3. Valentin
3
VALENTIN
The bell-like chimes of my phone roused me from a deep sleep. I rolled over to snatch it off my bedside table, immediately missing the warmth of Angelo by my side.
Angelo
I’m sending her to my father’s.
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. What the fuck time was it? 4:00 a.m. — 11:00 p.m. in Yorkfield. With a swipe on an app on my phone, I turned on the lights, then immediately dimmed them to a soft glow.
Angelo and I had been traveling the world apart and together since we’d become lovers six years ago. His single-minded focus no longer surprised me. But sending Ana to his father was a mistake.
She was tempestuous on her best days, and a brat on her worst, and Enrico would eat her alive. Or she would eat him. Either way, they’d leave the family villa a cratered, burning pit by the time they were done.
Moi
He’s a misogynist prick.
Angelo
She can’t stay here.
It’s too dangerous.
My jaw clenched. Was it too dangerous because the Russos intended to dismantle the Costa empire brick by brick and Ana was part of that? Or was it too dangerous because Angelo was in spitting range of his obsession and couldn’t resist?
I should be jealous of the slip of a girl who wanted nothing to do with him or what he did for a living. But I wasn’t. And I hated that I wasn’t, that as much as I cared about Angelo, I didn’t have the emotional depth to hate this obsession that predated our relationship.
My phone rang, and I swiped it open. Angelo’s face filled the screen, handsome and vibrant, even with his tanned face lined with exhaustion.
“Salut,” I said softly. Hi. “Comment vas-tu? ” How are you?
Angelo scrubbed his face and set the phone down, angled so I could see his face as he shrugged out of his jacket.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Selfish asshole,” I teased, softening the instinct to tear into him for not checking the time before he called. Incapable of giving Angelo the affection he craved, I made up for it by suppressing the ruthless instincts that had made me a billionaire.
He loosened his tie, and I could feel his eyes roving over my bare shoulders through the phone.
“She has a lover,” he muttered, changing the subject to what he really wanted to talk about.
“This isn’t a surprise,” I reminded him, forcing myself to keep my voice even, despite my frustration. Angelo had slowly unraveled over the past several weeks as the war between the American branch of his family and the Russos intensified, and he’d increased the level of surveillance on Ana as a consequence.
Ana Costa was a fucking idiot to be sleeping with her best friend’s brother, and the son of a man who’d sworn to salt the earth with the ashes of her family. How Angelo discovered it while she managed to keep it a secret from her father was a mystery to me.
“If she stays…” he trailed off, and looked at me, his eyes haunted. “I don’t have any self-control, my love. I never have. And she deserves better.”
Angelo took off his shirt, and I admired his shoulders, the black lines tattooed over his body, most of them stories, a few a way for him to escape into the euphoria of the needle when the urge for violence became too great for him.
He saw the path of my eyes through the screen and grinned. “How’s your mom?”
“Vas te faire foutre.” Affectionately, I told him to go fuck himself. “She’s well. Wants to know when you’re coming back.” My relationship with my mother was complicated on the best of days, and watching Angelo ship Ana off to Europe for a better life brought back the worst of my memories.
My mother had done the same to me.
“Just your mom wants to know?” he said, pushing me, always pushing me.
I took a deep breath and tried to make the words of affirmation escape my throat, to take flight and reassure him. My mouth opened, closed, then opened again.
Angelo smiled, and all at once, his compassion overwhelmed me. “I miss you too,” he said.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. He forgave me every time for my lack of emotion, the walls I’d erected long ago, when I’d been shipped out of the C?te d’Ivoire and thought I’d lost everything important to me.
“I had dinner with Maman,” I said quietly. “She’s enjoying her retirement.”
Angelo smiled his crooked smile, the one that was only for me, soft and sweet, if such words could ever be used to describe such a brutal man. He bent over, escaping the frame of the phone for a moment, and then stood up again, fully naked.
When he grabbed the phone and moved to his bed, I caught sight of his rock-hard cock. My mouth watered, and I palmed my own.
“Angelo,” I murmured, “don’t be a tease.”
He laughed and set the phone beside the bed. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see his cock, hard and pierced, and already leaking precum.
“Sì,” he agreed as he pumped his hand up and down, lubricating his grip with the precum. “And because—” He cut himself off.
And because he wanted to talk to me about Ana. Worry battled with my need for release. It had been bad enough when Ana was safe in Yorkfield under the care of her abusive father. Now, Angelo was free to unleash his protective instincts, and that meant trouble.
My hand clenched around my cock, and I groaned.
“That’s it,” Angelo coaxed, as he fucked up into his own hand. “Show me how much you miss me,” he said.
I shook the morose thoughts out of my head. Angelo deserved my attention now.
“I wish you were here,” he said, his voice low and raspy, hitting deep in my chest. “I think better when you’re here.”
I looked more closely at his hand—bloody knuckles, like he’d been beating the shit out of a wall. Or a person.
“Angelo, what did you do?”
He grinned, his predatory smile toothy and cruel. “Took out my frustration on some assholes who thought that because Gio was dead, they could steal money from one of his strip clubs.”
Was Ana grateful to him for preserving her legacy? Or was she a spoiled brat who’d lash out now that her father couldn’t beat her to keep her in line, and draw Angelo into the bloody consequences of her actions?
“Look at me,” Angelo growled. “Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it.”
My lips tilted into a smile. “Easier said than done.”
“Touch yourself,” he demanded. I dropped back into my pillows and pleasured myself with hard strokes, my eyes fixed on my lover’s cock. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
My eyes flew to his. How had he known?
Angelo adjusted the phone again, holding it above him, so I could see the ecstasy on his face as he pumped his hand up and down his cock. I could taste his familiar salty musk, smell the spice of his cologne, as we pleasured ourselves, tied by affection, connected by the video on the phone, even as we were an ocean away from one another.
“Valentin!” Angelo cried as he came, his face contorting with bliss as his seed spurted out of his cock.
“Fuck!” I swore as pleasure gathered at the base of my spine. I moaned, and Angelo smiled, never taking his eyes from the screen.
“Give it to me, my love,” he said. “Give me something to remember until I come home to you.”
I came, my eyes squeezing shut on my secret shame. I hadn’t just imagined Angelo. I’d imagined his bitch niece, on her knees, her ass red from my crop, absolutely gorgeous as she cried and choked on my cock.
I was so fucked.