15. Zarina
ZARINA
F or one, infinite moment, I think I misread the last few days.
Tamayo doesn’t find me attractive. Or she’s a born flirt who doesn’t actually want to bend me over her knee. Or worse, she’ll say no out of deference to my tarnished emotional state, as if I don’t know what I need in this moment. As if that wouldn’t be another choice ripped away from me in the long list of my life.
But then she flexes her hands on my waist.
“My hands are on you, princess,” Tamayo rumbles.
I arch into her fingers, but she doesn’t react. She’s wearing that infuriating smirk on her lips again, that unbothered air she’s had since she sat on her throne and raked her burnt-bark gaze down my naked thighs. I scratch through her undercut, down her neck, under the collar of her jacket and shirt. “Touch me.”
She chuckles, deep and raspy, the sound vibrating from her chest into mine. “I can’t read minds, princess.”
I huff and lean forward until my nose hovers over hers. I’ve been clear as day—erase him. Scrub away his touch with hers. What more do I need to say? My skirt rides up my thighs as her breath fans my lips. The car is warm, but the air is still cooler than the heat pooling under her hands. I drag my nose across her cheek to her ear, my lips brushing the lobe?—
“Zarina.” Tamayo’s voice is hard as a whip. My whole body freezes on impact, a shudder rippling over me a second later. She cups my chin in a gentle hand, so opposite the grip that held it earlier, and guides me to sit straight again. She furrows her brows, searching my face. “What do you want?”
I roll my eyes, and she clucks her tongue. “I told you,” I say.
Tamayo studies my face, eyes catching on the smarting bruises bracketing my chin. “You want to own yourself, your body.”
“Yes.” I roll forward an inch.
Her grip on my waist tightens. “You want to erase him.”
“His touch, yes.” I’ll erase his presence from this Earth later. For now, this will do.
Her fingers smooth over my jaw to thread in my hair, and she leans in, in, in. Until her lips graze my cheekbone. Until her heartbeat is pulsing through her chest into mine. Until the distance between us is a sliver of space that feels too close and too far. Her words brush against my cheek. “So take what you want, princess.”
I frown and try to pull back, but her hands hold me in place. “But I want you to do it.”
Tamayo chuckles under her breath and settles back against the seat again, her fingers leave my hair and trail down my arm to rest on my waist again. Unbothered again. “I don’t think you’ve earned that yet, hm.”
“Tamayo.” I harden my voice.
She arches a brow. “Take what you need.”
This has never happened before. “Seriously?”
“Sorry, princess.” She rolls her tongue over her molars. “I only fuck good girls who use their words.”
“I did! ”
“If you had…” Tamayo murmurs. She hasn’t moved, still laid back against the seat as if Zarina Gallo, mob princess with curves wrapped in gold and sin, isn’t sitting in her goddamn lap. I don’t beg. Not for anyone. Her fingers dig into the top of my ass, pulling the fabric of my dress and making my skirt bunch up even more. At this point, my panties are on full display. And so is the darkening wet spot I would very much like Tamayo to take care of. But she stays stubbornly in place and keeps talking. “I might’ve skimmed my hands up your legs, under your pretty dress.”
Her nails scrape up my back, skimming over fabric until they meet skin. The small tease has me arching my back again, wishing it was everywhere.
“I might’ve brushed my thumbs along the crease of your thighs, played with the hem of your panties.”
My hips roll forward of their own accord.
“How do you prefer it, princess?” She helps me rock, forward and back over the harsh fabric of her trousers, eyes lidded as she smirks up at me. “Slow and teasing? Hard and fast?”
“Tamayo.” My voice is more of a whine than I intend.
“I think you like to tease, be teased. Like to push buttons until your partners snap.” She scratches up my spine as I hold tight behind her neck. My hands burrow under the collar of her shirt again, seek out what little skin I can find as her thumbs slip under the edges of my dress, so close to my breasts that it’s more maddening than igniting. I circle my hips until I find the exact right spot, pressing down and dragging my clit over the seam of her slacks.
Tamayo keeps talking in that low, taunting voice, the timbre vibrating through my body, down to my core. “And when they snap? You lie back while they do all the work. A princess playing at being queen.”
“That’s—no—not true.” I shake my head, breath stuttering. Sweat dapples my brow and gathers at my nape, and my thighs are burning with each undulation of my hips. All I want is her hands on me, flicking my nipple, clutching my ass, finding their way under my dress. Just the thought of it sends shudders through me.
“Look at you.” She scoffs, lifting a hand to brush my hair behind my ear, patronizing. “You barely know what to do without me. Don’t you wish I’d take over?”
I don’t want to agree, but gods, yes . It’s not enough. I need faster, harder, more . I try to snake my hand out from under her collar to do what she refuses, but she presses back and traps it. I try to lean closer, legs widening, body searching for friction, but Tamayo’s hand slides up to grip my hair in a fist and hold me at a distance. I bite down on a whine.
She forces my gaze to hers. “Use your words, princess.”
“Your hands,” I breathe.
“They’re on you.” She traces her free hand down my back.
“No.” I can’t hold back the whine this time, chin dropping in frustration.
“Head up. Look at me.” Tamayo holds my gaze, her pupils blown wide, black swallowing the brown. She tugs my hair, and it sends shivers through my scalp. We’re inches apart, my hips circling, tension gathering in a whirlpool but never cresting into a tidal wave. She guides my face closer, fingers teasing the top of my ass, inches from where I want her. “You look so good riding my thigh. All you ever have to do is ask, Zarina, and I’m happy to help.”
