Chapter 20 Emmaleen
I’m still in Giovanni Bavga’s lap with his come still inside me when my brain comes back online.
I was semi-coherent during the sex. Or should I call it the “claiming”?
Because that’s what Giovanni was doing just now, marking his territory like some primal alpha male.
He wasn’t even fully focused on me—his attention was locked on his cousin across the pool.
I only caught it by accident when pleasure crashed through me and I turned my head, my body still pulsing around him.
Rico. Standing there in the shadows by the cabana, jerking himself off with slow, deliberate strokes. His dark eyes burning with something that made my skin crawl—not just lust, but something deeper, more twisted. He was staring directly at us, at me, at the place where Giovanni and I were joined.
And when I twisted back to look at Giovanni, the realization hit me like ice water. They weren’t looking at me at all. They were staring at each other across that expanse of glowing blue water—locked in some silent battle I couldn’t begin to understand.
Two predators, using my body as the battlefield for whatever sick game they’d been playing since childhood. The tension between them was electric, dangerous, loaded with decades of hatred and rivalry that suddenly made me feel like nothing more than a pawn.
The world filters in slowly—the splash of bodies in the pool, distant laughter, the smell of chlorine and weed and expensive cologne.
My thighs are trembling. My heart’s still racing.
And I’m sitting on a mobster’s dick at a sex party while wearing nothing but his T-shirt and the world’s most inadequate thong.
What the actual fuck am I doing?
The most disturbing part isn’t even that I let it happen.
It’s that I’m already cataloging the sensations, filing them away like rare books I’ll want to revisit later.
The weight of him inside me. The burn of his stubble against my neck.
The way his fingers tangled in my hair, not gentle but not cruel either—just.. . claiming.
Twice. Twice in one night I’ve let him take me. First against the door, and now in front of a crowd where anyone could have seen if they’d looked hard enough. Both times, I didn’t just let him—I wanted it. I arched into his touch, I came apart under his hands, I enjoyed it.
Sister Margaret would need smelling salts if she could see me now. Former bakery assistant, now performing live sex shows for the criminal elite. What a career pivot.
Giovanni shifts beneath me, and I have to bite my lip to keep from squeaking.
We’re still joined, his cock still inside me, and every tiny movement sends aftershocks through my nervous system.
His hand traces idle patterns on my bare thigh, just below where the T-shirt ends.
Casual. Possessive. Like I’m already his favorite toy.
“Comfortable?” he asks, his voice low and amused.
I shouldn’t be. But I am. “Mmm,” is all I manage, which makes him chuckle.
Looking around to avoid the mobster’s gaze, I notice that Rico guy is gone now. The crowd has thinned. People drifting away to more private spaces to continue whatever debauchery they’ve started here.
Giovanni seems different too—calmer, more relaxed. The tense, angry energy that vibrated through him earlier has dissipated, leaving behind something almost... pleasant.
My eyes drift to the wisteria tunnel where he recited the rules for tonight like they were gospel. Purple-blue flowers cascade from twisted vines, creating a living cathedral of color and scent. It’s the kind of place that belongs in a fairytale, not a crime lord’s backyard.
Giovanni follows my gaze. “My grandmother planted that the year we moved to the estate,” he says, surprising me with this voluntary personal information. “I was three.”
I try to picture Giovanni as a toddler and fail completely. He probably came out of the womb in a tailored suit, glaring at the doctor for failing to maintain proper sterile protocol.
“There used to be a big swing in the middle,” he continues, his voice taking on a quality I haven’t heard before. “The kind you find on a porch. My grandfather would sit out there for hours, just looking up at the blooms. They were much smaller then.” He pauses. “That’s my only real memory of him.”
The revelation feels strangely intimate—more intimate, somehow, than the fact that he’s still inside me. I don’t know what to do with this glimpse of humanity, this crack in his perfect mobster facade.
And then, out of nowhere, words start spilling from his mouth:
“How tenderly the twilight falls
About our dear home’s flowery walls
Upon the garden bowers
The breeze sighs over beds of bloom
My darling, leave the dusky room
Come out among the flowers.”
