Chapter 14
Savvy
The gondola sways as we enter, and I quickly slide into the bench seating, moving all the way to the opposite side. Gabriel speaks to the worker before he shuts the door, then settles in beside me.
“I think you should sit there.” I point at the bench across from me.
“Why?”
“Because if all of our weight is on one side, it’s going to make it move more.” I grab the edge of the bench, holding on as though I can keep the whole thing from swaying.
He tilts his head. “Are you afraid of a Ferris wheel?”
“No! Of course not.” I huff. “I’m afraid of falling off the Ferris wheel into the lake stuck inside this capsule.”
Then we move.
And I squeak.
He moves to sit across from me, lacing his fingers together and dropping his hands between his knees. Even sitting like any other person in the world, he’s intimidating.
“You brought me all the way down here because you wanted to ride the Ferris wheel? I think Damien would have joined you if you wanted company.” The gondola sways slightly as we come to a stop only a few feet from the ground. “It’s going to do this a lot, right, the stopping?”
He smiles. “They need to load everyone. There’re fireworks tonight so there’s a lot of people.”
“You’re trying to mess with my head.”
“Why would I do that?” He splays his hands out like some innocent little boy.
“Because you like fucking with my head.” I accuse as we move again, and I shut my eyes.
“When have I fucked with your head?”
“Every moment since I met you,” I blurt, sinking against the wall once we’re stopped again.
“How?”
“Seriously?” I laugh. “First you kidnap me, which makes me think you’re going to kill me. Then you barge into my apartment, again making me think you’re going to kill me. You spanked me, teased me, then… did the opposite. Then last night.” I sigh. “Everything is messing with my head.”
“Ah. I see the problem.” He leans toward me, pressing his elbows into his knees and steepling his fingers. “You think I was trying to make you think a certain way or throw you off your guard. I wasn’t. I told you what I was going to do, and then I did it. Each time.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Each time I followed through with what I said I would do, and I always will, so you should work on accepting that. It might make this idea that I’m playing some mind game with you go away.”
“Okay, then this?” I make a big gesture with my arms which sends us into a small swing.
“This is fun.” He grins, leaning back. “And for the record, I never said I was going to kill you.”
“It was implied.” We’re moving again, and the carriage falls into a comfortable silence. “Thank you, by the way for having Lucian take Cassie to the train station this morning. She almost missed her train, she would have if he hadn’t been there.”
He nods. “He mentioned there was an issue.”
My brow wrinkles. She hadn’t said anything about a problem. In her text, she’d said she overslept. She would have missed her bus if he hadn’t been there.
“Is she moving to St. Louis if she gets the job?” He asks, shucking out of his long coat and draping it over his knee.
“Probably. She’s tired of Chicago. She moves around a lot. She was in New York last year, and some mountain town a year before that.”
“You don’t ever think of going with her?”
“Sometimes I go with her, but St. Louis isn’t all that exciting to me. And I’m doing good here.”
“You mean you’re making good money, or you’re able to work your scams easily?” He arches a brow.
“I don’t understand your contempt for my work, considering your own.
You sell weapons to countries that probably shouldn’t have them, you move illegal things all over the world, and do whatever else you do, all while playing the legitimate businessman for the cameras.
How is what I do so much worse than you? ”
“It’s not worse.”
“Ah, but it’s small time. I’m a petty con-artist and you’re a big mafia man.” To emphasize my statement, I put my arms out like a bodybuilder who’s gotten too large to put his arms down and deepen my voice.
He huffs a laugh but looks away before I can register the genuine smile.
“It’s not that your operation is small, it’s that you aim your scams at people like me. It’s dangerous.”
“I didn’t know you owned the pawn shop, and to be fair, I didn’t really know who you were to begin with.”
“Exactly. You don’t keep up with who the players are, but you join the game.”
I look out the window, down at the people milling around on the pier.
Music plays through the speakers inside the gondola.
The lights of the city dance in the background.
It’s actually a beautiful view. If I just forget about how we could plummet to our deaths at any given moment, I could relax more.
“You have a point,” I say after a long stretch of silence. “Working with Ricci was a stupid idea. And if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been in the bind I was in, and I would have had time to research your shop and would have realized who owned it.”
