Chapter 6
It might’ve been a fear response, or a domination response, or a mixture of the two, but there was something undeniable about my attraction to Rocco.
He was tall, strong, and he was clearly in a position of power, but struggling to deal with it—especially when it came to me.
He’d said it himself, if this was anyone else, they would’ve already been killed, and that should’ve been the sign to leave.
Any normal person would’ve run, but I didn’t even flinch.
I gave myself away, for whatever reason, and all I had left was my want to wrap my legs around him and ride until I was—out of here?
“I can’t fuck you,” he said.
“That’s fine.” It wasn’t my first time being rejected, but maybe the first time after a passionate kiss. “So, can I go?”
He laughed. “I said I can’t, not that I don’t want to.”
It felt like I’d now put too much pressure on the idea of fucking him—and it was the topic we came back to every time we were together, even if I had gotten the gossip on his dick mixed up with his brother.
“Then fuck me,” I said. “I’m flexible. You know, and I’m so much better when I have both hands. ”
Rocco leaned in close, his finger beneath my chin.
he pulled in close and I could smell the scotch on his breath, it was sweet.
I closed my eyes for a moment as my tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth, pretending to taste his breath.
I was really doing my best, trying my hardest, and hoping he would give in to my seduction.
I knew how in theory, but this was my first time in practice.
“Screwing around with a Fed would kill off all trust my family has in me,” he said, pressing a finger to my lips as if hushing me. “But I’ll make a note that you’re easy. And maybe I’ll bring a bed in here, maybe even collect that little stuffed toy you’ve got, get it all comfy for you.”
“What happened to me leaving?” I asked.
Honestly. I couldn’t be too shocked. I was so used to my mom changing her mind on a whim that having Rocco do it wasn’t much of a surprise at all.
I just had to play him, to play the situation, and to hope he’d change his mind again.
I watched as he stood to walk away, each step he took like a thump in my chest.
“There’s a mattress I’ll bring in for you. Warning, though, my brother has not been kind to it.” He turned to me once he reached the doorway and smiled. “And I’ll go see about that toy. I wanna make sure you get enough rest here.”
He had my phone and my mom had seen me talk to him, so she’d welcome him inside, and before I knew it, she’d be in a similar situation, probably with worsened health and needing oxygen twenty-four seven, which would mean around the clock care too.
“I’ll leave Boston,” I called out to him as he was already down the hallway, footsteps echoing like ghosts, traveling up and down.
Rocco appeared in the doorway, and a smile twitched at his cheek.
“I know you don’t mean it,” he said. “So I’m not accepting it.
I’ve got everything I need now. And maybe I’ll mention it to my contact.
I’m sure they’ll love to hear about an agent going off, doing their own thing, sticking their nose into businesses, costing taxpayers, and all the stuff people love to complain about. ”
I sank further into myself on the ground.
It felt like I was being punished. I hadn’t found anything, I’d actually just worked for him, perhaps flirted too hard.
I’d even given him dinner, so if anything, I was an awful agent who’d only managed to get themselves into shit, rather than opening a case and busting it wide open.
The only thing busting now was the vein running down the side of my temple.
Times like this, under stress, was when I regressed, played house with my stuffed animals, absorbed the comfort of a onesie, and worked through a colorful sticker chart that set some sort of order up for my life.
As Rocco left the doorway again, and a tear rolled down my cheek, I tried imagining that same sticker chart I had in a secret corner of my New York apartment, the one that made it look like I had a child living with me.
* * *
It could’ve been seen as disassociating, but little space was happy space.
It was where I went when everything in my life turned to ash—and shit, basically.
It’s where I became all giggles and less frowny.
I’d lain on the hard floor for a while now, looking at the marks on the ceiling, making pictures from them.
It usually helped me process life, but I didn’t have anything now but a sort of hazy feeling, like my body was coated in fur and fuzz.
The marks on the ceiling looked like dino claws, and they were ready to play with the lion, or maybe it was a clown.
It had a big circle nose with two dots. It was a nice canvas to work with, and my eyes continued creating pictures all the way across it, most of them changed.
