Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
~CARMINE~
“ W hoa, whoa, whoa.” I hold up my hands and slide to my left, closer to Nadia. Jesus, she wasn’t kidding.
They really don’t like her.
“You didn’t say anything about that bitch being here,” Mick sneers.
“She’s with me,” I say quickly. “Our families are working together because we’ve recently come under attack. I’m here because we need your help.”
Mick’s eyes narrow, but he signals for his goons to put away their weapons.
“What’s going on?” Mick asks.
Billy hasn’t said a word. He only glares at Nadia as we step forward into the luxurious office and sit across from Mick.
I briefly fill the boss in on the attempt on my father’s life at the wedding in Denver, the subsequent attack on Nadia, and then remind him of my aunt’s and uncle’s murders long ago.
“Do you honestly think Vinnie’s murder is tied to this now?” Mick asks, doubt hanging heavily in his voice.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” I reply. “I need to ask around the city, find out what your men know about the attempt on my father’s life—and Nadia’s for that matter.”
“The Martinellis and the Tarenkovs are working together,” Mick mutters and shakes his head. “Fascinating. Well, you can ask around, but no one will tell you anything. Even if they do know what’s going on. This isn’t your territory.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Go home,” he says bluntly.
“Not without answers.”
Mick blows out a long breath. “We should have had this conversation over the phone. If you’d given me a heads-up, I could have asked around before you got here.”
“There’s a lot to be said for looking into a man’s eyes when you talk to him.” I clear my throat. “Mick, you aren’t behind this, are you?”
“No.” His lips flatten into a hard line. “It’s true, there is no love lost between our family and the Tarenkovs, but my beef isn’t worth a war. And Carlo and I have always had an agreeable relationship. But, if you’ll give me a couple of days, I’ll ask around. On the down-low. I don’t think it’s wise to bring a lot of attention to this. It might escalate the situation or make those responsible go into hiding. And then you’ll never get your answers.”
I nod in agreement. He hasn’t said anything that I didn’t already take into consideration.
“It looks like Nadia and I will spend a few days in your beautiful city. Take in the sights. Maybe see a show.”
“Enjoy your vacation,” Mick advises. “I’ll be in touch when I know something.”
“Thank you.” We rise and start to leave, but turn back at Mick’s voice.
“The next time you request entry into my city, you’d better be fucking honest about who you’re bringing with you. I don’t like surprises.”
“Understood.”
“I’ve heard great things about this show.” Nadia walks out of the walk-in closet off our suite’s bedroom and holds the necklace I gave her in Denver out to me. “Will you please fasten this?”
“Of course.” I slip the diamonds and platinum around her slim neck and fasten it under her hairline, then kiss the ball of her shoulder. I notice she doesn’t have any earrings in. “You’re damn beautiful, Nadia.”
She grins at me and then does a little spin in her red dress, showing it off. “Thanks. I’m glad I brought this along, just in case. And you look pretty damn good yourself in that suit.”
I adjust the knot of my tie and then hold my hand out for hers. “Shall we?”
“Let me just grab my clutch.” She rushes to the bed and slips a tube of lipstick into her bag, then takes my proffered hand. “Let’s go watch a Broadway show.”
The truth is, Nadia takes my breath away. She handled herself well at Mick’s office today, knowing when to stay quiet and let me do the talking. She’s intelligent. And she’s sexy as fuck.
I shouldn’t have kissed her on the plane this morning. I was only trying to shut her up, but all I did was remind myself how good we are together in bed.
How much I want her.
How I never stopped wanting her.
And she’s made it clear that a physical relationship is out of the question.
I’m a damn fool. I need to keep my hands to myself and keep my focus on the task at hand.
She’s a colleague who has become a friend. That’s all.
But when we step into the elevator, and she leans her head on my shoulder as we watch the floors tick down, all I want to do is pull her to me and kiss her breathless.
Instead, I turn my lips down and kiss the top of her head.
“Tell me about this show.” Before I take you back upstairs and fuck you into next week.
“The lead actress is London Watson. She’s a huge name in theater, and she wrote this show a couple of years ago. Still stars in it. I’m excited to finally see it.”
