Dressed in his party best for the birthday festivities, although still all in black—suit, dress shirt, and tie—Tony stood at parade rest at the edge of the patio surrounding the pool, scanning the crowd with watchful stillness. He’d gladly sacrifice a week’s pay for a set of earplugs right about now.
The conversations going on among the masses of people gathered around the swimming pool were loud and animated. The party decorations were just as loud—oversized bouquets of bright balloons and large, gaudy crepe paper flowers everywhere. Thank the Madonna for his sunglasses.
Sporadically placed tables offered every imaginable type of food, from tequeños—fried, cheese-stuffed dough from Venezuela—to pizza canapés to caviar, and there was no shortage of alcohol. To honor Venezuela, an eight-man mariachi band played in the background, adding more noise to the clamor, although the wine being served was strictly Nero d’Avola, Sicily’s strong, dark grape.
Serafina Cuntrera was holding court near the diving board end of the pool, wearing a short, silvery cocktail dress that somehow made her appear both well-moneyed and like a porn star. Costa Galana Spa, which was a stone’s throw from the villa, was her daily haunt, and it showed in the clarity and glow of her skin. She wiggled when she walked and thrust out prominent female body parts, and Carlos Rios wasn’t the only man who lusted after her. Serafina was a shameless flirt with just about all men, except her husband’s soldiers, who she considered to reside on the food chain somewhere in the same vicinity as tapeworms.
Even though Tony had promised to watch out for her tonight, he did so only occasionally and peripherally. He was more interested in keeping the other security guards under surveillance.
A moment of inattention on their part would give him the opportunity he needed to slip inside the house and make his way to Cuntrera’s den, or, more specifically, to the safe there, where cash, jewels, and important documents Cuntrera didn’t trust to hackable computers were stored. This included the priceless leukemia-cure formula Dawson Pharmaceuticals had hired Phoenix Agency to rescue.
If Tony could pull off the heist.
An older matron of the Venezuelan aristocracy set, emeralds dripping from her wrists and around the wrinkled webbing of her neck, approached him. “Excuse me, young man,” she said in Spanish, “do you know where the bathroom is?”
Oh, he could just kiss her. “Ma’am, right this way. Allow me to show you.” He opened the patio door for her and followed her inside.
The mariachi band’s trumpet bleated out a string of squeals, but it was a muted shrill now that Tony was upstairs, padding down the corridor on light feet, his ears attuned to any evidence of nearby occupation. Normally as busy as a subway station, the hallway was blessedly empty. How long it would remain vacant was an uncomfortable unknown.
His pulse beat a staccato rhythm in his veins. He was pumped to get his hands on this formula. Once he had it, he could leave behind the role of “Antonio,” fat-knuckled enforcer and Sicilian turncoat.
He reached Cuntrera’s den and ducked silently inside. The room was clearly a masculine hideaway, the décor running ultra-heavy on testosterone. The carpet was deep blue and burgundy. The sofa in front of a substantial fireplace was dark leather with brass studs. The desk was hefty mahogany, and the small, lit lamp set on top of it was wrought iron. The place almost could have been a hunting lodge—the only thing missing was a buck’s head on the wall and a billiards table. Although the room did—
Shit!
Verónica.
Partially hidden in a shadowed corner of the room, she was crouched in front of Cuntrera’s safe, the steel box about the height of an eight-year-old child and built into the far-right side of the wall, across from the desk and the door.
What the hell was she doing?
She was fiddling with the electronic combination panel, that’s what—his domain, where he was supposed to be putting his EOD skills to use and cutting the correct wires to break into the monstrosity. He had his tools all ready to go in his jacket pocket, tools he’d been open about from the beginning. Day one, he laid them out on his dresser and told Carmelo he used them in his trade…though no one seemed to notice that he had yet to bring pliers and/or wire cutters to an enforcer job.
“What,” he clipped at Verónica in Spanish, “are you doing in here?”
She jolted to her feet. “Oh!” she gasped and gaped at him.
Whoa. Here was a different look for her.
He was used to Verónica in her physical therapist garb, loose, breathable, moveable clothing, and with her hair balled up on top of her head. Seeing her squeezed into a short, low-cut black cocktail dress that displayed her charms to their utmost—both plumped-up cleavage and shapely legs—was a damned sexy sight.
Her hair was down, flowing in a gorgeous, chestnut mane past her shoulders, and her skin was like Nicole’s, a lustrous light brown. She was fuller in the figure—in a totally awesome way—than his former partner, and instead of exotic, almond-shaped eyes, Verónica’s were round, her eyelids wide and sensual. He could imagine her easily being able to change her appearance—from seductress to innocent to whatever—just by how she did her eye makeup.
