36. Alina
36
ALINA
H e thrusts deep inside me, his eyes on my face.
If I had to describe Tomas to a stranger, the first word I’d use is controlled. He’s not controlled now. His famed composure has vanished. His face is contorted with desire, and his eyes blaze as they rest on me.
He’s looking at me as if I’m the only woman in the world.
And it’s addictive. I want to capture this feeling in my hands and never let go.
My arousal spikes dangerously. “Ali,” Tomas says my name like a prayer. His mouth crashes down on mine, and his fingers pluck my nipples again. “You know what you told me last night?”
Oh God, what else did I say? What secret truth did I confess? “Tell me.”
His eyes glitter. “You told me that you masturbate thinking of me.” He reaches over my head and unties my hands. “I want you to do it now. I want you to pet your pretty little clit while I fuck you hard.”
If it were a request, I might be too embarrassed to fulfill it. But it’s not. It’s an order, and I promised to obey.
I flex my wrists to ease their slight stiffness, and Tomas gently but firmly guides my right hand to my pussy. His eyes rest on me, hot and heavy and hooded, as I graze my wet folds with my fingertips. He pushes into me, slow and steady, as I touch my swollen clit, my hips jerking at the contact. Tomas got me to the edge with his mouth and his tongue, and I’m so sensitive.
“I’m going to come,” I whisper, feeling the familiar tight spiral build inside me.
He cups my chin and looks deep into my eyes. “Yes,” he says, his lips finding mine. “Come for me, Ali.”
He speeds up his thrusts, his breathing harsh and labored. My muscles start to convulse around him, and he hisses. “Yes,” he says, his fingers gripping my hips. “Yes, fuck yes. Keep your eyes on me, dolcezza. I want to see you fall apart.”
My orgasm hits me with the force of a tidal wave. I roll from one climax to another, barely aware of Tomas grunting out his pleasure as he comes. I stare into his gray eyes, and there’s only one thought in my head.
This didn’t feel like casual sex. It felt entirely too real.
I must fall asleep. When I wake up again, Tomas isn’t next to me. I get out of bed and look around for my clothes, but they’re nowhere to be seen. My handbag is on a chair, but my phone is missing. I frown. Did I leave it in the restaurant? No, that’s not right. I have a clear memory of talking to Tomas after dinner. I was talking to him when?—
I draw a blank.
My mind offers fragments of images, but when I try to focus on them, they disappear into thin air. Have you ever tried to remember a dream after you wake up and find that the harder you try to hold on to the details, the faster they dissipate? This feels like that.
Except this wasn’t a dream. Something happened last night. I was too distracted earlier to dwell on the maddening gap in my memory. After all, I did wake up next to a shirtless Tomas, his hotness overriding everything else. But now, the questions are piling up. I went to dinner in Castello. Got drunk, sat on a bench, called Tomas. But why did I end up in his house? Tomas lives in Giudecca; my apartment in Dorsoduro would have been much closer. Why bring me here? And what happened to my phone?
There’s a folded T-shirt on the mattress that I’m assuming is for me. I put it on—it hangs to mid-thigh—and head downstairs in search of answers.
Tomas is in the kitchen, his cat Freccia sprawled in a heap next to him. I enter the room, and she gets up and comes over to investigate, sniffing the air near me before sniffing disdainfully and resuming her nap. Tomas laughs. “That’s my cat for you.”
“I think you’re maligning her. She’s hanging out with you, isn’t she?”
“She’s hoping that I’ll drop a piece of pancetta on the floor.” He shakes his head wryly. “Give her a treat, and she’ll become your new favorite person.”
I bribe Freccia. She daintily eats the treat from my palm and then demands petting. I oblige, looking around the large, sunlit space as I do so. Tomas’s kitchen is filled with plants and gleaming copper appliances. At home, mine is the size of a closet. One day… One day, after I buy Tomas out, I’ll find a proper apartment. I’ll fill it with plants in colorful pots, fragrant candles, and walls of books.
Freccia decides she’s done with me and leaves the room, her tail held high. I straighten, and Tomas holds up a mug. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please. What time is it?”
“A little after noon.”
“Noon?” I repeat, shocked. The gym has been open for hours, and I’m not there. In the two years it’s been open, that’s never happened. “I need to head to Groff’s.”
“Why?” He hands me a cup. “Omar is handling it.”
“Omar?”
“You know him. Average height, curly black hair, hangs out in the weights area.”
I do know Omar. He joined the gym more than a year ago and works out at least four times a week, but he’s very quiet, and he’s never said more than a word to me. “How do you know Omar?”
“He works with me. He’s one of Leo’s guys.”
