I Would Beg For You

Chapter 1 Naomi

Stupid delay, stupid storm, now another text coming in! My father is growing overly worried, and I don’t like it. My only solution is to work damage control at this point, and I hate this.

Me: It’s weather, I can’t control it. I’ll let you know when I get to the gate.

A quick look at the departure board almost makes my heart stop when the tiles start to move. Not again. It’s done this three times already today—our flight which should’ve taken off at six this morning got pushed up and up and up. It’ll soon be twelve hours we’ve all been stuck here.

The tiles keep shuffling, then settle, and a collective whoosh of relief can be felt across the waiting room. They went from ‘Delayed’ to ‘Boarding Soon.’

My body sags in my seat, the twinge in my back not letting me forget I’ve been sitting in this plastic bucket chair for ages on my ass. What ass? Yeah, it’s gone completely flat now. Thanks, unplanned storm that doused the whole area with blustering snow just today. Even the books that bring me so much solace have lost their appeal during the past hours.

All I want is to get home. I should’ve been there months ago. After finishing my degree, I was looking forward to a summer of R&R in my home town of Mendham Township in Morris County, New Jersey. I didn’t count on my father pushing me like a pawn on a chessboard, already enrolling me—as an unpaid intern, of course—to help out at the Board of Commissioners, our county’s seat of government.

I did my time, served my county, then someone there offered a paid internship in their policy-making firm in Salt Lake City. I jumped on it, and now, four months later, I’m going home for that well-deserved break.

An inkling tells me I have another think coming. My father is running for Mayor this year. The kicker—it’s a steppingstone to becoming Governor very soon. His party has all but confirmed he’s on the fast track to the top spot in the state. He doesn’t have a campaign manager, as far as I know.

Cue the niggling feeling I am going home to fill that very slot.

A sigh escapes. And damn, are those little tiles shuffling again?

Everyone’s eyes have turned to the board located conveniently on top of the massive sliding doors leading to this waiting area. As I squint to check, the wide panes of glass slide open, a tall, dark figure strolling in.

Black shoes, black pants, black travel case rolling smoothly at his side, a long black coat tied at the waist, a gloveless hand a stark contrast against the thick wool fabric.

A jolt runs through me, the memory of a stark hand standing out like this flitting into my brain like a lightning bolt. I haven’t allowed myself to think of that moment. Of him .

Something about that hand makes me grow cold. It can’t be… No. Too much of a coincidence.

Though I am going home, a neighborhood he also calls home. But what on earth would he be doing in Salt Lake City? I wince. He can ask the same thing about me. We’re both a long way from home.

Unbidden, my gaze travels over the man striding into the waiting area with a casual gait, long legs eating up the tiled floor at a rapid pace.

The coat can’t hide he is a big man, much taller and broader than most. Well-built, like he works out to enhance what God has naturally given him. He fills that tailoring perfectly, broad shoulders outlined to their full breadth, sleeves wrapping around muscular arms with rippling biceps, surely. The pants will no doubt be doing the same to strong thighs that bring to mind solid but lean tree trunks.

Ask me how I know… Because I recognize him even before my eyes land on his face. Seeing him finally just makes all the pieces click into place.

Square jaw, full lips that look uncompromising, a nose that broke once, hence the slight deviation along the bridge, wide forehead brushed by tousled black hair that never stays put. And the eyes—the same deep blue, like the first dip of a paintbrush doused in Prussian Blue into a jar of clear water.

A small gasp escapes me.

Valentino Andretti.

Still the same five o’clock shadow I recall—this time on the face of a man who has lived life. The cheekbones are more defined, and the crinkle of lines at the outer corners of his piercing eyes wasn’t there last time I saw him five years ago. Older—he’s thirty-four now—but still him.

Still my first crush.

Still the same man who broke my heart when he rejected me and scowled in my face when I told him I loved him.

The memory I’ve been trying to keep at bay resurfaces with a surge. Me reaching out to touch his cheek. His hand coming up to clasp my wrist. I never thought it was to stop me. Until his grip tightened around my forearm, his tanned skin a stark contrast against the milky alabaster of mine.

That’s what started it all, the sight of his hand on his coat, the contrast.

I blink to here and now. Unfortunately, my gaze is still on his face. Mortification slithers in like a sour reek. I hope I don’t look like an awe-struck fan right now.

Those blue eyes catch mine, and then the bastard smiles. One side of his lips curls up in a sardonic little half-smile.

He saw me, alright. Damn.

I stiffen and school my features, looking away from him.

