Chapter 10
Valentina
I gasped the instant his sinful mouth made contact with my quivering lips.
The breath left my lungs. I was dizzy, lightheaded.
Too stunned to think straight. One moment I had been anxious that we’d been caught, and the next moment, he had me pressed up against a wall, his knee pushing my legs apart, his hands on my back, his tongue prying my mouth open.
It all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to protest. Not that I wanted to. My body welcomed the way he roughly took charge of the situation. The way he protectively placed his large hands between my back and the wall.
He overwhelmed my senses. There was something animalistic about the way he’d taken me with barely any warning. His muscular frame was large enough to hide me, while his kiss created enough of a scene to distract anyone who happened on us.
The heat of his sensual mouth put me in a daze and my knees buckled. My eyes fluttered closed, and I moaned. Actually moaned.
This was betrayal of the worst kind. Kissing my sworn enemy was bad enough—even if we were trapped in an engagement. What was worse than me kissing Enzo was the fact that I was enjoying it.
Ordinarily, I would have pushed him away. Under any other circumstances, I would have probably kneed him in the groin or smacked him. But I didn’t want this to end.
As he sheltered me with his huge body, I went limp against him, surrendering to the onslaught of his kiss.
With me backed up against the wall, this was a repeat of the way he’d intimidated me upstairs in his apartment.
He’d pinned me up against a wall in his apartment right before he’d patted me down.
Renewed desire flooded me.
I could practically hear the sound of my heart beating wildly in my chest. My pulse quickened, heat rushing through my veins as he deepened the kiss with a masterful swirl of his tongue.
Wetness pooled between my legs and my entire body ached. Because this was so much and yet, not enough. Everything was a blur of sensation as I lost myself between Enzo’s hard body and the brick wall at my back.
I knew he was only kissing me to shield me from the councilman.
But this didn’t feel like a distraction.
Enzo was kissing me like he meant it. Kissing me as if this was real.
There was so much burning desire in the way he held me.
So much animal need in the way his tongue dragged against mine as he feasted on me without shame.
Nobody had ever kissed me like this. I could practically taste his lust and the sheer force of it made my body tremble.
Suddenly I heard a male voice curse. No doubt it was the councilman having caught up with us. I froze against Enzo, the reminder that we had an audience paralyzing me.
“Dammit! Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to interrupt,” the councilman muttered before I heard him fast-walking in the other direction.
After a few moments, Enzo wrenched his mouth from mine so quickly that it felt like he couldn’t wait to get away from me.
That was cold water over me, the silent rejection chilling me.
Sheesh, I was an idiot. Of course he wasn’t into it.
Enzo had been faking so that the councilman would believe that he was too wrapped up in his lover to notice anything else.
My entire body throbbed with need as he stepped back away from me. “Nelson’s out of sight. Looks like he’s headed into the building.”
“You should catch up to him. I can walk the rest of the way to my car,” I said, fighting the breathlessness in my voice.
My chest heaved as I worked to get air back into my lungs.
As desperate as I was for oxygen, I didn’t want him to see the effect that he had on me.
Let him think that the kiss meant absolutely nothing to me.
Just another ruse needed to protect the family business. Nothing more. Nothing less.
“You’re sure?” Enzo asked, his tone even and steady. As if he hadn’t just kissed me senseless.
“I’m sure,” I forced out.
While I was practically melting, Enzo carelessly adjusted his jacket.
He seemed so utterly unfazed by that kiss that I almost wondered if it had even happened at all.
But I still felt the heat of his mouth on my tingling lips.
That heat reminded me that one brief moment of heaven had been all too real.
I needed to get out of here before I made an even bigger fool of myself.
After taking a few seconds to smooth a hand down my skirt, I forced myself to walk away from him without another word or a backward glance.
Strutting around the apartment building, I made my way to the parking lot at the back of the property.
My chauffeur materialized to open the passenger door for me. To anyone looking, he looked like an ordinary chauffeur, but he was just as much my personal bodyguard as he was my driver. Giving him a quick nod of acknowledgment, I slid into the back seat of the luxury car.
