Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (36 page)

I took his hand and put it on my breast. “What if you hurt me?”

“Basta.”

“Take me, Antonio. Hurt me bad.” I slid my hand between his legs. He was hard.

He turned a corner, and I saw the yellow-and-black East Side Motors sign. It had a dusting of soot on the bottom. A trailer with a logo for LoZo’s Construction had been pulled onto the lot, a man sat in the back of the truck, feet dangling, eating a sandwich. Charred wood and plastic were piled to the left; burned-out cars had been moved to the right. The office side of the building was burned to the beams. The garage fared better, though there had been some damage. Antonio pulled into the garage. It stank of grease and flame. Thickness and sharpness stung the back of my throat. If black had a smell, it would be the inside of that building.

Antonio got out of the car and lowered the gate, shutting the space in darkness except for the wall connecting the office, which had burned off at the top.

I got out of the car, feeling my way along the side of it.

“Antonio? I—”

I felt him beside me a second before his hand grabbed a handful of hair and bent me over the hood of the Maserati, holding me there.

“You want it to hurt?” He pulled my skirt up and dug three fingers into my pussy as if he owned it.

“Yes, yes. Do it.” I was pinned. He yanked my panties down halfway then put his wet fingers back inside me without warning.

“If you scream, there’s no one in here to hear you. And you’re going to scream loud enough to bring the rest of this building down.”

I pushed my hips against his fingers, feeling violated and needy at the same time. I needed him to go deeper, to touch me where it hurt most. I was going to break from the inside out of he didn’t bend me into nameless shapes.

He took his hand off the back of my neck and pulled my thighs apart. A gust of air cooled the wetness between my legs. He spanked my ass.

“Open your legs.”

I didn’t have a chance to obey before he kicked my knees apart. His tongue descended on me, the flat of it taking me from clit to asshole. His fingers worked inside, gathering moisture as his tongue worked my clit, not gently, but sucking like he meant to eat it, teeth grazing painfully, leaving waves of pleasure behind.

“Fuck me, Antonio.”

“Not yet.” He sucked on my clit then licked it, drawing his tongue over my ass. I’d never felt anything like it, and I cried out.

He used his fingers to wet my ass while he gave his tongue to my clit, sucking hard, then licking.

“I’m going to come, you fucking—”

“Come.”

“Make it hurt!”

He shoved two fingers into my asshole and I came, pulsing around him, arching back and pushing my pelvis against the car.

“Stay still,” he said when I shuddered and twitched. His cock slid into my ass, which was smooth from saliva and pussy.

“Yes!” I shouted. “Fuck!”

“Does it hurt?” he said in my ear then bit my shoulder.

“No.” I wanted to hurt, to break, to get lost in pain. I was crusted and black, hardened to steel on the outside, while inside, a molten swirl grew every day I was with Antonio. The pressure of it bloated me, and the gunshots in the store had only tightened my hard-bitten skin into a translucent, paper-thin shell. He had to break it. He had to crack me and let it spill.

He jammed himself in harder, but I was too ready and too needy to think of the stretching as anything but pleasure.

“Do it until I break,” I hissed. “Make me cry.” I swung back at him, but he took my wrist and twisted it, pinning it against my ass.

“You’re going to cry, Contessa. But not in pain.” He put my knee over the hood of the car, and he got in even deeper, groaning. He went slowly, rotating his hips gently.

“You won’t weep from being hurt. Not from me. You’re going to shed tears from coming so hard you forget who you are. And when you return, you’ll remember you’re mine, and you’ll cry then too.” He pumped me hard, once, and I screamed in surprise. “And you’ll cry again.”

“Harder.”

He didn’t go harder; he slid carefully out and back into my ass, letting me feel every inch of him. I cursed him. He intended to make good on his promise but took his time with it, shifting my hips downward until my pussy was pressed against the hood of the car. It rubbed against the hard metal.

“You think you want me to hurt you. You don’t even know what that means.” I felt rocking, rocking, his hips and mine, the hood of the car, his hand holding my arm back, the escalation of pleasure on my clit, my empty pussy throbbing for something to fill it. “You have never tasted death,” he said into my ear softly, as if it were a secret.

“Make me taste it.” I heard the desperation in my own voice, the pain of need.

“I can’t bring you back.”

“Put it on my tongue. Take me all the way. Please.”

“No,” he said.

In the dim light, his face close to mine, I saw his jaw clench, his eyes get hard. He pulled me back by the throat and put his other hand between my legs. I don’t know how many fingers he wedged into my cunt while his dick was in my ass, but I was full and covered too, with his warm wrist on my wet clit and his body above mine. I felt protected under his thrusts, even if I’d never be safe again. I let myself crack. The fissure opened and the molten lava poured, pressing against the blackened case of control, smashing it until I screamed as if I were being rent open.

I was made of heat. The cold shell shattered into sharp-edged chips and floated away in the fiery river. I was consumed so completely I screamed in the pain of loss and pleasure of emptiness.

Antonio, the catalyst for my dissolution, the destroyer of my façade, put his lips to the back of my neck. I didn’t know who I was anymore, but I was his.

And I wept.

theresa

wo bathrooms had survived the fire. Antonio let me take the nicer one. I washed up and came out sore and emotionally drained. I didn’t have a thought in my head, only a need to see him.

