Chapter Eleven
I strapped up my stockings with the TV on. I saw it behind me in the mirror. Daniel wore his pale grey suit and tie, ice in the sun. He’d done well at the debate that afternoon, keeping himself poised, still, and focused. He was the perfect Future Mister Mayor.
BRUCE DRUMMOND: My opponent hasn’t opened a serious case against any crime organization in over a year. Just because it’s peacetime, do we sit on our laurels?
I hadn’t heard from Antonio since he’d left me at the set. I’d been tempted to reach out to him, but to what end? As I watched Daniel, I knew I still had feelings for him. How could I get involved with someone else? How could I take Daniel back? How could I use another man to break my holding pattern?
DANIEL BROWER: Believe me, my office has been gathering information and evidence against a number of organizations. We won’t open a case unless we’re sure we have the evidence we need. Please, let the people know if your administration will recklessly accuse citizens, so they can start looking for an independent prosecutor.
Antonio would be at the fundraiser. Though I was excited to see him, despite the fact that I had to avoid him, he’d become tight and unreadable. He’d avoided telling me about his business, and his story about being pushed by a valet was absurd. Vito hadn’t gone home whistling Dixie. Antonio was Italian. From Naples. Was he a lawyer or criminal? Or both?
BRUCE DRUMMOND: In closing, I love my wife. She’s the only woman for me, and that’s why I married her. As your mayor, I’d never distract—
I liked nice men. Lawful men. Men with a future, a career, who could safely support children. I wasn’t the type to look for the dangerous, exciting guys.
The dress went over my head in one movement. I twisted, struggled, and got the zipper up by myself.
* * *
It was eighty degrees and humid as hell, the wettest, nastiest, buggiest fall in L.A. history. Totally unexpected. Nothing anyone from the Catholic Charitable Trust could have foreseen when they’d planned an outdoor event ten months before. A string quartet played in the background, and wait staff carried silver trays of endive crab and champagne flutes. I made my way through the crowd alone, smiling and sharing air kisses. The house was a Hancock Park Tudor, kept and restored to the standards of a hotel as if the taste had been wrapped, boxed, and shipped in from a decorator’s mind.
I was standing by the pool with Ute Yanix, talking about Species—the only raw foods place in L.A. that served meat—when Daniel crept up behind me. Ute’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, and she brushed back her long straight hair like a silk curtain. Daniel did have a certain something. That thing had made him a frontrunner before the race even started.
“Ute, I’m glad you could make it,” he said.
“You know I support you. All Hollywood does, whether we say it in public or not.”
“I appreciate you being here publicly then.” His hand found mine. “It’s even more important than the donation.”
She laughed a few decibels louder than necessary. “Now more than ever, huh?”
And with a look at me, the heiress in the candidate’s corner, she implied the ugliest things. The first and most dangerous was that Daniel had been running the campaign on my money and now couldn’t.
“I assure you, donations have always been appreciated.” My smile could have lit the Hollywood sign.
The sexting incident was never mentioned on the fundraising floor, but in the bathroom, whispered voices, offered words of support, empathy, understanding, and others were clearly derisive. I had stopped fielding both sentiments.
I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. Over Ute’s shoulder, I saw a man in a dark suit. Lots of men in dark suits milled around, but they had jeans, open collars, ties optional. He wore a suit like a woman wore lingerie, to accentuate the sexual. To highlight the slopes and lines. To give masculinity a definition. He held his wine glass to me, tearing my clothes off and running his hands over my skin from across the room.
“…but what you’re going to do about the traffic—”
“I’ll be Mayor, not God.” They both laughed.
I’d lost most of the conversation during my locked gaze with Antonio Spinelli. “Excuse me,” I said to my ex and the actress. “Duty calls.”
I walked into the house. The unwritten rule was if the party was in the backyard, guests stayed in the backyard. Wandering off into the personal spaces was bad manners, but I couldn’t help it. I went to the back of the kitchen, to a back hall with a wool Persian carpet and mahogany doors.
“Contessa.”
I didn’t have a second to answer before he put his hands on my cheeks and his mouth on mine. I didn’t move. I didn’t kiss him back. I just took in his scent of dew-soaked pine, wet earth, and smoldering fires. He pulled back, unkissed but not unwanted, his hands still cupping my face.
He brushed his thumb over my lower lip, just grazing the moist part inside. “I want you. I haven’t stopped thinking about you.”
“What happened then?” All my resolve to not use him as a rebound went out the window. “You froze me out yesterday.”
“I don’t like answering questions about myself.”
“I can’t be with you if I don’t know you.”
“Do you want me?”
His breath made patterns on my face. I could have pushed him away, but his attention was an angle, a point of reference, and I was but a line defined by it.
“Yes,” I whispered, putting my head against the wall.
“Let’s have each other then. My body and your body. No expectations. No questions.”