“Sounds great.”
We walk through the hotel lobby and see our car is waiting. The ride through Manhattan is slow, as always, but before long, the driver drops us off in front of the theater. I bought us VIP tickets, so we bypass the line and are immediately shown to our seats.
“That’s Paul Rudd,” Nadia whispers and nods to the man several seats down. “Holy shit, I love Ant-Man .”
“Tell him so. We have a few minutes before the show starts.”
She bites her lip and then shrugs her shoulder and stands to approach the actor. Paul smiles up at her, then stands to talk to her. I can’t hear everything that’s said, but there are smiles, a couple of laughs, and then Nadia returns to me.
“Oh my God,” she says. “He’s so nice.”
“He looked like a good guy.”
She grins. “This is a fun day. Well, aside from having guns pointed at my face, of course.”
“Yeah, that was a little intense.”
“But the rest of it has been better than expected.”
“I’m glad.”
She links her arm through mine and leans on me. Nadia has become more and more physically affectionate over the past few weeks, at least since we started staying at the penthouse again.
I don’t mind the affection.
But damn if it doesn’t make me want more.
“You really do look nice in this suit,” she says casually. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“No, this one is navy. You usually wear black.”
I glance down at her. “You pay attention to the color of my suits?”
“You usually wear black,” she says again. “I like this on you.”
The lights flicker, signaling the start of the show. Through the entire three hours, Nadia touches me—holds my hand, leans her head on my shoulder, smiles up at me.
She’s flirting with me.
Blatantly.
Boldly.
Either she’s trying to seduce me, or she’s playing a game. And I have no patience for that. She has me tied in knots, my dick semi-hard as we leave the theater.
“London was amazing ,” she gushes as we get into the waiting car. “She’s so talented. I absolutely loved it. Man, I’m starving.”
She grins over at me.
“Are you hungry?”
“Hmm.”
She frowns. “You don’t know if you’re hungry?”
“I could use something.” I turn my head and watch Manhattan pass us by. The traffic is no less frantic at midnight than it was close to four hours ago.
“Let’s just order in at the hotel,” she suggests. “We can get comfortable and eat all the food. That sounds awesome.”
I nod. When the car stops in front of the Four Seasons, a bellman opens our door. I climb out first, then turn to offer Nadia my hand to help her out of the vehicle.
She’s in another pair of those mile-high heels she loves. The kind that look damn hot over my shoulders as I fuck her into oblivion.
I remember very well.
“New York just energizes me,” she says when we step into the elevator. “Don’t you love this city?”
“You’re talkative tonight,” is my only reply.
“It’s New York,” she says. “Like I said, it energizes me. I don’t come here often enough. For obvious reasons.”
She slides her hand into mine, and I glance down at her.
“Why are you flirting with me so hard tonight?”
Her smile doesn’t dim, but the light in her blue eyes sparks. “Oh, so you did notice?”
“Hard not to.” I lead her out of the elevator and down the long hallway to the presidential suite, then unlock the door and walk inside. “You’ve turned it up.”
“Turned what up?”
“The flirting.” I turn and look at her as I loosen my tie. She drops her bag onto a table and crosses her arms over her chest. “What’s going on?”
“I like flirting with you.” She moves to me and brushes my hands out of the way so she can unbutton my shirt. “I like being with you.”
“You set the rules hard and fast from the beginning of this, Nadia. No sex. I’ve upheld my end of that bargain.”
“I know.” There’s no flirtation in her voice now as her eyes find mine. “And I also know that it’s unfair and just plain ridiculous to muddy the waters. To change the rules.”
“But I have a feeling you’re going to do just that.”
“We’re good together,” she says at last. “I thought I could turn that piece off. That I could ignore it. But damn it, the truth is, we are good together. And we’ll be working together for God knows how long.”
“Are you saying that you want to reintroduce sex into our dynamic?”
“Well, that just sounds like a business merger.” She rises onto her tiptoes and barely skims her lips over mine. “And there’s nothing sexy about a business merger. What you and I do to each other is fucking sexy, Carmine.”