I don’t know how I know because I’m not looking at him, but I know he is coming towards me. Those long legs eat up the space, and they’re getting closer.

Just that stride can make a woman wet her panties, because a man who moves with such measured control of himself is already telling the world he exerts this same discipline in all aspects of his life, including the bedroom.

Add to it the GQ-cover-worthy good looks wrapped in such an expensive package and with whiffs of a dark, sultry scent coiling around him, this could be the devil incarnate himself, sent to Earth to lure mortals unsuspecting or not.

Swirls of sandalwood and cypress reach my nostrils, and it takes everything to not sniff it all in, to inhale his aroma and drown in it. Still the same signature scent he wore five years ago, when I got so close to him that evening under the mistletoe.

Do not think of that, Naomi. I forbid you!

These last words bring to mind another admonition. One spoken in a paternal male voice that couldn’t hide the slight slurring from imbibed whiskey.

My father has forbidden me to have anything to do with the Andretti family, Valentino in particular.

Why him? Because I have always had eyes just for him. Valentino was a man. Eleven years older than me, he was always a grown-up. Not a bland boy trying to impress with stupidity, the kind I met every day in school.

I’ve never had time for crushes and infatuation. At ten, he fascinated me, reminding me of Hollywood movie stars, dark and brooding and mysterious. Then at fifteen, I took one look at twenty-six-year-old Valentino home for the Christmas break, and I knew this is the man I want. Period.

“Little Naomi Smith,” he drawls as he settles his tall frame in the bank of chairs across from me.

“Not so little anymore,” I snap.

He said those same words to me on that fateful night when I bared my heart to him. They cut just as sharp today as back then. Five years ago, no sighting of him in the meantime, yet it’s as if time hasn’t passed, like I haven’t grown up from a silly teen to a woman out of college and with a strong resume under her belt already.

His intense gaze peruses me from head to toe. “I can see that.”

Somehow, his words make me feel naked.

Worse, they make me want to be naked in front of him.

Damn it! This asshole toyed with me in the worst way. How can I still want him?

Uh, hello. Have you seen him?

This seems to come directly from my ovaries.

“I didn’t think I would see you again,” he adds in a soft tone.

Something that always gets to me about Valentino is how he never raises his voice. The soft rumbling in his words call to the depths of a person, bringing to mind sultry whispers but also veiled threats that can sound more ominous coming from such a low tone.

Little Naomi Smith.

The quiet in the words slashed my heart to pieces that day.

“Didn’t seem like you wanted to see me again,” I throw back, resigned to get a grip on myself and not let this man ever get the better of me again.

The sound of a half-hearted laugh pulls me to look at him once more. This time, a full-on smile graces his beautiful yet dangerous face.

See? The ovaries again. We want him. We definitely do!

Shut up!

“Did I really do that?”

He leans back in the chair, the plastic almost espousing his tall, lithe form as he stretches his long legs out and gives me a perfect full-frontal view of his gorgeous body covered in those elegant dark clothes.

“Did I?” he asks again.

“What?” I blink, tearing my attention from his resting form.

“Give you the impression I didn’t want to see you again.” He pauses, the moment loaded with tension. “I’d have thought you’d come back for the summers, settling back in your bedroom, wearing those tiny shorts and crop tops I could totally see from my bedroom window next door.”

A wave of mortification rushes in hotly. I did do that, especially the next day after he’d snuck in a lithe, model-like bimbo into his bedroom and I caught glimpses of what he was doing to her body before he would turn around, look across the window, then close the curtains.

I always pictured a little half-smile when he caught me staring from across, and it wasn’t my imagination because I’d seen it plenty. He had a girl in almost every day, and these changed every week, it seemed back then. And with each girl I would see him bring into his room, my imagination ran wild with despair, and my heart took untold beatings.

“I was away at college and not whiling my summers away like some people.” He always came back home for breaks—spring, summer, Christmas. “If you need to know, I interned all over to gain experience in policy and governing offices to get the experience needed to work for my father.”

His face tenses when I mention my dad. And yes, there it is—that small muscle ticking away in his left cheek. Definitely more prominent now his face has grown leaner with age. Guess this is still a trigger for him, me mentioning my father. It’s the same the other way round, too, I know.

“Anyway, I worked for the Board of the County Commissioners last summer. This and everything else will look great on my resume,” I continue, happy to have shut him up and wiped that sardonic smile off his face.

“You really think ‘I worked for my daddy and his political frenemies’ is going to get you hired?” Valentino throws this out with a deep laugh.

Experience is experience, and it’s who you know that moves people across the checkerboard in the governing world. All these contacts will come in handy when I set out on my own path in the policy-making world.

