.” He reached under my skirt from behind.

I groaned.

“
Shh
,” he said. “My men are on the other side of this door.” He pushed me back onto the bench and spread my legs. “
A
more Mio.”

He kissed inside my thighs, moving my panties aside to lick so slowly I almost came with anticipation. I grabbed his hair, but he wouldn’t suck. He only used the tip of his tongue on my clit.

“Antonio,” I whispered. The hard bench bit my back and the room was rough hewn from the earth, yet I’d never felt so comfortable, at home, safe. “Always be my Capo.”

He slid my underpants off and planted himself between my legs, his dick out and ready for me.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Fuck me,” I said with conviction. “Fuck me now.”

He put one of my legs over his shoulder, opening me for him. He moved my body like a precious thing, then he slid his dick into me. I was so wet, he got the whole length of him in with one try.

“
Come vuoi tu
, Contessa.” He moved out then in again, every inch a breath of intention to keep me safe, to keep me pure. But most importantly, I felt his intention to keep me. His voice dropped, and his words sounded more like prayer than surrender. “
Come vuoi tu.
”

Fine, per adesso.

------------

RUIN.

Complete Corruption - Part Two

theresa

verything bled. The sun bled gold over the skyline. The deep blue horizon bled over the map of the streets. The trapezoid of light bled across the carpet as the day passed. The smog bled into the cloud. From the tower, I presided over silence.

I didn’t know how many hours a day I sat in front of that window, looking out over the breadth of the Los Angeles basin with its endless ocean of greys and browns, wondering where he was and where I was and how many hours were between us. Wondering if I’d eaten or if my motionless night at the window had been cut by sleep or if my open-eyed diligence was to end in another day of bleeding the hours of life into the endlessness of death.

He was gone. He didn’t talk about what he did, but I was sure the sun draining onto the blanket of the basin was blood shed by him or his men or on his behalf. I feared it was his. Everyone’s blood looked the same once spilled, but his, running the same color as a polluted sun, would have brought me to tears.

The most tender symptom of aging is the reduction of choices. I’d wanted to be everything when I was a girl: a scientist, a politician, a financier, a lawyer. But I’d made a choice to be nothing, bleeding options from a wound where my heart had been pulled out, inflated to ten times its normal size, and put back.

Time had passed in that bland grey apartment. People had come and gone like Zia Giovanna, Antonio’s aunt who ran a restaurant in San Pedro, and Zo, one of his associates, a sweet man who had no problem beating the life out of someone. Others with names and accents came, bringing food, clothing, comfort, and I still had no idea how I’d gotten there.

Not physically. I remembered the multiple cars, the handoffs in desolate places. But I couldn’t recall the single decision I’d made that had yanked me from my world and into that place, high above the city, where I knew no one, had no connection to the things I’d spent years building, and had no influence on decisions made about my life.

I was able to leave.

People watched me, but I could have eluded them if I’d gotten my mind to wiggle around options and choices. With a well-built strategy for escape, I could have left in a blaze of light or the thick of night. I had a phone. One call to my father, and my confinement would have been over. Or to Daniel. I could manage anything I set my mind to, even if I was watched. And I wasn’t being kept against my will. Not really. Not in a way that was decidedly illegal, but only in a way that left me staring at the breadth of the city and out to the horizon, bleeding time.

Until he came.

He barely knocked when he entered. Maybe the
whickCLAP
of the lock should have been as good as a knock. Or the mumbles of him and the guy outside, with his voice an interlocking puzzle piece to something in my brain. Something with needs. Something desperate. But every time he came to the apartment, I was surprised and relieved and hungry, like a woman who was so starved she hadn’t even entertained the thought of food until someone slipped a bowl of stew through a flap in the door.

I paused when he closed the door behind him. I never knew which Antonio I was getting when he walked in. It didn’t matter if he was in jeans and a polo shirt or, as was the case that day, a jacket and sky-blue turtleneck. He could be any one of ten incarnations.

“Contessa.” He tossed his keys on the end table.

I said nothing. Not yet. I was afraid speaking would break the spell, and like that, he’d disappear in a flare.

He shrugged out of his jacket, revealing the brown-leather shoulder holster that creased his sweater. He wore it in my presence. He trusted me. He wasn’t afraid, and as he walked toward me, the straps cutting his frame didn’t scare me either. The gun made me bold. The scruff on his face and the circles under his eyes made me compassionate, and the line shadows bleeding from his feet to the side of the room in the late sun made me angry.

“Capo,” I said when he was a step away.

He gently reached for my cheek, and before he could embrace me and sweep me away, I tilted my body back and slapped his face.

I hit him so hard his neck snapped ninety degrees until he was facing the window. The sound of skin hitting skin rang against the walls.

And I felt not an ounce of regret.

