Page 39 of Captured Fantasy

Embarrassment washed over me. “God, I feel so stupid,” I whispered.

“You’re alright, don’t worry about that,” he said, guiding me into the bathroom. “Now get in the bath.”

He turned to go, but I reached out and snatched hold of his wrist. His whole body tensed and he glanced up, his dark gaze sharp.

For one delicious moment I imagined all the things I wanted to do with him. How I wanted to strip his clothes away and sink into the hot water with his muscled body beneath mine. He would groan as I nipped up his neck and his big, lean fingers would tangle in my wet hair. I’d feel his hard torso tense beneath my body as I slipped down onto his cock.

We’d fuck like animals. I’d ride him hard, water splashing out onto the floor. He’d flip me and fuck me bent over the edge. His wet palm pressed into the mirror and his other hand on the back of my neck. Then he would balance me on the edge of the sink and eat me out the way I’d seen men do in porn. Ravenous, filthy, raw. I’d bury my fingers in his dark hair and hold his face against my soaked pussy while I came all over his mouth.

My breath came short and fast and he saw the change in my body. He had to have an idea of what I was thinking. His mouth parted and the tip of his tongue wet his lower lip. Dark eyes fixed on mine and his tall body moved a step closer.

Our breath caught between us. Hot like fire.

I reached down and pulled up my slip. It peeled away from my thighs, revealing my body. The soft curve between my hipbones and flatness between my lower ribs. The round firmness of my breasts and cold peaks of my nipples.

His jaw tightened and his breath came hard and fast. The slip fell to the ground with a sound that echoed in the deathly quiet house. He lifted his hand, his hot palm hovering less than an inch from my right breast. He was a man transfixed, on the edge of total seduction. Poised to give into the darkness flickering in the corners of his gaze.

He closed his fist and pulled back.

“Mrs. Russo,” he breathed.

I felt his desire. Like a caged animal, roaring to be freed. He turned on his heel and the door slammed shut behind him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

COSIMO

I didn’t speak to Lorenza for weeks after that morning in her bathroom. There was no believable excuse for visiting her even though I was dying inside to see her again. Privately, I’d given up pretending I didn’t want her and I’d resigned myself to pining in silence.

I lay awake for days, kicking myself for walking away. Why the fuck had I done that? She’d all but offered herself to me on a silver platter. She’d stripped her perfect body naked and it had been everything I’d imagined it would be. Curvy in all the right places with little freckles dusting her breasts and the rise of her thighs.

She was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen.

And she was ruining my life.

She must have existed before I laid eyes on her, but now that I knew of her she was everywhere. I’d hear her name spoken at the office. I saw Federico with her outside St. Bede’s Cathedral. I caught the swirl of her skirt in the grocery store and I stood transfixed, watching her body curve as she reached for the highest shelf.

She didn’t see me that day in the store, but I saw her and I soaked in every detail. Her body moved with effortless grace beneath her yellow sundress as she paused in the liquor section. She hadn’t struck me as the type to drink Irish whiskey, but she put two bottles in her cart. Then she hesitated, her slender fingers hovering for a moment before she picked up a bottle of wine.

It occurred to me that perhaps she wasn’t the one drinking the whiskey. The thought soured my stomach. I’d never been a jealous person. I’d had no problem sharing women with Amadeo back in our late teens. But the thought of another man putting his hands on her, drinking whiskey in her kitchen, sleeping in her bed—that roused the anger in my blood.

The image of her naked body haunted my brain. Some nights I woke bathed in sweat and painfully hard remembering the line that curved down her belly to the apex between her thighs.

Other nights I woke just before my mind began to spin a fantasy of her hand curling around my cock, bringing it to her tongue. My body tortured me, waking me moments before I sank into hot, wet ecstasy.

I spent a lot of time at work, managing the warehouses with Amadeo and Elio. Sometime in mid-November our largest import of product and our annual domestic import of weapons arrived at the harbor. It was bitterly cold the first night and my fingers were numb as I sorted through the shipment and readied it for the delivery drivers in the morning. Everything was quiet, the warehouse empty except for a handful of workers in the far corner.

Amadeo and Elio had stepped outside for a smoke when the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Like someone had walked over my grave.

Something was off, the energy had shifted. I stepped back from the table, I took my pistol from the holster at my thigh, checking to make sure I had my two extra magazines. Then I crossed to the front door, still ajar from Amadeo passing through. Keeping my grip on my Glock 19, my arm in line and pointed at the floor, I nudged the door aside with my head and stepped through.

Amadeo stood at the edge of the drive, smoking a cigarette, and behind him glittered the harbor. To his left, Elio was talking quietly on the phone and kicking at the driveway gravel. As I stepped out, keeping to the doorway so the floodlights wouldn’t fall on me, Amadeo looked up and I shook my head, warning him not to speak.

I heard it somehow, before the shot even found home. The shooter must have had a suppressor because there was no crack from a gun. There was just a faint disturbance, so quiet I could only feel it, and then Elio stiffened and fell to his knees. Amadeo whirled, his hand going to his belt as he pulled out his Beretta and another bullet pinged off the ground at his feet.

“Attack,” I yelled, kicking the door behind me open to shatter the silence. “We’re under attack.”

From somewhere behind me, the men in the backroom of the warehouse scrambled for their weapons—how many were there? Maybe six? Not enough surely. Amadeo was running, skidding to his knees by Elio, but in the dim light, I saw the mark on his temple. It was too late. Pressing my body into the wall, I fired a warning shot toward the hidden sniper.

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