I heard him before I saw him, rattling off in Italian. I’d never had a talent for languages, but right then, I wanted to learn to speak to him in his. I wanted to sing with him to that same song, to tell secret jokes in the same melody.

I followed his voice to his burned-out office. He was freshly scrubbed and brushed, poking a charred two-by-four with the toe of his dress shoe. I kissed him. His mouth was minty and soft. His face was clean, and when he touched my cheek, his tenderness was a balm on the damage he’d inflicted with those same hands.

He said a few short words over the phone and clicked off.

“What would you say if I sent you away?” he said.

“Sent me away?”

“Back home. My home. I think if I can’t protect you, my father can. Until things blow over here. Or until I can go back there.”

“There is no way, Capo. No way in hell. I have a family here. I have friends. I can’t just get sent away. It doesn’t work like that. And I won’t be away from you.”

“If Paulie ends up running an empire, whatever happens will be my fault,” he said.

“The last thirty-four years are my own. And the last couple of months are mine, as well. If something happens to me, it’s not your fault. It’s mine. I own this.”

“No. You don’t. I dragged you into hell. Now I have to get you out in one piece.”

He put his arm around me, and we looked through the space where the window had been, onto the broken glass and carbon chips that made up his shop, like an old couple on a porch, reminiscing about how the neighborhood used to be.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“About?”

“Your accountant?”

“Dime a dozen.”

“He went to Paulie?” I asked.

“Everyone loves a winner.”

I leaned against a circular-saw table and crossed my arms. Antonio put his hands in his pockets.

“You just nearly blew Paulie’s head off,” I said.

“Give me credit. If I wanted him dead—”

“And he shot at us.”

“He was aiming over our heads.” By his tone, I could tell Antonio wasn’t defending Paulie but mocking his excuse as one would mock a child who blamed his baseball bat for yet another broken window. “Asshole. I don’t want to kill him; I want to rip his heart out.”

“I mean it. We have a deal.”

“I know, Contessa. We have a deal. I hope to God that you live to be the most beautiful old woman in history.”

“I need you to end this, Antonio. Before I lose you. This has to stop.”

I put my arms around his waist, and he held me so close I felt the blood in his veins.

theresa

 woke up the next morning in a panic. My rib cage felt like a twisted coil around my lungs. I needed to get out of bed, or my spinning brain was going to lift me six inches off the mattress.

I couldn’t think about Antonio, where he was or who he was meeting. He’d conducted his business his whole life without getting killed. I had to assume he knew what he was doing.

Daniel was a talking head again. Polls were looking better, but the outcome was touch and go. The local elections were scheduled for March. Four months. I knew Daniel. He wasn’t done with Antonio and me. He was gathering clouds for a February storm.

My phone buzzed. I snapped it up without even looking at the caller.

“Tee Dray,” said a familiar voice.

“Directrix. How is it going? Do you need me?”

“Uh, yeah. Have you ever been in for questioning?”

“By whom?” I asked.

“LAPD. I lost half a day of edit.”

“What did they want?”

“Why don’t you come by? I have some questions about your notes. It would really speed things up if I had you around this afternoon.”

***

Katrina hadn’t been sheltered as a child. Her parents hadn’t had a lick of money until middle age, and by then, their daughter had been exposed to enough of the realities of Los Angeles. She knew how to answer questions from the police, something I’d given exactly zero thought to my whole life.

“What happened?” I whispered as she walked me down the hall.

“Remember the day your hot boyfriend came with food for the crew?”

“Yeah?”

“They wanted to know about that.” She stopped at the editing-bay door. “They wanted to know what he was wearing, where you went for dinner.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Everything.” She opened the door.

She went in like it was nothing, and I got in behind her and slammed the door closed. We were alone in the darkened room with only the blue light of the monitors highlighting the curves of her face.

“Like what?” I asked, my tone an accusation.

“What?” She shrugged. “He came. He brought dinner. To seduce you, I figured. And nice job, by the way…”

“Were they asking specifically about
me
?”

“They’re lawyers. They don’t need to ask. But yeah, that’s what they were getting at.”

I tapped my fingers on the back of the chair. There was an equation at work, with Daniel sitting to the right of the equal sign.

“He said he was done protecting me,” I said. “Looks like he meant it.”

“Have you done anything? What happened with Scotty?”

The loan shark Scott Mabat, had shaken down Katrina for her post-production money, threatened her life, refused payment, and eventually run afoul of Antonio. He’d landed in the hospital and was back on the street in a week.

“I pointed a gun at his head and pulled the trigger.” I said it as if delivering the news at nine. Who knew what looking death in the face had done to him? If he’d felt threatened enough, he might have gone to the cops, which would have eventually led him to Daniel.

“You what?” Katrina said.

“It wasn’t loaded.”

“Okay, Tee.” She held her hands out as if pushing me away. “This is way, way out of my league right now.”

“I didn’t shoot him.”

“What do you want, a cookie? Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck. You’re pulling triggers on people?”

“He was going to hurt you,” I said.

“Oh, no. No no no no. Just, no. I would have gone to the cops.”

“And lost the movie?”

“Which I’m going to lose anyway, right now, if my script supervisor and the woman financing postproduction shoots people. Holy fuck, no! They can freeze your assets. Then they can stop post. Everything here can go to hell! God dammit, Theresa!”