And why should the thought of her being able to disguise herself bother him?
“I-I was just…” Verónica’s tongue darted out across her lips, drawing his attention to the tiny beauty mark dotting the upper right side of her mouth. More sexy stuff. “I was going to borrow…” Her hand waved in the general direction of nowhere and nothing.
Snapping his brows down, he stalked toward her.
Her eyes went wild with panic.
Not the most pleasant of sights, but what could he do? A Cuntrera wiseguy would never simply leave with an All right, miss, continue on as before. Just cover up your tits so you don’t catch a chill. A wiseguy would confront her. And, honestly, the Tony side of him was curious to know what she was after.
Tony stopped close to her and squared his jaw. “You were trying to break into Mr. Cuntrera’s safe,” he accused her. “I saw you.”
All the color washed out of her face. Even her lips went white, making her beauty mark stand out like a mini chocolate chip. “No, I…uh-uh-uh…”
He peeled his sunglasses off so that he could give her a clear look of cut the crap, I caught you red-handed.
Her complexion changed from white to red so fast he thought she might faint.
She did, in fact, stagger back from him. “Oh, God, please… I was just going to take one small jewel. Mrs. Cuntrera has more than she ever wears, and…and my mother is very ill.”
Tony rammed his sunglasses into his inside coat pocket. Another sick mother? Was someone out there trying to punish him with all these sob stories he was forced to ignore?
“She n-needs an expensive surgery, and…” Her teeth worried one corner of her mouth, and three little creases stacked themselves one on top of the other between her brows. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to consider stealing. It’s just that I’m…I’m just…just desperate. Please don’t tell on me. I need my job.”
Well, fuck, this was an annoying Antonio-Tony bind. “Tony” could understand her motives—there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his own mother—and would have been perfectly fine letting her off with a warning. But “Antonio” was a loyal goombah who would definitely, heartlessly, tell Cuntrera a thief was living under his roof and after jewels in his safe.
Shaking his head, Tony took a rigid step backward.
“Please!” Verónica cried out, her round eyes going rounder. “I’ll do anything! Th-there was no harm done, right? I didn’t get into the safe, and I won’t try it again, I promise. You don’t have to tell.”
He didn’t speak. What could he say? What could he do?
Verónica obviously interpreted his silence as meaning more stubborn no, because she repeated, “I’ll do anything,” and this time the phrase was spoken with husky emphasis and accompanied by a step closer that brought her to within inches of his chest. No, not inches—she was actually touching his chest. Not much more than a bit of nipple grazed him, but still. Touching was going on.
“Please,” she whispered and tilted her chin up to look at him. The anything part of her offer was written plainly in the brown depths of her eyes…as if her nipples weren’t already making her intentions perfectly clear.
Tony’s stomach clutched. Fuck me sideways with a pole. Verónica had just stuck him in a whopper of a horrendous Antonio-Tony tough spot. “Antonio” would absolutely go balls deep with Verónica; among Cuntrera’s soldiers, she was the most talked about female on the staff, and she knew it. “Tony” wasn’t too keen on the idea of taking advantage of a desperate woman.
He kept his expression noncommittal but shifted his focus downward. From his superior height, he had a spectacular view of her generous breasts, soft and smooth flesh, her cleavage dewy with perspiration.
Apparently ogling her tits was a sign of acquiescence.
She ran her fingers over his lapels, as if to straighten his jacket, but really charting a slow, steady course up his chest, toward the destination of looping her arms around his neck.
He seized her forearms, stopping her.
But it didn’t stop her. She lifted up on tiptoes, did a full-body lean into him, and crushed her lips to his.
She pushed her tongue into his mouth right away, before he could even consider firming up his jaw to prevent such an intrusion. Her bold move must’ve startled him into accidentally slackening his grip, too, because she caught him fully around the neck with her arms in a stranglehold. She became bolder, caressing her tongue over his in a languid swirl. He tensed, desire surging hot and slow into his extremities. Her tongue was moist and cool and tasted like Nero d’Avola layered with peppermint and eagerness. Not at all like desperation. Or maybe he was making stuff up.
He lifted his hands—out of pure what-do-I-do-with-these-grubby-mitts? perplexity—and settled them on her back, the tips of his fingers resting on the zipper tracing her spine.