I raised my hand again, and he grabbed the wrist. He was not gentle when he drew it down, nor when he stepped toward me, pushing me back against the table. His breath was hot on me, his body a field of energy. His hips pressed against me so forcefully his erection hurt through my clothes.

“Did you want to tell me something?” Antonio let my wrist go so he could put his hand up my shirt. He shoved my bra out of the way and grabbed a nipple, pinching to pain.

“Where were you?” I gasped the question. All the accusation and anger heated to a sticky, molten mass between my legs.

“It’s business.”

“God,” I groaned. “Go to hell.”

I tried to wiggle away, but he grabbed under my arms and threw me on the table. I swung; he dodged and held me down with his weight while peeling my pants off.

“Did you hear me?” I growled.

“I heard you.”

I kicked at him, twisting. I fell off the table with a crash, pants halfway down, and I flipped so he wouldn’t have me helpless on my stomach. He grabbed my ankle and dragged me across the room. My shirt rolled up, exposing my skin to the burn of the carpet, which matched the burn between my legs.

“You’re not understanding your place, Contessa.”

He whipped my pants off. In the split second before he grabbed me again, I scuttled to my feet and backed up.

“My place? It’s next to you.”

“It’s under me.” He came for me. I slapped him again, hard, the force of my body behind it, but it didn’t stop him that time. He took me by the arms and threw me on the couch like a rag doll. I lay there with my legs splayed, my elbows under me, looking up at him with a clenched jaw as he undid his pants.

“Don’t you even think about it.”

“I’m not thinking about it.” He wedged himself between my legs and pushed my knees apart. “I’m doing it.”

I slapped him again, twice in the face, three times in the chest, and he ignored all of it as if he were under attack by mosquitoes.

“Fuck you,” I said when he slid his cock along my soaked cleft, not entering me but teasing, even as I lashed out at him. I got a good shot to the neck, and he latched my wrists together in two of his fingers, binding me with his flesh.

“Say ‘fuck me,’” he said, putting his other hand on my throat.

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

He moved his hips, sliding the length of his cock on my clit. He leaned down, and I smelled the burned nicotine on his breath.

“Wrong. Say what you want.”

My pussy pulsed for him, and while my hands and shoulders thrust against him, my lower half pushed into him.

“You’re hurting me.”

He pressed his dick on me harder and hooked his fingers onto the side of my jaw.

“Say it.”

“You’re garbage.” I was clothed in him, a corset laced tight with desire and pain. I wanted his fingers to dig into me and find my filth, my foulness. Only he could find it and grind it out. There was only one way to do that. There had only ever been one way. “Fuck me. Fuck me hard, you worthless piece of shit.”

With a twist of his hips, he was right there. I felt him. I moved against him, the slickness of my pussy an open invitation.

“Do it!” I said as loudly as I could manage with his hand on my throat.

“Beg.”

“No.”

He slid along me again, a strafing of pleasure between my thighs. I moved with him involuntarily, shifting so that worthless and beautiful man would rub me.

“No?” He said it as if he were speaking to a child.

“Fuck you.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” He let go of my wrists, and I balled up my fists and pushed against his chest, even as I pushed my hips against him.

“Please, Antonio.”

“Please, what?” He unstrapped his gun, letting it drop to the floor in a tangle of leather and iron, and pulled his sweater off.

“Please, fuck me good.” I punched his chest. “Fuck me hard. Use me like the punk you are.”

He slammed into me, taking my breath away, before I’d even finished the sentence, and time stopped. He had me pinned, and I accepted him, pushing myself against him. It was the only direction I could move in.

“This good, Contessa?” he said in my ear. “This how you want it?”

My mouth was open, but no words came out. Only vowels. With every thrust, a wave of hot-pink pleasure came in, and then another.

“Capo,” I groaned. “Fuck.”

“Those words,” he whispered.

“Destroy me.”

“You’re ruined,
amore
.
Rovinata
.”

And at the thought of being left a ruined piece of flesh and bone, I burst into flames of sensation, crying his name, be it Capo, or Antonio, or my own personal dance with death. I claimed him to the heavens.

antonio

 was taught that a woman needed to be protected. She needed stability. Tenderness. A woman needed to feel safe and build a home for a family. A woman needed a future, a hope of comfort. She needed a man who’d stand between her and danger.

The securest place for Theresa was with her ex, Daniel. I admitted I was already failing to put her in the safest situation, because I’d die before letting him have her.

My father, who ran the entire olive trade in Napoli, never told my mother a thing about how he got his money. He made two children with her. He made her an honest woman. He gave her all the things a woman needs until she threw it back at him because he couldn’t leave the business. She threw his name away; she took his children; she made herself the target of contempt. I’d always thought my mother was the one with the broken heart, because my father was a cold, cruel man.

One night when I was maybe eighteen, he came to the mechanic shop, drunk. He didn’t drink much, but it was his birthday, and my father did not like birthdays.