“You’re saying I’m right?”
“I’m saying you have a point.” I correct him with a finger in the air. “It happens to everyone now and then.”
It doesn’t stop the smugness from blossoming in his eyes.
“But,” I continue, leaning toward him with my finger pointed. “Just because you have a larger and more successful operation, doesn’t mean I should be discounted.”
He grabs my finger and brings it to his mouth, wrapping his lips around it and licking. Who knew the pointer finger had a direct connection to the clit?
I do now.
“No, you can’t distract me with all that.” I jerk my hand back and lean against the back of the bench.
We’ve made our way nearly to the top and are stopped again. I keep my eyes away from the windows. Maybe I can pretend we’re still low to the ground if I can’t actually see the direct line of death.
“Distract you from what? We’re just enjoying a nice ride on a Ferris wheel.” The false innocence actually makes him even hotter. His face relaxes and the dark storm that’s usually raging in his eyes calms to a seductive simmer.
“Yes. Which is another thing.” I start to jab my finger at him again, but when his gaze snaps to it, I put it away.
“Bosses don’t take their employees on Ferris wheel rides.
They don’t tell them to wear a dress for the occasion, either.
You’re lucky this bottom isn’t glass. The people under us would be getting quite the view. ”
“Are you not wearing panties?” The question comes low and sultry. Thank God I am wearing panties, or I’d be slipping all over this damn bench.
“Of course I am.” I tug on the hem of the dress toward my knees, as though he can see anything from where he’s sitting across from me. “Don’t change the subject.”
“What was the subject? You’re talking in circles, which you tend to do when you’re nervous, so that begs the question. Do I make you nervous?”
“No.” I answer too quickly and too forcefully for him to believe the lie. “It’s this ride. That’s all.”
“Ah, okay. We can talk about honesty later. I’m enjoying myself, and I don’t want to stop just to punish you.”
I roll my eyes. “Always with the punishments. You can’t just keep punishing me.”
“Of course I can.” He leans closer. “And I will. You like it.”
“I do not.”
“Another lie.” He laughs. “If you really want to have your ass blistered this high up over the city, keep going.”
“You are impossible. I’m trying to ask you something.”
He tilts his head, like a cute, confused puppy. “Are you? Then out with it already.”
“You said I have to work for you until you recoup the money you spent to make Ricci go away. But you never told me the exact amount or how my debt reduction is determined.”
“However I determine it,” he says easily.
“No. I mean, for example, the documents I did today. I would normally charge two thousand a document.”
“Two thousand? You’re underselling yourself. You should charge five.”
“It’s not that hard when you have the right typesetting and know what you’re doing.”
“It’s not just the product it’s you, you’re charging for. Five thousand a document. And whatever you’re charging for the IDs, double that. I’m sure you’re underselling yourself there.”
“Okay, we’re getting off track again. Back to how my debt is getting settled.”
“I already told you, when I say it’s done, then it will be done.”
I cross my legs and arms, clenching my teeth as we move again. My frustration with him pushes away the fear of rolling off into the lake and finding a watery grave.
“That sounds a lot more like slavery than a job.” I sigh. None of this is going how I wanted. I’d been planning to bring up the topic on the way home tonight, after his meeting and after he’d had a drink or two.
But I didn’t know we were going to be spending the night high over the city in a death gondola.
“If that’s how you want to look at it, that’s up to you.” He shifts, taking his coat from his knee and laying on the floor between us. “Come here and kneel.”
Flickering my gaze between the coat and him, I decide I won’t give in so easily. Whatever he’s thinking to do, he can just forget it. I want a serious conversation and all he wants to do is distract me.
“Savvy, when your master tells you to kneel, you kneel.” He gently rests his hand on my knee.
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be. I told you to do something, I expect you to obey.” He gives a pointed look to his coat. “Kneel.”
“We’re on a Ferris wheel.”
He arches a brow but says nothing.
“The carriage is going to move.”
He nods. “It’s going to move a lot, but I promise you won’t care.
Now, are you going to be a good girl and obey, or should I pull you over my knee, bare your ass, and spank you until this ride is over?
Everyone will hear you begging me to stop.
They’ll hear every time my palm smacks into your ass. They’ll know you’ve been punished.”