The poetry hangs in the air between us, unexpected and beautiful. I’m transfixed, unable to reconcile this moment with everything else I know about him. His voice has a different cadence when reciting—softer, more melodic.
“What is that?” I blurt. Astounded that those beautiful words came from the same mouth that called me his “whore” not thirty minutes ago. “Did your mother write that?”
“No,” Giovanni says. “It’s something old.
My grandmother, she was the gardener when I was little.
She used to recite that poem. Often enough that it’s been burned into my brain, I guess.
It’s long, but I don’t remember it all. It’s about the wisteria.
” He beings reciting again before I can gather my thoughts:
“See, darling, in this tender gloom
The clusters of its purple bloom
Peep out amid the green;
A comely summer robe it weaves
Of sturdy twigs and tender leaves,
With splendid blooms between.”
He sighs. But it’s softer than anything I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth. “If you read all the verses, it’s about second chances.” Suddenly he’s looking at me. Those intense green eyes of his looking directly into mine as even more words spill out of him…
“How rich and full a life must beat
In its green branches! fair and sweet
It flowered in the spring;
And yet, ere summer days are done,
It spreadeth to the summer sun
A second blossoming.”
I can’t even breathe.
Giovanni begins to look uncomfortable. “Because… some species of wisteria bloom twice, right? If you prune them correctly. Once in the spring, one in the summer.”
“I… I didn’t know that.” What is happening here? Who the hell is this man? This mobster who recites his grandmother’s poetry from memory, who reminisces about his grandfather, who knows the blooming patterns of wisteria, who fucks me in public while maintaining eye contact with his enemy?
My brain starts spinning wildly inappropriate scenarios.
Maybe he’s not really a mobster. Maybe this is all an elaborate act.
Maybe he’s undercover FBI or something, playing a role.
Maybe he’ll fall in love with me and whisk me away from all this.
Maybe I’m his Pretty Woman and he’s my Richard Gere and we’ll end up on a fire escape somewhere while I overcome my fear of heights.
Jesus Christ, Emmaleen, get a grip. This isn’t a rom-com. This is real life, and in real life, men like Giovanni Bavga don’t fall in love with women like me. They use them, discard them, and move on.
I’m here for one reason only: $31,750. That’s the prize at the end of this fucked-up rainbow. That’s what I need to focus on. Not the poetry, not the sex, not the way his hands feel on my skin.
Just the money.
Once I get that money, I’m gone. So gone. I’ll leave Pennsylvania and never look back. Never think about Cleveland again. Never be at anyone’s mercy again. I’ll go to Florida or California or fucking Alaska—somewhere warm or interesting or just far away from all of this.
I can handle being his plaything for a week. I can talk dirty for him, let him boss me around, be whatever fantasy he’s projecting onto me. I can even enjoy the sex—might as well, right? But I can’t forget what this is. A transaction. A business arrangement with a very specific end date.
Six more days. That’s it. Six more days of Giovanni Bavga, and then I’m free. Twenty-one days until homelessness. Five demerits left. $31,750 on the line.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” Giovanni murmurs against my ear, his breath warm on my skin.
I force a smile. “Just… enjoying the view.”
He hums noncommittally, his fingers still tracing intricate, lazy patterns on my thigh, each touch sending small electrical currents through my oversensitive skin.
Then, without warning or preamble, he’s standing up—taking me with him in one fluid motion as though I weigh nothing at all.
My bare feet find the cool concrete floor of the cabana, the chill a stark contrast to the heat still radiating between us as he casually shoves his dick back inside his trunks with practiced efficiency.
Come is spilling down my thighs once again, warm and viscous against my skin, a physical reminder of what just happened between us. Just as suddenly as he stood, he picks me back up and starts walking with purpose, his stride confident and unhurried.
I hook my legs around him out of pure instinct, wrapping them securely around his waist, but I quickly realize I’m in no danger of falling. He’s got his large hands firmly cupped under my ass, holding me close to his body with an effortless strength that makes my breath catch.
“What are we doing?” I ask, my words coming out embarrassingly shaky and breathless, betraying the lingering effect he has on me. My heart hammers against my ribs as he carries me away from the cabana, his steps deliberate on the stone pathway.