Page 10 of Unhinged Little Angel

“Why did you call me?” I try again.

He shrugs and reaches into his jacket pocket. I tense and follow the movement. He pulls out a flask. “I’ve had an unbelievably shitty week and, believe it or not, my radiant personality doesn’t earn me a whole lot of friends. I thought we could have a drink and shoot the shit, that’s all.”

There’s still something he’s not telling me. I can see it written all over his carefully neutral expression.

“Get out,” I say coolly, already reaching for the handle on my own door. The echo of our doors closing and the crunch of gravel under our feet is a reminder of how quiet it is out here, how far away we are from everyone else in the world.

Dante is still holding the flask, his arms crossed and his head held high as we meet at the front of the car. There’s wary defiance dancing in his eyes. If it were up to me, I would replace it with trust and submission, but that takes a hell of a lot of time. Right now, I think I’ll have to settle for reigniting my favorite spark of rage.

“I need to check you for a wire. And you’re either going to let me do it without attempting to break any of my fingers or I’m going to drive you back home now without another word out of my mouth.”

He stares me down silently and, just as I expected, the worry in his eyes sparks and sizzles, burning away until there’s nothing left but the defiance and the heat of his fury that I can almost convince myself is passion if I try hard enough.

“Fine,” he growls again, setting the flask down on the hood of my Jag, not bothering to be careful with the paint at all. He shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over the hood next to the flask, then spreads his arms wide in invitation. “Check me for a wire.”

DANTE

The quiver deep down in my gut has nothing to do with how close Salvatore is standing or the fact that he’s about to strip me down and put his hands all over me—in one of the least fun ways imaginable—and everything to do with the fact that I’ve been on edge all damn day and there are still a dozen ways this could go wrong before I manage to pull it off. It can’t go wrong. If it goes wrong, I’m dead. Hours of thinking about those photos and the threat behind them and that’s the realization I arrived at. He wants revenge and simply fucking with me won’t be enough. He’s not going to stop until one of us is dead. But he has no idea how far I’m willing to go to make sure he’s the one who ends up in the ground.

“I hope you’re not expecting a show, honey, because I don’t do those for free,” I snark, grabbing the bottom of my t-shirt and pulling it up over my head without any of the flair or theatrics I pride myself in when I’m onstage. I toss it on top of my jacket and hold my arms out to show him there are no microphones taped to my chest or tucked under my armpits.

Salvatore’s perusal of my bare chest is much slower than necessary, lingering on every square inch of bare skin as if he hasn’t watched me take my clothes off for a hundred horny idiots every night for years. I have to admit, being naked in private hits different. On stage with hot lights glaring in my eyes, men whistling and scrambling to throw money at me, my bare body is my power. It’s my weapon, my freedom and defiance. But all alone, just the two of us, I feel exposed. It feels… vulnerable.

My skin prickles with unexpected heat and my nipples tighten, the nubs throbbing around the warm metal of the barbells. His words from earlier echo in my mind again. “Did the city run out of pretty subs willing to pretend that all your bratting is proper Domination?”His assessment of me is so dead wrong that it’s laughable. He thinks I’m a brat in denial, just waiting for some big, strong Dom to come along and make me feel safe enough to submit? I’ll admit, I’ve probably pushed it a little too far on occasion, putting him in his place in front of his friends, curious to see where his pride draws the line, to see just how much mouthy disrespect he can take before his true colors show. Does he think I was doing that in the hope that he would put me over his knee and spank me? If I’m such a brat, I would have to struggle, cuss at him, and fight until the hard sting of his hand connects with my ass cheek for the first time, blunted by my shorts but still enough to make me gasp and go still with shock that he would dare to punish me like an unruly child while his friends look on.

I swallow hard, ignoring the electric feeling snaking through my veins and the growing throb in my cock. That sounds more like his fantasy than mine. Besides, if I were a real brat, I wouldn’t be able to resist running my mouth now either.

“Are you staring so hard at my nipples because you think one of the barbells has been replaced with the world’s smallest listening device? Maybe you should whisper a little secret into itjust to be sure.” Thatbarelycounts as running my mouth. It’s not my fault I can’t stand awkward silences.

His lips twitch and his hands land on my hips with a warm, firm grip, his fingers sinking into the skin right above the waistband of my jeans. A gasp catches in my throat as he spins me around without warning, making me stumble. I catch myself with my hands on the hood of his car, still warm from the engine, another little tremor running through me that I hope Salvatore doesn’t see. I don’t know what would be worse, if he thought I was afraid of him or if he mistakenly believed this half-assed Mafia foreplay was getting me hot.

He strokes his fingers slowly down the length of my spine and I grit my teeth as goose bumps rise to meet his light touch. Whatever he’s doing, it’s a trick. He’s lulling me into a false sense of security, hoping I’ll be naive enough to believe he’s a good, gentle man who only wants to worship my body instead of one who will leave me bruised and broken. A few soft touches aren’t enough to erase a lifetime of experience. Besides, I’m counting on him being every bit the violent, possessive monster I need him to be. If you have a rat problem, sometimes the easiest solution is to get a cat. What happens to the cat when the rats are all gone? Well, I’ll figure that part out later. One step at a time.

“I have to check the rest of you too.” His deep voice comes from right next to my ear, his warm breath dancing over my earlobe and cascading down the slope of my bare neck.

Salvatore slides his hand around to my front, bringing it to rest on the button of my jeans. I bat it away before he can notice the swell of my cock straining against my zipper.

“If there’s one thing I can do, it’s undress myself,” I mutter, keeping one hand braced on the car while I pop the button and lower my zipper with the other. “You know, if this is how you treat all of your friends, I can understand why the only people you spend time with are a bunch of criminals.”

He barks out a laugh. “Weren’t you the one so desperate for friends you calledme?”

I wiggle my pants and underwear down around my ankles and return both my hands to the hood of the Jag, feeling every bit like a criminal being strip searched and cursing at my stiff, drooling cock for finding anything fucking erotic about this.

“Yeah, well, something tells me I won’t make that mistake again,” I grit out between my teeth.

Salvatore repeats the process of his soft, careful touch, ghosting his hands over my bare ass cheeks and tugging them apart. I choke on a gasp and instinctually clench. My cock twitches and I squeeze my eyes closed, my muscles all coiling and my adrenaline spiking, readying me to fight if I need to. He moves on though and I sag with a relieved breath as he drags his hands down the backs of my thighs before taking a step back.

“Almost done. Turn around, Angioletto.” He sounds just as even and unruffled as always, except that air of confident authority is back, the same one he used to run that guy off in the club last week after I broke his nose. Did he have to practice that voice, or does it come naturally? I’m almost embarrassed to admit how long I worked on my Dom voice, and it still doesn’t hold that level of unquestionable authority his does.

I push myself off the car and slowly turn to face him, careful not to trip on my pants still around my ankles. I hold my breath, waiting for his hands again. But instead, his gaze lingers on my unmistakably hard cock for a moment before he rakes it all the way up my body to meet my eyes.

“No wire,” he says, and I nod, my heart leaping with another burst of relief even though I already knew I wasn’t hiding anything. Well, not a recording device, anyway.

“Can I put my clothes back on now?” I ask, putting as much vitriol into my glare as I can manage.

“If you want to.” He smirks, then stands there and watches as I pull myself back together, like it’s just as exciting to see me put my clothes back on as it is to watch them come off.

I snatch the flask off the hood of the car again and steel my nerves. I cleared most of the hurdles; I got Salvatore alone, I’ve gained his trust, now I just have to hope this next part will work as well as I need it to.

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