When he got into the front seat the chauffeur asked, “Where to?”
“Work,” I responded, still flustered.
We drove out of the parking lot in the direction of Romano Hospitality headquarters.
Since it was late morning, there wasn’t much traffic to get through.
That was for the best because I’d only get jittery in traffic, lost in my thoughts and feelings of guilt over going behind my father’s back to try and change Enzo’s mind about the wedding.
Despite the smooth drive, I was still on edge, my entire body thrumming. Enzo had taken complete command of me and I hadn’t protested. Not even a little. I had probably made a spectacle of myself as I’d let him kiss me. A shameless, wanton display that made my face heat just thinking about it.
As we got closer to the office, I realized how disheveled I must have looked, so I grabbed a hairbrush and my compact from my handbag to quickly tame my hair and check on the state of my makeup.
My eyes widened in the mirror as I saw that my nude pink lipstick was smeared. Apparently, the pricey brand was supposed to be kiss-proof, but it was clear that turned out to be false advertising. Face heating with embarrassment, I retrieved my lipstick to hastily reapply it.
The chauffeur parked in one of the executive spots in the underground garage of the Romano Hospitality building and I ducked inside, heading up to my office.
While Romano Hospitality was a legitimate business, it was still just a front for our underground operations.
All of my father’s casinos, hotels, and restaurants were under the Romano Hospitality umbrella—making us look respectable to the outside world that didn’t look too closely.
Despite the legitimacy though, we laundered not only our reputations through the business but also our money.
The front protected us, which was why on paper, I was nothing more than a respectable executive at one of the most successful businesses on the East Coast.
Once inside my expansive office, I made sure that the door was locked.
Usually, I’d leave it open so that my assistant could walk in whenever she needed to, but I didn’t want anyone to see me in this state.
No amount of makeup was going to hide that my face was still flushed, not to mention I was still out of breath.
I could handle anything the workday threw at me, but not this. Not a kiss from Enzo.
Sinking down into the leather chair behind my desk, I forced myself to take several deep breaths.
Suddenly, the phone on my desk rang and I quickly answered it, hoping to dismiss whoever it was on the other end.
“Ms. Romano, your father is on the line for you,” my assistant informed me.
Anxiety took hold, forcing me to take a deep breath. There was no dismissing the caller if the caller was my father. Brushing him off was totally unthinkable.
“I’ll take the call,” I said.
The unease intensified as I wondered if my father was contacting me because he knew.
Knew that I had skipped work this morning to go and talk Enzo out of the engagement.
Going behind my father’s back to do anything was a foolish, dangerous thing to do, but sneaking around to try and break a contract he had drawn up?
That was begging for trouble of the worst kind.
Not only would he have the right to punish me if word got out about my disloyalty, he’d also never trust me again.
Meaning he could strip me of all my power, leaving me as nothing more than a biddable mafia wife if I ended up married to Enzo, and not even that if the engagement fell through.
I could lose my place atop the family empire.
I’d known that trying to bribe Enzo out of this setup was a huge risk, but I’d been so desperate for an out that I didn’t have time to take sensible precautions. Not only did I risk Enzo revealing what I had done, he now also knew about my family connection to that councilman.
Though, of course that meant that I also knew about Enzo’s connection to Councilman Doug Nelson.
I could use that information to force Enzo into silence about this morning.
The problem was, that silence pretty much guaranteed that the wedding was a done deal.
With Enzo’s refusal to take my bribe, and the intel I planned to use to make this morning go away, I didn’t have any more cards to play right now.
We both knew too much about the other to back out of this.
The realization that I was well and truly trapped sent a burning anger through me.
To think that Enzo De Luca had used my moment of weakness to steal a kiss.
He had well and truly won this round. Conceding defeat, however, was not an option.
I’d either find my way out of this, or use it to my advantage.
At least, that was what I hoped right before I heard my father’s voice on the other end.
“Valentina,” he greeted.
I swallowed hard, praying that he was in the dark about what I’d been up to earlier with Enzo. “Morning, Papa.”