The dino claw became a field of grass where I was playing, rolling a beach ball through it.
It must’ve been an hour or so when Rocco came back, distorting the hazy glow of removing my adult self from this space.
I snapped out of it with two tears as reality slapped me in the face.
One of the first real feelings I’d had in a while, and it was the feeling of fucking up—of not thinking anything through.
“You’re on an extended vacation,” he said, holding out a large manila file.
“Compassionate leave to take care of your mom. Or so your file says. You’re an intel analyst. You have a photographic memory.
High intelligence. You crave order. You’re a chameleon to your surroundings.
And it says here, an uncanny ability to get under people’s skin when you need something.
” He smirked. “Think that means you’re annoying. ”
I nodded. “I’m not going to say anything about you to them. Listen. I’ll leave.”
“I’m impressed,” he said, folding the file shut. “You might actually be useful. I already told you, we’ve got enemies—the Morrell family, the Cordello family, both of them want our business, our territory, you know. And obviously, they’ve been using dirty tricks.”
I gulped hard. I’d read up on the families, just a little, but enough to recall it all at will. “You had their son arrested at your port,” I said.
“And you thought they’d come for us, so you’d catch us going for them?” He posed the question, shaking his head. “Why not go to them?”
“Because my mom lives within your territory,” I said. “If I tried with them, they’d—”
“Kill you,” he said with a smirk. “But they don’t know anything, so you’d probably get away with it.
And that’s why I want you to work for me.
Your resume speaks for itself. You’ve worked in the area, analyzing organized crime, which I am not in any organized crime, and I will not admit to any of that. ”
It was obvious he was. He knew I had no wire or phone, so he didn’t even need to keep up the act. The pretense that he was a good guy. After all the threats, he wasn’t good, but there was something about him, and it made my chest swell.
“Work for me, and I promise you’ll never want for anything, and you’ll never be in this room again.”
Two choices it seemed. Work for him or die. And I liked living. “Is there a third option?”
He shook his head. “Not for what I want to do with you.” He was on his knees,in front of me, scuffing his trousers in the floor dust again.
“Tell me, then,” I said.
Rocco gritted his teeth. “Well, my brother did it, so why can’t I?”
“Did what?”
“Work for me,” he said. “And I’ll make sure you want for nothing.”
“You already said that.”
He got closer, his finger beneath my chin. “I want you, but I can’t have you.”
“Unless I quit,” I whispered, finally understanding. “You don’t want to sleep with a federal agent, or kill one, so you’ll have me quit and then—I just become a civilian, someone you can do whatever you want with.” As the words came out of my mouth, Rocco’s smile widened.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I’ve seen your contract.
You’ve done your three-year commitment, you’ve relocated, and you have no active assignments.
Well, you have some on your desk, right?
But none of them you’re actively doing. You can resign.
In writing.” He opened the file up again. “I’ve already written it up for you.”
I shook my head; it was an impulse. I wasn’t going to immediately agree. Even if there was that twinkle inside me, begging me to sign, telling me I’d have everything I’d ever wanted. “What would I do for you?”
“All that training, I hope you know how to use a gun,” he said. “You can be my right hand.”
My mouth spoke before my brain thought it through. “Because that’s the one you masturbate with.”
He laughed. “Sign it, start the process, and you can sleep on something much softer—or much harder.” He glanced at himself, and my heart skipped.
I couldn’t resign for dick. I had a retirement plan, I had a career.
I couldn’t give all that away for rumored good dick.
Or maybe I could. Maybe I’d be reckless for once.
Fuck. Was I really about to risk it all on a man who’d cuffed me to his wall?
The man whose boner had been pressing into me through his jeans.
I felt like a Disney princess about to sign her life away for a man who turned out to be the evilest person in the world and then found herself locked away inside some ivory tower.
“I can’t,” I said.
“I figured you’d say that,” he said. “You’re like a forbidden fruit. I can’t touch you because you’re toxic, because you’d be poisonous. It would kill me.”