I sigh, wanting nothing more in this moment than her. And in about six seconds, I’m going to have her.
But we need to get something straight first.
“There’s no pretense here, Nadia. No act.”
“It’s just you and me, who we really are, enjoying each other, Carmine. I know that.”
“Good.”
I don’t waste any time. I lift her against me and hurry to the bedroom. “If anything hurts?—”
“Trust me, this doesn’t hurt.”
I grin and set her on her feet next to the bed. “Leave the shoes on.”
Her eyes are full of pure female satisfaction as she reaches behind her and unzips the dress, letting it pool around her ankles.
“Leave the necklace on, too.”
“Any other requests?”
I laugh and urge her back onto the bed. “No. Let me do the rest.” I take her right foot in my hand and kiss her ankle bone, right above the shoe. “Do you have any idea what these fucking shoes do to me?”
“Why do you think I wear them?”
She leans back on her hands, watching me as I kiss up her leg, then spread her wide and lick a wet trail from her inner thigh to the pink lips of her glistening pussy.
“You were always good at this.”
She sighs and lays back on the mountain of pillows as I take her on the ride of her life—all with my mouth. I lick and suck, then lick some more. I vary the pressure and speed, and when I push two fingers inside of her, she comes apart spectacularly.
“Good girl,” I murmur as I kiss up her flat stomach to her breasts. “I love your tits. You know that, right?”
“They never grew in.”
“Excuse me?”
She laughs and brushes her hand through my hair. “When I was young, I was desperate for them to grow so boys would notice me. Much to my dismay, they stayed small.”
“I see zero things wrong with these.” I brush my tongue over a hard peek and then kiss her neck passionately.
I fumble in the bedside drawer, find a little packet, and make quick work of protecting us. But before I can slide home, she pushes me onto my back and straddles my hips.
She always loved this position the best, and she’ll get no complaints from me.
She rides me hard and fast and reaches back to cup my already-tight balls.
“Fuck, Nadia.”
“Yes, fuck Nadia,” she agrees and clenches her core around me.
I don’t want to come yet, so I grip her hips in my hands, lift her, then shift our position so I’m behind her. Then, I push back inside. Her round ass is in the air, and I give it a loud smack as I fuck her from behind.
“God, Carmine.” She clenches the bedsheets in her fists and pushes back against me. “Yes.”
Three more hard thrusts are all it takes to have us both coming apart at the seams, crying out in ecstasy.
“Oh, God, I love this.”
She’s wearing a white hotel robe and nothing else, and we’re sitting on the terrace, a large tray of food on the table between us as she eats her weight in shrimp cocktail.
“I mean, just look at the lights.”
The New York lights are stunning. We’re not far from the World Trade Center memorial and can even see the lights of it from here.
“It’s a beautiful place,” I agree and reach for a taco. Tacos aren’t on the menu, but they made them for me tonight. “If you love it here so much, why don’t you live here?”
“Because I’m a Tarenkov,” she reminds me. “There’s no way the Sergis would allow that. Especially Billy. That little worm.”
She sips her chocolate shake and scowls.
“He did seem a bit angry with you today.”
She laughs at that and then switches from her shrimp to the dessert she ordered: crème br?lée.
“He’s a baby. Worse than Alex,” she says as an afterthought. “I would keep an apartment here in a heartbeat, but it’s not possible because of the family drama. The Sergis don’t trust us, and we don’t trust them either, truth be told. But once a year, I do come shopping. I send Mick an email, and he always replies cordially, giving me a four-day pass to spend some time here. It’s the best four days of my year.”
“This is still a free country, Nadia.”
She turns sad, blue eyes up at me. “Come on, Carmine. You know that isn’t true for people like us. Never has been. Men who claim to love us dictate our lives, but they wouldn’t hesitate to use us for personal gain if they saw the need arise. It’s a game we play every damn day of our lives.”
She eats more of her dessert.
“But you know what? I don’t want to talk about that.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to chat at all. I want to lick what’s left of this crème br?lée off your penis.”
My eyebrows climb at the suggestion. “I’m not saying no.”
“I didn’t think you would.”