She adjusted positions, and a little bird told him things were about to get a whole lot worse for him, and, yeah. She rocked her hips against his crotch, the motion such an accurate simulation of the sex act his cock whammed upward, thickening and stiffening, and in a hot-fire flash, he was throbbing from scalp to dress shoes with need. It was an aching reminder that he hadn’t gotten laid in a century or two. He’d recently moved from Panama City to Phoenix Agency’s headquarters in Baltimore, and life had been lonely as the new guy in town. And then lately, of course, he’d also been sort of busy busting on debtors.
The prod of his hard dick sent forceful breath streaming from Verónica’s nostrils.
Erection discovered.
And, dammit to hell, his boner put him into the most impossible jam of all. If he tried to stop now, he would look absolutely fucking ridiculous and unrealistic. As far as he knew, there wasn’t an Italian male on the planet—married, single, or half in the grave—who would walk away from a beautiful woman throwing herself at him, not once he’d popped a boner. Hell, no. And Tony was certain Verónica likewise knew that such a creature did not exist. If he rejected her now, she would know he wasn’t a real sleazebag wiseguy, and then six weeks of ball-breaking undercover work would go down the toilet.
What was he going to—? Shit. Now she was urging him back toward the desk.
Maintaining her lip-lock all the while, she pushed his jacket off his shoulders, stripping him out of it—his tie, his shirt.
She was fast, and shit, shit, shit.
Before he knew it, she’d wriggled out of the front of her cocktail dress—never losing contact with his lips during it all—and her full, naked breasts were pressed against his bare chest. Holy Madonna.
Good did not remotely come close to describing how she felt. Bouncy and firm, but supple in all the ways that made her female, Verónica’s breasts might be the best ones he’d ever encountered.
He hesitated another second, his internal conversation now leaning toward reminders that playing this role meant getting his hands on the cure for leukemia and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives. He wasn’t lying to himself with this reminder, but it still felt like a bit too handy of an excuse as he scooped one of Verónica’s breasts into his palm and started to massage it, molding and squeezing the warm slope of her flesh, and—and, hell—enjoying it.
Her breast seemed to swell and blossom to his touch, and the feel of the heavy silkiness filling his palm sent a lightning blast through his balls. The nipple puckered up, and Verónica’s spine did a weird little dance. He didn’t think it was a shiver. More like tension.
He pulled back from the kiss and saw her grimace, the expression speaking volumes about how less-than-thrilled she was about her body reacting to the ministrations of the sleazebag wiseguy she was giving herself to only for reasons of base survival.
He started to re-contemplate ways to escape this. Hey, I think I hear someone coming might work, if—Then she dropped the rest of her dress to the floor, her panties too, and… He nearly strangled on his tongue.
She had a lusty little patch of well-groomed, toffee-colored pubes, and the sight of them sent all kinds of other contemplations racing at high revolutions through his brain. Like, he’d bet kissing her down there would taste as good as kissing her mouth…
She hopped up on Cuntrera’s desk and opened her thighs to him, showing him the pink petals of her sex.
His balls squeezed, his heartbeat broke out of rhythm, and the Rational Decision Command Center in his brain shut down, along with the Good Sense Monitor. Male animal drive took over. Deaf, dumb, and blind to anything but getting inside that, he jerked his wallet out of his back pocket and found a condom. His mind harangued him in a minor Antonio-Tony debate about whether or not “Antonio” would give two fucks about using a rubber. But ultimately, safe sex wasn’t something to fudge on.
Wrenching his pants open, he let them swoosh down to his ankles then unrolled the prophylactic onto his hard dick and stepped between the vee of Verónica’s spread legs. Her soft inner thighs brushed the sides of his hips, and he flared his nostrils in pure masculine pleasure. There was no better place in the world to be than between a woman’s thighs, even in the worst of circumstances.
He found the entrance to her body, and as warm and inviting as she felt, a roll of his stomach had him balking against taking the final, irreversible step.
Verónica clutched his ass, nails biting his flesh, urging him on…out of eagerness or a hurry-up need to get this over with? He would bet the house on the latter—and would’ve won that bet—but her reasons become immaterial as the point of no-turning-back-now was reached. She pulled him inside her.
He followed along and drove in all the way with a solid thrust and a primal grunt.
A surprised, gaspy woot escaped Verónica, her hot breath hitting his cheek.
He sped right into plunging in and out of her, fast, immediately surging into the hard strokes that would propel him to climax. She wanted this done quick. Well, so did he.
She held onto him with the firm clamp of her thighs, every penetration on his part jolting a small noise out of her.
