Page 30 of Rise of Temptation

My eyes have adjusted, and he’s sitting close enough to me that I can see his face when he grimaces. “Uh, yeah. That.”

I think back to earlier in the evening, after Enzo joined us in my room. How he made the other three wait while he ran me a bath and helped me get in. I don’t know if he was putting on a show for his friends—who still don’t know who I really am—or if he genuinely thought I needed some self-care to recover from the trauma of seeing a man die. Either way, it was unusually and unexpectedly sweet.

Once I was situated in the bath, the four of them sat in my room and discussed their strategy regarding the new information about the Irish princess. I couldn’t participate without arousing suspicion, but they were close enough to my bathroom for me to hear what they were saying.

Enzo’s kindness had caught me completely off guard. If you’d asked me how he would handle me being present during an incident like that, I would have guessed that he’d tell me to get over it and then probably sneak into my room later to burn off the excess energy that the adrenaline left him with. Never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted a bath and a strategy meeting.

“I’m fine,” I tell Joey. And I’m not lying; that wasn’t my first time seeing a dead body, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. It’s a hazard of the job, but I can’t tell him that.

He looks like he’s hesitating, like he wants to say something but isn’t sure if he should. His lack of confidence is unusual and endearing, so I decide to help him out.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Did you know that none of us have fucked another girl since being with you?” He eyes me cautiously, like he’s not sure how I’m going to take that news. But he doesn’t stop there. “Also, we’ve never seen Enzo act the way he did tonight. He’s not usually so… attentive.”

“It surprised me,” I admit. “But about the other thing… Why?”

He shrugs. “Fuck if I know. I mean, it was a good audition, but we’ve had a lot of good auditions that haven’t pushed us to celibacy. Well, Sal and Frankie aren’t celibate. But they usually add girls to the mix, and they’ve only been with each other since your audition.”

“You know you don’t have to be celibate, right?”

“Trust me, I’ve tried. It’s not really a choice at this point. But there’s more. Enzo hasn’t ever—not one single time—let a woman stay in this house. Or cared if anyone sampled his sloppy seconds. Not that there’s anything sloppy about you,” he rushes to clarify.

I laugh. “Relax, you’re not going to offend me.” More seriously, I say, “I don’t really understand what any of that means.”

“None of us do,” he says with a shrug. “I just felt like it was stuff you should probably know. Since it seems like you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

We both fall silent, lost in our own thoughts. I stare out the window, admiring the way the moonlight illuminates the leaves of the trees, giving them an almost ethereal, silvery glow.

“Has Enzo explained his new rules to you?” Joey’s question brings me back to the moment, and I debate how much I want to tell him.

“He mentioned something about it but said you guys would know the details.” Not a lie.

He nods. “Basically, we’re allowed to share you as long as we don’t actually fuck you. In either hole.”

“Either?”

“We can use your mouth. Not your pussy or your ass.”

“So I don’t need to worry about one or both of us getting in trouble for you being in here?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

So I was right. None of us are confident that the new rules will last.

He hesitates again.

“What’s the matter? You already called me sloppy,” I remind him. “Afraid to accidentally say something worse?”

Joey laughs. “I was just trying to figure out a nice way to ask how you feel about the new rules. About being shared.”

“About being treated like an object? Like a possession that Enzo can choose to share with his friends when he wants to?”

I can see his cheeks turn pink in the moonlight. “Uh… yeah. Pretty much.”

I shrug and consider lying and pretending to be offended. “Honestly? It’s kind of exciting,” I admit. “I enjoyed my audition more than I thought I would, and I wouldn’t mind a repeat.”

The heat in his eyes amplifies with my words, and I think I’m finally going to get to test these new boundaries. He grins at me, and everything about his demeanor is pure sex. I lean back into my pillows when he stands up. But then he walks over to the door and opens it.

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