Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
FLORINA
W hat just happened? I followed the tight ass stalking up the stairs with my eyes. You’d think I was on fire. He couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Now that was something that had never happened before.
Unease rattled my nerves. Too many things happened that were new to me. A man leaving food out for me for days on end. A man putting a gun in another man’s face because of me… I think. A man refusing my mouth…
I pulled my gaze from his disappearing ass and dropped it to my brown scuffed sneakers. The laces were all twisted, and the plastic on the ends was chipped off. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep the thread together, so it was rapidly piling off, one thread at a time. These sneakers looked as out of place on the blue and white patterned tiled floor as I did standing in his pristine house. Both objects, dirty and damaged, were meant for outside in a dark alleyway. I looked around. Not here.
The house was huge. Not as big as the one I’d had my dinner in, but still, it was large. The shabby house I had lived in for most of my life, which was made from clay and straw, would probably fit into the kitchen and with enough space leftover for another. I did a slow 360-degree turn. Didn’t want to move further and stain the pristine floor with the dirt on my feet. It was all so clean and neat and uncluttered. A massive fireplace and a sofa gulped down most of the space in the living room. The sofa was a black leather one. You’d think it would look intimidating. Instead, it looked old and welcoming. Like coming home to a childhood home full of memories. I swallowed the lump in my throat and glanced beyond to peek at the kitchen. Much like the bigger house, a row of dark wooden cabinets and a marble top greeted me. Except the marble here was a dark blue. Blue floors, blue worktops… he’d had a blue tie on… did the man like blue?
I sighed. This wasn’t me. The man stretched so broad and wide that every time he moved, I thought he would burst out of the suit he wore. It was odd. He moved like he wanted to erupt out of it. Like he didn’t like to be entrapped by gentleman’s clothes. Like he should be naked… Stop it. I didn’t wonder about strange men. Because there hadn’t been a single man in my life that had been worth wondering about. The last one I wasted my energy on threw harsh words at me like sharp icicles piercing my chest. You think I’d love a filthy girl like you echoed off the ivory brick walls of this house, as if those dark words were screamed out just now.
If I craned my neck, I could see the front door at the end of the warmly lit corridor. I knew men. Even before he locked the door and pocketed the key, I thought I knew what he wanted. He and the jackass Albanian would have common ground. Even though I might have been more willing with this one than I was with the Albanian. This one smelled good. Had a faint scruff on him that was polished. The type that you spend time taking care of. Not the type that grew wild because you couldn’t afford a razor. But all men wanted one thing and one thing only from me. So I thought I’d get the job done and get out of here. But he hadn’t even allowed me to blow him.
This wasn’t right. Felt all wrong. It made my skin itch with unease. Made my pulse pump in my ear. I didn’t belong here. If a man didn’t want the one thing I had to give, then he didn’t want me at all. Not a shred of hesitance veiled my thoughts before I marched over to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife from the knife block. I would have normally taken the smallest one. It was faster to defend myself. But he was massive, and I’d need a bigger knife to do the job.
I didn’t know his name or what he did or how he was related to the Capizzi brothers. But he must have been because he was hot. Short, almost cropped black hair cut close to his head in tiny spirals. Thick black eyebrows with the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen matched with a long, sharp nose and the scruff on his jaw that had a pulse ticking somewhere in my body where it had lain long forgotten.
What was happening? I shook myself visibly. I did not pay attention to men. Definitely not their fucking faces. If I did, it was their body, so I could judge how I could defend myself. He was tall. Like really tall. Six feet and a few inches tall. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was broad. The muscles that had bulged underneath his suit told me he knew how to use his body to suck the last breath of life from someone. Someone like me. That should be my worry now. Not how he wore his suit like armour. Not how the ink seeping out from under his white cuff contrasted against his olive skin. Definitely not his long, thick fingers. Because that made me wonder about other long, thick things on him.
“Fuck!” I kicked the cabinet door in front of me. This wasn’t helping.
“It’s all a charade,” I muttered. Just like he clothed himself in a starched shirt and hid a graveyard of black tattoos underneath, he was hiding something, and he was going to be more dangerous than the men with open lust in their eyes.
With the knife clutched in my right hand, I checked out other non-existent exits in the house. All locked, of course. So I sneaked up the creaking stairs that gave me away louder than a drum roll. Good thing I had the knife because if he hadn’t heard me kick his furniture earlier, he definitely heard me coming upstairs. I counted four doors. The one furthest down the hall was the only one with a closed door. The first open door to my left showed an office of some kind. Even the table was clean. Not a shred of paper out of place. The next one was a bedroom, and across from it was a toilet. So I guessed Prince Charming was sleeping behind the fourth door. The only one closed. But he wasn’t Prince Charming, was he? He wasn’t blond, and he wasn’t charming. He was rude, and he was hot as fuck. I wouldn’t have minded sucking him off. Finally, a dick I actually wanted in my mouth. Except he didn’t want me to.