Push.
Uhn.
Pound.
Uhn.
Slam.
Uhn.
His brain couldn’t translate exactly what all of it meant, but his body decided to like it. His rear molars began a slow press in on each other. The climaxing quick part was probably going to happen pretty easily—her sheath was snug and hot and fit him like a tailored glove, and, damn. His eyes fell shut. Too bad she wasn’t his girlfriend. He could get used to this.
Their bodies smacked together. Their breathing increased to a harried cadence. The scent of furniture polish drifted up between them from the desk, and Verónica’s heady aroma, borne on increased perspiration, became more pronounced. It was something with Damascus rose in it, Dior or Calvin Klein, like the expensive perfume Maria, his mother’s coworker, had always worn. And here again was something odd about Verónica. Her perfume didn’t strike him as something a physical therapist would wear, like something sporty or with notes of the outdoors, maybe the ocean, or—
Ah! Here goes…
The muscles wrapping around his pelvis constricted, and he groaned deep in his chest.
He had no idea if it was this pure-pleasure noise he made, or something else, but she seemed to change. Her fingertips stippled lightly over his shoulders, as if he was worthy of some curious exploration now, and her body softened against his. She felt like an armful of warmth and affection, and if he was making stuff up again, he was going to pretend he wasn’t. Faster…
He lasted longer than he thought he would, but he was now receiving very clear cautionary indicators that the end was upon him, especially the main signal: his toes always curled up tight in the moment he came. As those ten digits made a grab for the inside of his shoes, he angled his hips so that he banged into Verónica’s clitoris. He didn’t know if trying to bring her to her own peak as he climaxed cast him farther down into the dungeons of bastardhood or not. It was just something he naturally did at this point in the activities.
Verónica tensed up, tight as a tripwire, gripped his shoulders, and breathed heavily, but she didn’t come, and then he couldn’t wait any longer. His balls geysered up seed through his convulsing prostate and out the head of his cock in an ecstatic explosion. He arched his neck back, and with a long, drawn-out, close-mouthed shout of rapture, locked their hips together. The orgasm was impossibly fantastic. He jerked and shuddered, and his toes nearly cracked off inside his shoes.
Gulping for air, he sagged forward and plonked his chin on top of Verónica’s head while he waited for the frantic pounding of his heart to slow.
In the fog-clearing, reality-returning passing minutes of post-orgasm, he stared at a painting of the split-level fountain in Palermo’s Palazzo Pretorio.
Well.
Sweat trickled down his spine.
That was damned guilt-inspiring.
He straightened, using the task of grasping the edges of the condom as an excuse not to look at her. He pulled his cock out, fully expecting to see that he’d ripped through the rubber, because adding an unwanted, unplanned—and undeserved—pregnancy to this fiasco would be continuing things along at about his current speed.
Surprisingly, the condom was intact.
He tugged up his pants then walked around to the other side of the desk, pulled a chair on casters out, and tossed the rubber in the trashcan underneath. The morning maid should dispose of it before Cuntrera could raise holy hell about somebody having screwed in his den, but Tony wouldn’t hold out hope for such luck here, either.
Verónica fumbled with her clothing. “So you won’t tell?”
He bowed his head. If it wouldn’t have fucked away his image as a strutting, conquering Italian, he would’ve buried his face in his hands. As it was, he stared at the carpet for far too long, muscles all over his jaw jumping. He risked a single glance at her.
Her eyes were enormous.
The sight sent his stomach curling in on itself.
I just…misjudged myself.
A hundred bucks said Verónica just had too. And, same as before, Tony let a woman under his care do that. His shoulders sank as a new wave of shame crashed down on top of him, a feeling so huge and crushing and horrible he had no idea who he was anymore. What the hell kind of man am I? Really?
Striding over to where he’d left his clothes, he snatched them off the floor. Fuck the cure for leukemia; I’m a stain on humanity. How could he expect to escape human filth when he himself was it?
“Antonio? You—”
“I won’t tell.”
From down at the pool, voices raised in song drifted up to the den. “Tanti auguri a te, tanti auguri a te…” The gathering was singing happy birthday to Serafina. The party would be breaking up soon, people coming back into the main villa.
Tonight’s opportunity to steal the formula was lost.
Tony and Verónica finished dressing quickly then together they stole carefully to the door and peered out. The corridor was empty.
Verónica scuttled off one way.
Tony went the other, moving with clipped, emotion-packed strides, the back of his neck burning—surely a precursor to what he could expect in Hell.