I can’t hold back anymore, can’t stop the word from spilling out of me. “Please.”
A wide, satisfied smirk spreads over Tamayo’s face. “Please what, princess?”
I dig my fingers into her skin, trying to pull her closer. I’ve never begged once in my life, not for anyone, but it tumbles out of me, desperation and want cracking my voice. “Please help me.”
She doesn’t budge. “Help you what?”
I press my clit harder against her thigh, and it jolts up my body, into my throat. “Can’t come, not enough.”
“Good girl.” Tamayo closes the distance between us for the first time since I climbed in her lap and presses a kiss to my cheek. She speaks into my ear, “And what do I do with good girls, hm?”
“Fuck them.” My pussy clenches in anticipation.
Before I can register what’s happening, Tamayo’s lifting me off her lap and maneuvering me to turn around and sit, my back against her chest. She wraps a hand around my throat without an ounce of pressure, simply guiding my head to rest against her shoulder as her fingers drag up, up, up the inside of my thigh.
“That’s right.” Tamayo bites my earlobe, and my ass presses into her. She holds me close as she swipes up the seam of me over my panties, the fabric soaked through. My breath hitches. Her teeth skim the skin behind my jaw. “I fuck them.”
And then she finally, finally touches me.
If I couldn’t stop myself begging, there’s no hope to quiet the moan that falls from my mouth. Tamayo’s grip twitches on my throat, like the sound is affecting her more than anything else I’ve done. She circles my clit, and I roll forward into her. I grab her wrist with both hands and ride her fingers, biting down on another too-loud moan.
“Ah, ah.” She adjusts her grip on my neck, pressing her thumb on my chin until I give in, mouth falling open with a mewl. “That’s right, princess. Let me hear you.”
My body twitches of its own accord.
Tamayo hums in my ear, fingers stroking harder, my hips setting the pace.
Her grasp on my chin keeps my mouth open, and words tumble out, broken and breathless. “Ooh, yes, Tamayo. Fuck me, please.”
“Good girl,” she rumbles. Her lips find my neck as she releases my chin, fingers slipping down to my chest. She licks below my ear at the same time she scrapes her nails over the thin fabric of my dress covering my nipple. My body shudders and throbs.
“Harder.” I don’t know what I mean—her hands, her teeth. I just need .
She answers. Her hand presses harder, rubbing faster over my clit; her teeth dig into the column of my neck; and her fingers pinch my nipple and pull, making my back arch and shooting sensation straight to my core.
And the whirlpool finally crests into a tidal wave.
I go taut as a bowline pulled tight in a storm until it snaps with the force of the wave, and then I’m tipping over, swirling under, lost at sea. My orgasm washes over me. Tamayo doesn’t stop, holding me tight by my chest, teeth in my neck, fingers ushering me through like a lighthouse. My jaw drops wide, and a high mewl trembles out of me.
Small pecks litter my neck, and nails tickle up and down my arms. My chest heaves. I turn my face into Tamayo’s ear, and a kiss lands on my forehead. Something warm soothes through me. Something unnerving in its unfamiliarity.
Tamayo’s fingers leave my panties, drifting up my dress. I crack my eyes open to watch as she opens her mouth, her gaze holding mine captive. My wetness glistens over her knuckles, and when she brings them to her mouth to lick them clean, a sound unbecoming of a mafia princess crawls up my throat.
I look from her lips to her fingers and back to her lips. They’re shiny with spit and me, beckoning me to lean in. She’s inches away. The space is negligible, the distance between us simple to close. To taste myself on her tongue. I reach forward? —
A knock cuts through the dense fog of lust.
I snap backward. At some point between when we started and when I finished, the car stopped moving. At some point, I forgot we were in a car.
“We’re home,” Pat’s voice calls through the window.
Tamayo takes my weight under my elbows and helps me move onto the bench seat. I let her, yanking my skirt down like she didn’t just have her hands on my pussy, on my breasts. I glance back to the door then to Tamayo reaching under the seat and pulling out a packet of wet wipes. She holds them out to me with a blank look, no longer smug nor lidded nor anything. It’s worse than the unbothered smirk.
I wave off the offer. “What does this mean?”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything.” She takes a couple for herself, cleaning her hands then her pants. “We’re consenting adults, and we both wanted this.”
“And we’re fake engaged.”
She stuffs the dirty wipes into her pocket and slips the packet back under the seat. “This doesn’t affect our deal.”
Deal. Like what we did was just business. Detached and impersonal and nothing.
“So we just sweep it under the rug?” I ask. “Never speak of it again?”
Tamayo cocks her head. “Do you want more?”
I swallow hard. No. Yes. Maybe. “I don’t know.”
“Let me know when you do.” She leans across me and opens the door without another word.
Pat stands on the other side, face blank except for the stern set of their jaw. I sit still for a moment, panties cooling against my skin, somehow both arousing and nasty at the same time. I don’t know why, but annoyance simmers under my skin. This wasn’t nothing. It was something. I just don’t know what .
All I know is the black hole inside me that craves without logic gnashes its teeth, just as greedy as it’s always been. And it wants so much more. But I’m not sure if it should.
“Fine.” I twist out of the car to stand on shaky feet.
“Good night, princess,” Tamayo calls after me.
I roll my eyes and stride out of the garage, Pat on my heels and Darius’s watchful gaze following me like I might turn around any moment and crack Tamayo across the jaw. While that might feel good for a moment, it wouldn’t help the cum still wet in my panties. Or the echo of my orgasm thrumming in my veins.
Marcus who? My body can only think of Andrea Tamayo.