Before I could get offended, he kissed me hard, hurting me. His tongue probed my lips, my teeth, pushing my head against the wall. I was aware of every inch of his body, its warmth, its supple curves, the hair on his face, and I yielded. My insides melted, pooling between my legs. I moved with him like a wave, tongues dancing, jaws aligning. I fell into that kiss, its taste of wine and sweet water, the hum vibrating from the back of his throat. I thought I would burst from my hips outward.
He pulled away with a gasp, still close to me, his eyes darting across my features. “You’re blushing. And you’re panting, just a little.”
I couldn’t speak. I wanted him to kiss me again. My body wanted it. The hairs on my arms stood up when I thought about it.
He put his hand to my chest, between my breasts, and pressed a little. “Your heart is beating hard. This is what it takes.”
He moved his hand slightly, brushing my hard nipple through my dress. I wanted him to stop, but I didn’t want it to end. If I spoke, the spell would be broken. I’d have to go back to the other me, that spurned, unwanted woman. I opened my mouth but just shook my head. What had I become? What was wrong with me?
“Since the minute I saw you,” he said into my neck, “I’ve wanted to open your legs and take you.”
His words had fingers, and as he spoke, they drifted down my body, fondling me and arousing me. No one had ever spoken like that to me, because I would have laughed with discomfort. But when Antonio said it, I forgot everything but his voice and the image of him moving over me.
“I’m not good at casual sex,” I said in a breath.
“I never said it would be casual.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t know how sex could be just two bodies meeting without being classified as meaningless. I couldn’t wrap my head around it because he was near me, his hands on my hips, the scruff of his face brushing my neck.
“Take me,” I said before I thought about it.
Like a cat leaping into action, he pulled me through an ajar door, clicking it behind us. We were in a bathroom with marble tiles and double sinks. White curtains. A thousand details I couldn’t absorb because his lips were on mine.
When I heard him lock the door, I surrendered to what was happening. I stopped worrying about where I was or what the future might bring. I tangled my hands in his hair and kissed him for all I was worth. He pulled my knee up over his hip, stroking the back of my thigh. I tried to remember to breathe, but when he leaned into me and I felt the hardness between his legs against the softness between mine, I forgot.
“I’m going to fuck you right here,” he growled. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” The word came out in a hiss.
“Yes, what?” He pushed against me. “What do you want me to do to you?” He took my hands from his hair and put them above me, pinning me to the wall as he kissed my neck.
“Fuck me.” I said it so softly a butterfly wouldn’t have heard me.
“Say it again. But this time, own it.”
“Fuck me.” A little louder.
He let go of my hands. His fingers brushed past my breasts to my waist, where they pushed me down against his erection.
“You are so sweet,” he whispered, wrapping my other knee around him, pinning me with his hips. “Dolce. The way you don’t like to say the word fuck, and you say it to me anyway. I know how bad you want me to make you come.”
With that, he hitched me up and carried me to the vanity. He balanced me on it as he kissed me, grinding between my legs and driving me crazy. I yanked up my skirt.
“Antonio,” I said, “protection.”
“I have it.”
I spent a little time worrying about having sex with a man who carried condoms around. Just a second. Just a stab of my real self, the one who was going to walk out of that bathroom when we were done. He took half a step back and pulled my knees apart. I leaned back as he slipped his fingers under my garter belt, finding the crotch of my panties.
“I like these,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He poked his finger through the lace and yanked with his other hand. The lace gave way with a bark of a rip, leaving my underwear with a gaping hole. He stroked me. I didn’t know if I’d ever been that wet.
“I can’t help it. I have to taste you.” He put his face at the inside of my thigh and brushed his tongue on the sensitive skin. His hands stroked, tongue flicking, lips a soft center to the roughness of his face. When he made it to my pussy with a soft suck at my clit, I moaned. “Do you like it?” he asked before he circled my opening with his tongue.
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, suck it. Eat me. Take me with your mouth.”
The string quartet purred outside, and the party hummed along while I begged for a man’s tongue on me. His tongue flicked, finding every want, every emptiness, and filling it with sensation. He sucked just a little then ran the flat of his tongue over my clit until my pussy felt like a bursting balloon.
“Antonio.” My voice squeaked. I was on the edge.
“Come,” he said, looking up at me. “I’m still going to fuck you.”
When he put his lips on me again, his eyes watching me over the horizon of my gathered skirt, I let him fill me. I came hard, lifting my hips as he grabbed my thighs to keep me from falling over. I was beyond cries, beyond words. I was just a receptacle for the pleasure of a tiny percentage of my body.
I didn’t have a second to breathe before he positioned himself above me. His pants were open, and his dick lay against my engorged clit. I reached down. He’d gotten it out and wrapped while he was eating me.
“You’re very skilled,” I said. “And you’re huge.”
He put his fingers in me. I was sensitive and swollen, soaked in desire.
“You’re tight. So tight. Fuck.” His eyes went to half-mast, and he sucked in a breath. “Spread your legs all the way.”
