Loving Leo (The Romanovsky Brothers Book 3) (9 page)

Leo’s eyes hit hers, shrouded in suspicion.  “How did you know he worked at 5th?”

She faltered, kicking herself for her stupidity.  “He must have said so at dinner last night.”

Leo shook his head.  “No.  He didn’t.”

“I must have read it somewhere, then.  I did a lot of research on you guys, you know, to prepare for the interview.”

He studied her face, frowned, and then looked away, taking another sip of his beer.

Jessica exhaled.  That had been close. 

Leo swallowed the beer with a frown.  “He was the Supervising Chief when Zoey first moved in.  He wasn’t promoted to Head Chief until a little while later.”

A month later, to be exact. 
The same month Victor King retired from the station to accept his city council win, Tony had been promoted to Chief of Police.

Some would call it a coincidence, but Jessica didn’t know the meaning of that word.  In her world, there were no coincidences.  Only devious design, calculated intention, and great misfortune.

She felt sick as she looked to the balcony doors and found Zoey cuddled in Val’s arms on the living room couch.

Cuddled in the arms of the man who’d murdered her parents.

Zoey Black had no idea who she was in bed with.

But she would.

***

The white light beaming through Val’s floor-to-ceiling windows rose higher in the sky, and hours after midnight, the brothers were winding down.  Champagne flutes and beer bottles were scattered on various surfaces across his ten million dollar penthouse.  The brothers were scattered as well, limp limbs sprawled haphazardly across Val’s black U-shaped sectional, groaning their way through the rest of the alcohol.

Zoey, forcibly sober, was out cold on Val’s shoulder on the recliner. He cradled her head while sipping his glass of champagne, glassy eyes focused on the white crib in the corner of the room that was only halfway assembled.  He occasionally pressed his nose into Zoey’s hair and breathed deep.  Gary rambled on next to him, but Val wasn’t listening.

Alone in the kitchen, watching them all with frantic eyes, Jessica used one hand to pour herself a glass of wine while the other hand worked a hidden camera into the power outlet next to the sink.  If she had both hands to work with, she could’ve done it in seconds, but she couldn’t risk drawing too much attention to herself.

She got the camera inside the outlet with wobbly fingers, just as Leo stood from the living room couch on shaky legs. She knew he was coming for her.  With an annoyed huff, she screwed the outlet back into place and shoved the mini screwdriver in her bra just as Leo circled into the kitchen, hopping up on the counter next to her.

“Oh hey, Wednesday.”

“Hi.” Jessica set the wine bottle down and picked up her full glass, facing him.

He grabbed the bottle and took a swig, setting it down before tugging the sleeve of her dress between his fingers.

“Why don’t you like me?” he asked, using his hold on her sleeve to swing her arm back and forth.

The action made her body swerve.  “I do like you, Leo.”

He released her, looking down and clutching the counter.  “You’re
tolerating
me.”

Jessica was disappointed that she wasn’t as good an actress as she’d imagined.  She
thought
she’d been doing a great job pretending not to hate his guts.

Beer Belly Borgia.

Her jaw tightened.  “If I hated you, if I was only tolerating you, why would I have come all the way down here from Westchester, and spent all night partying with your family?”

Leo held her eyes, then shrugged.

“You’re like a little boy in The Hulk’s body.  Your looks have made it too easy for you.  You’ve grown so used to women dropping their panties the moment you say the word that you don’t have the faintest clue how to recognize a
lady
who genuinely likes you, and just wants to get to know you.”

All bullshit.  It took everything she had to stop her face from curling into a laugh.

“Okay…”  Leo pushed himself deeper on the counter, holding his hands out.  “What do you want to know about me?”

She set her glass down next to him.  “Do you do drugs?”

“Wow.”  He laughed.  “Okay.  No.”

She lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

“I don’t know…” He shrugged.  “Weed makes my clothes stink, coke makes my stomach sick, and pills make me dizzy. I just don’t get it.  But I do tend to find myself in the company of people who
love
to get high, and often.  But I don’t.”  He nodded at her.  “You?”

“Drugs are stupid,” she answered.

He laughed.  “Were you that kid?  That kid in fifth grade who walked around with a DARE t-shirt on every other day and won all the ‘don’t do drugs’ essay contests?”

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 around 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.”