With a huff, I marched to the bedroom, not his one, of course, and slammed the door shut. The old door shivered on its hinges before creaking into place. What was his plan, anyway? I flipped the lock on the door and looked around. A bed, a three-door dark wooden cupboard with an oval mirror in the middle door, and a small desk and a chair in the corner.
He might have been hot as fuck, but men only wanted one thing. Dropping the knife on the bed, I shoved the desk towards the door, my teeth on edge as an uneven metal nail underneath scraped along the floor. Cristo. My eyes followed the fresh grove zigzagging on the wooden floor. The man had been so kind, and I had gone and broken his… hold on. Had he been kind? Unease crawled all over me. I didn’t do kindness. People weren’t kind unless they wanted something from me. So he wanted something from me, or he wasn’t kind. I carried the chair and stacked it on top of the desk. That would teach him if he was planning to come for a nightly visit.
Satisfied, I moved to the adjoining door and flipped it open. Well, fuck me! The room had an adjoining bathroom and the fucking office attached to it. How was I going to barricade this?
Frustration itched on my skin. The bathroom was tempting, but there was no way I could let my guard down to take a shower. Couldn’t he have just let me blow him and sent me on my way? No! He had to defy the norm of the spectrum of men I knew.
Think, Florina, he must want something.
I paced the floor. Bedroom, bathroom, and office. Pause. Office, bathroom, and bedroom.
He didn’t want me to jerk him off.
He was definitely not being kind because, let’s face it, no one ever was.
So what…
I stopped. In the middle of the bathroom. Realisation dawned, and the navy blue tiles on the walls laughed at my stupidity. He thought he was too good for me. He wanted to be a good Samaritan, but I wasn’t good enough for him.
Anger pooled inside me, and a rush of heat throttled through my skin. I fucking hated men who thought they were too good for me. I had many talents. I was a brilliant thief. Snagging a man’s wallet point blank with his eyes on me was a practised art. I was an excellent liar. I had proved it innumerable times. But above all, I was a master at sucking men’s dicks. The fact that this man didn’t want me to was frankly offensive. If he thought anyone could do a better job than me… I didn’t even realise I’d marched through the office and hallway until I yanked his door open and barrelled into his room without even thinking of bringing the big fucking knife I was going to use to defend my honor. Really, Florina… where’s your head?
Midnight blue walls, an orange, glowing tabletop lamp, and a massive bed in the middle were what I should have focused on. Instead, my gaze zoomed in on the man on the bed with a naked tattooed torso and a clear hard-on under the crisp sapphire sheets.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Cǎcat. He was huge. I knew that much, even without lifting the sheets. And wide. Ink ran up the entire length of both his arms, and on his left breast, a tattooed skull resided, begging for my starved mouth. Intricate words circled around it, too far for me to read, hanging onto a circle of drawings like the fine artwork of a Mayan temple somewhere.
“Rina.”
“Urgh.” I scowled at him darkly. He leaned on his elbows, looking at me with slitted and glittering angry eyes. “Who the fuck is Rina?”
I guessed I wasn’t worthy of an answer because all he did was glare at me. What the fuck was he angry about? I crossed my arms and glared right back at him. I didn’t know how long we stood at a standoff, but it felt like it took a hundred pulse beats before he dropped his head to the pillow with a heavy sigh and growled a “get out” to me.
Not that easy, buddy.
“You know… that looks painful to me…” I jerked my head towards the very obvious bulk under the sheet. “If you didn’t want to act like such a goody-two-shoes, I could take care of that for you.” I don’t know why the thought of it made my lips dry. I also totally didn’t lick my lips to tempt him. But it worked like magic.
His expression shifted. It glowered at me in the darkness, and then he rasped two words that told me I had him right where I wanted him. “Come here.”
I shrugged that small disappointment coasting somewhere in my veins and strolled over to the bed. He had an arm folded behind his head, and he used his other to curl his fingers towards him.
Here, I had thought he was an exception to mankind. At least this I knew how to do. I knew what to expect, and there weren’t any surprises later on. Kindness, my ass. I dropped onto the bed and crawled over to his side.
My God. The man smelled good. I was so used to my stench from days of not washing that it took some time for a pleasant smell to reach my nostrils. But when it did, it was all I could do not to drop down and snuggle up to him. He reminded me of burned charcoal. Dark and musty. And expensive. My gaze locked into his. His burned hot. My hands clutched the sheet right next to his hip. My knuckles grazed his hot skin. I tugged. Nothing. Confused, I glanced down to find his hands clamped onto mine. What the hell? Before I could put words into my mouth, he’d yanked me close to him, arm, sheet, and all. I wobbled precariously on top of his chest, trying not to fall on him.
“I’m not the men you know, Il mio passerotto. I want to sink my cock into you and make you scream with pleasure.” What? I jerked back. “So you want to fuck me? Then the game is on. But you want to thank me—” he shoved me off him, and I landed on my ass. “Then do us both a favour and get the hell out of my room.”