I did, and he guided the head of his dick into me. I stretched when he thrust, a little sting of pain drowned by pleasure.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. I felt as if I had a telephone pole in me, but I wouldn’t complain about it. Maybe I should have asked him to go slow, because he shoved himself in until my expression told him he couldn’t go any farther. He shifted my hips then pushed forward. He found space to fill and drove into me up to the base, pushing his body into me. I put my hands on his face, and he leaned down. We were eye to eye, nose to nose, bodies moving together, the swell of tension returning.
“You’re beautiful,” I said, my thumb on his lips.
He kissed my thumb, running his tongue along the length as he fucked me. We were dressed up but joined in our most vulnerable places. My back hurt where it was pushed against the stone vanity, and my shoulder was jammed into a cabinet. I heard the sounds of the party, and one of my shoes was about to fall off. I felt ripped apart by the size of him.
But I was going to come again, and I couldn’t come with anything inside me. I knew that. It was an indelible fact.
“I’m coming inside you,” he gasped. “I’m going to come so fucking hard in you.”
“Me too.” I didn’t even believe it. “You’re making me come.”
The swirl of feeling dropped away then coalesced, increasing until my limbs stiffened and I put my face in his neck to stifle my cries. The impossible happened. I came just from a man inside me. I pulsed around him, drowning in the power of it.
He thrust hard with a grunt then a moan. I felt the pulse at the base of his dick on my stretched pussy. He was coming. Making that beautiful man lose himself in me felt like a gift. I pushed into him until he slowed, stopped, and kissed my neck.
“Grazie,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
Slowly, he slipped his dick out of me. It was still rigid, and I felt every inch of it against my raw skin. He tied off the condom and wrapped it in toilet paper as I sat up.
“Stay there,” he said, pressing my legs open.
Was he going to have me again? I didn’t think I could take it. Though I was already feeling twinges of shame and guilt, I wouldn’t have turned him down. He balled up a wad of tissue and pressed it between my legs, cleaning me. The gesture was so much more intimate than the actual sex that I blushed.
“I can’t send you back outside with sex dripping down your leg, now can I?”
Despite the sounds from the party, I’d forgotten that there would be a “back outside.” I’d forgotten about Daniel, his meek request that I come back to him, and the air of forgiveness my attendance was supposed to provide. I closed my legs and sat up.
“I have to get back out there.” I put my left shoe on all the way and popped off the vanity. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
The shreds of my underwear tickled my inner thighs, bunching as only ripped lace could. I straightened my skirt and smoothed my stockings, knowing he was watching me. I didn’t look at him as I went for the door.
He slipped between me and the knob. “Contessa.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t leave like this.”
“How should I leave?”
He kissed my forehead, and I let myself enjoy the tenderness. I didn’t want to rush out, but I couldn’t delude myself into thinking I was fully present, either.
“It doesn’t have to be meaningless,” he said.
“You won’t answer questions about your life, and I’m still in love with my ex. I don’t know how it can be meaningful.”
“I’ll answer one question right now if you kiss me back like you mean it.”
“Why are you doing this? You’re the one who wanted two bodies meeting and no more.”
“Because I can’t walk out of this room like this. You’re like a stranger all of a sudden. One question.”
“The girl. Who was she? To you, I mean? Why did you come here for her?”
“That’s three questions.”
“Pick one.”
“My sister. She’s my sister. Her name is Nella.”
“And?”
He bit his lip and looked down at my face. After a second, I realized he wasn’t going to answer me.
“Excuse me.” I pushed him away, but he shoved me against the door.
“I want my kiss,” he said.
“That was no kind of answer.”
“I answered two of the three. If you only cared about the last one, you should have said so.”
“Lawyer.” I said it like an indictment, and he smirked. I elbowed him, but he caught my forearms and pinned me to the door.
“Your underwear’s already ripped, and if I checked, I bet you’re wet again.”
“Get off me,” I said.
“I should fuck you right now.”
“Go to hell.”
I twisted, but his hands were bruising, and the growing hardness of his dick was enough to weaken my knees and my resolve. “Take your kiss then.”
He did, without hesitation or gentleness, prying my mouth open with his tongue, thick with the taste of my pussy. He pulled away when we had to breathe, and we stared at each other, panting.
“I hope you enjoyed that,” I said. “Now excuse me.”
He backed away from the door, and I went through it before he and his beautiful dick could stop me. The air outside the bathroom felt fresher and thinner. I smoothed my dress again and pulled the pins out of my hair, letting it fall down in a red cascade. It was easier to keep that way.
I felt a weight between my legs. I could easily get my appearance together for the rest of the party. But I couldn’t hide the fact that my cheeks were pink with arousal and my nipples stood on end. My arms still had goose bumps, and I was so wet I felt the moisture inside my thighs. But I walked outside as if it were my house, my party, my world, because that’s what I did. It was easier than math.
Dinner had started. Daniel was at his table with an empty seat next to him. He hadn’t mentioned the seating arrangements, but they shouldn’t have surprised me. Forgiveness didn’t sit across the room. He stood as I took my seat.
“Thank you,” I said. When our eyes met, I was sure he knew what I’d just done.