Page 65 of The Enforcer

The word ‘stimulation’ makes me squirm in my seat. She grins up at me before getting back to work.

“But then I met Salvo.”

“And how’d you do that?”

“He came to one of my fights. Giulio bet against me, the stronzo. But Salvo said he saw something in me he liked. He bet all his money that I would win against one of the best amateur boxers in Rome.”

“And you won, I’m guessing.”

I laugh, remembering my last amateur fight. “Of course, I did, but that fighter had a bad habit of talking trash during his matches.”

“Okay?”

“Apparently, most people just let him do it. But I’m not most people.”

Zoe is watching me with interest, a heat in her eyes that I’m not even sure she realizes is there. “What’d he say?”

“He called my mother a whore.”

Zoe gasps lightly. “Did you kill him?”

I have spent the last two days trying not to feel anything for her, especially not the lust that has been consuming me, but now I know that I’ve failed miserably. The lust is one thing, but the way that gasp makes me feel is something that I’ve never even fathomed before. And seeing an echo of the bloodlust I felt during that fight makes my heart pound against my chest.

I think I see now how Giulio and Salvo have gotten themselves into their individual predicaments. And I don’t know what the fuck is going on in these women’s genes, but it’s kryptonite, apparently.

“They had to pull me off of him. Salvo hired me that night.”

“You know, if you ignore all the details, that’s actually a really sweet story.”

I laugh so hard I cry.

Zoe

I tell Alfonso that my feet still hurt from all those steps and that I don’t want to venture too far from the hotel, which is true. But really, it’s because I know I’m going to fuck him, and I have no idea what the Italian laws on public nudity look like, so I want to stick close to home if you will.

We have dinner in the hotel restaurant. I don’t have anything too fancy, so I wear a dress that’s really just a sarong tied around my body. It’s skimpy and scandalous, which I think fits our cover story well.

At the very least, it makes Alfonso’s face redden and his dick hard. I wear my sunglasses until the sun sets to feed the rumor that I’m famous. Most of the people in the restaurant are with some random Australian tour group that seems desperate to believe that there’s a celebrity in their midst. One table sends Alfonso and I a bottle of champagne. Another watches us for so long that their food grows cold. Some man asks for my autograph. I sign it ‘Lena Horne.’ He doesn’t notice because he’s too busy staring at my breasts.

The food is good too.

And not to be sentimental or excessively horny, but I think my favorite part of dinner is when it’s over.

“Let’s walk around the garden,” Alfonso offers.

“If you want,” I say. “Although we both know what’s about to happen.”

He gulps loudly. “Then we should walk and give our food some time to digest.”

His arm circles my waist again. I realize just how much this man has been touching me in the past two days and that I have enjoyed it more than I would have expected. I look away so he can’t see me smile.

The hotel gardens aren’t lush, but there are tall trees and beautiful flowers scenting the air. The paths wind in a maze through the trees. I trick my brain into believing that Alfonso and I are on a private island, just the two of us. We follow a winding gravel path through the garden, and the already blue-black evening sky disappears at points under the canopy high in the air.

If Tyrone were here, he would have pulled out his phone, adorably desperate to figure out the name of every plant we passed. And Kevin would have wanted to take dozens of pictures, so we never had to forget this trip. If they’d been here with me, I would have appreciated their enjoyment as much as I always did; I would have hung on the edges of their pleasure, soaking up only what I needed. But it’s different with Alfonso because he’s the sponge.

He doesn’t mean to, but I can feel the yearning black hole of him. He’s waiting for me to tell him what I want and precise instructions on how to give it to me. There’s so much about his neediness that I enjoy — and that unintentionally speaks to the also greedy black hole inside of me, and my pussy as well — but that is so much goddamn responsibility.

I hate the way that this quiet walk helps me realize that maybe, just maybe, my mother was right. Maybe Tyrone and Kevin weren’t meant for me. Maybe I had been with them because I hadn’t wanted to grow up. Maybe our arrangement, where we didn’t talk about the future and avoided the fact that we didn’t want the same things out of life, was a reprieve. Maybe that relationship had been a convenient way to forestall building a life of my own.

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