Page 38 of The Enforcer's Revenge
The last thing they needed was for him to do anything that made his heart beat faster.
“I’ll make it good.” He licked the smallOmertàtattoo at her bikini line. “Very good.”
“I know,” she said, because she did. “But I’m sticky. I need a shower after the last time, and?—”
“I don’t care about that.” He pushed at her thigh again, trying to force Brianna to slide down the stack of pillows and be more available to him. “Make me be dirty for you.”
“No, I don’t want to make you dirty tonight. I want to hold you instead.” She fisted his hair, forcing his head against her thigh. “Like this. Lemme touch you and hold you. That’s what I want.”
Brianna stroked his hair once more, feeling that drug-powered adrenaline humming under the surface like a raginginferno. Tino pulsed with pure, high-octane male energy when he wasn’t high. Brianna let Tino touch her while she waited for him to come down. She had to give him that indulgence, or she would’ve never kept him pinned down, even with the sickening indoctrination from being a victim of sex trafficking that left him more inclined to cater to others’ needs instead of his own.
He rubbed his fingers over the line of her pussy, teasing her, likely trying to get Brianna to give in and have his way with her because he wasn’t used to her denying him. When Tino tried to taste her, spreading her and making her stomach muscles clench in anticipation, she fisted his hair and pulled him back so that his head was resting against her thigh instead. They lay there for a long time, both of them high-strung for very different reasons. She caressed him, too. Brianna traced the scars on his back, feeling them like hundreds of tiny threads of pain. She used it as an anchor when the small voice in the back of her mind told her this relationship had skated past healthy before it even started and was well into completely fucked up after two years in.
It didn’t matter because this was Tino.
They were allowed to be fucked up as long as they were together.
Then Tino’s touch got a little softer, running up the long line of her other leg, from her ankle to her hip in a gentle lover’s caress. It was similar to how she touched his back as if he was memorizing something, looking for an anchor. Then he palmed her ass and whispered into the early morning darkness, “You have nice glutes.”
“Thanks.” She smiled. “I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
“You have nice legs, too.” Tino used his hold on her ass to pull her tighter against him. “Sexy dancer legs.”
“You like dancers?”
“Yeah.” He lifted his head on her thigh, giving her one of those dazzling, bright Tino smiles that could steal her breath without warning. “I likethisdancer.” He kissed her Omertà tattoo and then rubbed his thumb over it, staring at it in the semi-darkness. “Only this one. You’re my dancer, aren’t you?Amore mio. My baby. My Bri. I feel good. It has to be you doing it. You make me feel good.”
“It’s probablynotme,” she argued, but refrained from saying it was likely whatever Carina crushed up and put in his tea. Mostly, she was just glad to have him back. Even if she had to buy the clarity with more drugs, Tino saw her again. He knew it was Brianna loving him. “I’m pretty sure it’s something else.”
“No, it’s you. I know it’s you. Bad night.” He groaned and pressed his face into the crease of her thigh like he’d never left to begin with. “Jesus, Nova’s been planting all sorts of ideas in Carlo’s mind about bullets and evidence. Paranoid motherfucker. There’s just not enough fucking blow.”
So, itwascocaine he was buzzing on.
Brianna was silent for a moment, realizing that whatever Carina put in his tea was also loosening his tongue. His words were a little slurred, obviously hazed by a unique combination of drugs that were the unexpected key to a vault Tino kept locked down tighter than the Federal Reserve, a key that should probably have stayed hidden.
Brianna was just going to ignore the comment about the bullets.
“Bad night,” he whispered again. “Eat a bullet kinda bad night.”
“Tino,” she snapped when those words hit her like a knife in the heart. “You?—”
He put his fingers over her lips before she could lecture him and said, “Suck them.”
“Fuck you, suck them. You’re not supposed toeversay shit like that.” She shoved his hand away. “You promised you’d come to me if you were thinking about it.”
“I’m here,” he reminded her. “And I feel good. You heal me.”
“Carina put something in your tea,” Brianna admitted, though she wasn’t positive he’d remember the confession. “Benzos. Whatever the hell that means.”
“No shit?” Tino rolled over, his head still on her thigh as he looked up at the ceiling. “She must’ve stolen them for her mother. Mary eats benzos like fucking candy, and now we know why.Minchia, they mix nice with blow.”
Brianna’s body got tense at the mention of Mary, the woman who brainwashed this beautiful man in her arms and set into action a series of horrible events that forced Tino into being a hitman, whether he wanted to be or not.
“I gotta get Dr. Acciai to write me a script for Valium,” Tino mused to himself.
Oh.
That’s what benzos were.