Something makes me look at the man across from me, a sudden chill in the air.

Indeed, his face is stone-cold sober, eyes like glittering rocks.

“You’re never making it out from under your father’s thumb. You know that. He is grooming you to be his life-long puppet.”

More than the words themselves, the venom they’re coated in sinks into me and makes my stomach roil.

Who does he think he is?

“Last I checked, you work for your father, too.”

“My father is dead. I work for no one but myself.”

I’m sorry . The words are there on the tip of my tongue, but they don’t make it out. I am sorry. Valentino, his brothers, his sister Francesca—they lost a rock when their father passed. For them, he was their dad. Never mind what he did outside the home.

Thinking of that hardens my heart.

“Ah, yes. The family business. You all have graduated to what, now? Racketeering? Smuggling? Murder for hire? Good, honest work it is, right?”

His eyes narrow, a dark glint appearing in them. Yes, I am pushing him. Everyone knows what Marcello Andretti was about. It’s a hush-hush M-word, and the world’s best-kept secret it was not. Said world rejoiced when he was killed.

Still, he was Valentino’s father, and family is everything to the Andrettis. I might not see eye-to-eye with my dad all the time, but I would be devastated if anything happened to him. That’s family.

“There’s no such thing as an honest politician, Naomi. So, since you studied to be one, I guess you’re not exactly into good, honest work, either.”

The bastard. He thinks he could throw this at me? My dad married my mom for money, yes, but his dealings have always been the opposite of shady. He got into politics to do good.

“At least I haven’t killed anyone,” I snap back.

Nor gotten anyone killed.

“Yet,” he states, one side of his lips curling up in that half-smile again.

I narrow my eyes on him. He’s definitely the person who will make me cross that line—I can already picture myself throttling him. Not just for what he just said, but for stealing my heart and making me burn for him all this time.

Valentino Andretti is an— “Asshole.”

He chuckles. “You have it in you. You’re an ambitious little thing, after all.”

This. Sexy as all get out he may be, but what did I ever see in him? Did I not look beyond the outward appearance, into the nothingness that exists inside this man?

He thinks he can judge?

“Ambition is not a bad thing,” I say, holding his gaze.

“I never said it was.” Not breaking eye contact, he leans forward. “I like bad things, Naomi. I think you do, too.”

The last words came with a wink. The bastard.

Suddenly, he’s on his feet, and I’m left blinking at him, blinking out of the haze of suggestion he wove around me with those words. Suggestions of dirty, filthy, dark, forbidden things that exist out there, that he could do to me, that we could do to each other…

The tinny voice coming from the speakers is telling us our flight is boarding now. I get up, fishing for my phone in my pocket. A slew of messages is waiting. I sigh.

Me: Boarding now. See you in a few hours.

As I’m typing, I can feel a presence looming. Tall, overbearing.

Valentino, of course. He’s got at least a foot’s height on me—no wonder he can stare down and see everything I’m writing.

I start to make my way to the gate, not checking if he’s following.

A message pings.

Dad: I will make sure Elliott is there to get you, do not get in an Uber those things are dangerous.

Me: Yes Dad. See you soon.

At the gate, I stop to flip the phone onto airplane mode and then push my way through the throng. I have a business class ticket—we’ll board first, and I can see the staff has opened a corridor for us to pass through.

It kinda looks like a trip down death row for me. Flying is something I dread, and it already makes a mess of me in general. Having to think of the dark shadow looming around me? I don’t have the brain space for that, for him.

We’re being guided ahead now, and I simply can’t push my way through.

Then a dark figure cuts ahead of me, jostling me slightly in the crush. Oof.

“Asshole,” I mutter.

He slows his gait and turns to me while still moving ahead.

“You’re blocking the way,” he says.

The gall of him. “Whatever happened to ladies first?”

“You can’t call yourself a feminist then have double standards.”

I glare at him, my feet moving before I can think to catch up with him.

“How dare you suggest I have double standards?”

“Equality of the sexes and all that? Ring a bell?”

I wince. He does have a point. I can’t claim to be a man’s equal then demand he let me pass first.

Argh! He’s so unnerving.

Wait, is he laughing as he strides along and disappears around the bend?

Valentino Andretti is a bastard of the first order, and never mind the sight of his long legs and fine, tight ass strolling ahead of me like the carrot dangled before the donkey. And that’s exactly what I am, a witless cretin being led on by her treacherous ovaries and debilitating lust for this man who can be nothing good for me.

Guess I can say goodbye to any R&R now that we’re both heading home at the same time.