I freeze, my cup midway to my lips. There’s only one Leo I know. “Leo Cesari, the same guy who’s engaged to my friend Rosa? That Leo? He works with you in the mafia?” The dots start to connect. “Hang on. You told me Simon made a pass at the enforcer’s fiancée, and that’s how you got involved. It was Rosa, wasn’t it? Which makes Leo the mafia enforcer.”
“Yes.” Tomas looks unfazed by my obvious shock. “To speed this up, Rosa’s friend Valentina, who I believe you’ve met, isn’t a web developer; she’s our hacker. And Dante, her husband, is Antonio’s second-in-command. Daniel handles our legal stuff, and Joao, who has visited your gym at least twice, also works for us. And the doctor last night…”
“What doctor?”
“Matteo was here when we got back. You don’t remember him?”
Now that I think about it, there was someone here. I can’t remember his face, but he was kind. He took my temperature and told me to pee into a?—
“Why was there a doctor here?” I demand, shock jolting down my spine. “I don’t understand. I drank too much, and I just needed to sleep it off. Why did you call a doctor, and why did he need to take a urine sample? He took a urine sample, didn’t he? I’m not imagining that part?”
“He did,” Tomas confirms.
My head is spinning. What the hell is going on? One minute, I’m in a pleasant sex haze, and the next, I feel like the foundations of my world are cracking. “What aren’t you telling me, Tomas?”
He sighs, his eyes troubled. “You weren’t drunk, Ali. At least, I don’t think so. I think someone put a date rape drug into your wine last night.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. The only person who came near my glass of wine was Gemma. Why would she want to drug me?”
He looks at me steadily. “Do you remember the men trying to abduct you?”
“Men?” A frisson of alarm runs through me, and a fuzzy memory drags itself to the forefront. A boat gliding into the dock, its engine cut off, its lights out. Two men dressed in black coming toward me. I start to tremble. “I don’t understand… Who were they? Why would they want to abduct me? Why would anyone want to abduct me?”
He puts his arm around me, and I lean into his body. His strength. He smells like sandalwood and soap, a clean male aroma that’s both comforting and a turn-on. I know this is just supposed to be about sex, and I’ve already overstayed my welcome, but I can’t bring myself to pull away. Right now, I need comfort in the worst sort of way, and Tomas is here, as solid as a rock, offering his shoulder for me to lean on. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I intend to find out. Matteo should call me in the next hour with the results of your sample.”
“What about the men? Can we ask them?”
“They’re dead.”
I pull away from his embrace and stare at him. “They’re dead? How?”
“I killed them,” he says flatly.
My vision turns fuzzy around the edges. “You killed them,” I repeat in disbelief. I open my mouth and close it. Please let this be a bad dream because I can’t quite believe what I heard. “Why?”
“Because they tried to abduct you,” he replies, his voice hard.
He’s being so matter-of-fact. He’s acting like their deaths are no big deal, and it’s never been more obvious to me that we live in two very different worlds. Those men were alive last night, and they’re dead now. Tomas killed two men, and he doesn’t seem to care. Not at all.
Who did I just sleep with?
The way I’m feeling must be visible on my face. “Alina,” Tomas says quietly. “I know this is hard for you to understand, but?—”
I take a step back. “It’s not hard to understand.” I feel sick. Bile fills my mouth. I slept with Tomas less than twelve hours after he murdered two men. Even worse, I liked it. I liked him. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Before I…” My voice trails off, and I can’t finish the thought. “Why did you hide it from me?”
An expression of hurt flashes over his face. “I didn’t set out to hide anything from you,” he says. “I was going to tell you everything when you woke up. And then you dropped your towel.”
That’s a reasonable explanation, but I’m in no mood to hear it. Right now, all I want to do is flee. I take another step back. “I need to go,” I blurt out. “Where are my clothes?” I’m not looking forward to wearing the vomit-splattered garments, but I can hardly go dressed in Tomas’s T-shirt and nothing else.
“I sent them to the cleaners,” he replies. “Paulina went shopping this morning, so…” He disappears from the room for a moment and returns with a paper bag. In it, I find underwear, a pair of yoga pants, and a new Groff’s T-shirt, all my size.
“Thank you,” I say grudgingly. Who’s Paulina? “So, you’re a killer but a thoughtful one?”
His lips twitch. “Your phone ended up in the canal last night. Here’s a replacement. Valentina synced it up, so it should have all your info on it.”
Damn it, he’s making it really hard to dislike him. From the day he walked into my gym, I’ve been trying my best to hate Tomas Aguilar, and at every turn, he thwarts me.
“Thank you,” I repeat stiffly.
And then I leave.