Page 28 of King of Omen

He preoccupied my waking hours.

I kept replaying his sensual body, his lips, his hands, those freaking bedroom eyes.

Oh, his touch.

The way his fingers had traced the curve of my neck and his lips grazed my cheek, leaving a trail of fire that had seared me to the core.

Other times, I remembered the tenderness of his smile on his sensual mouth from our time on Bianca’s terrace.

At times, the echoes of his voice, a seductive rumble, would send shivers down my spine as if he were with me, whispering in my ear.

While haunting my daydreams, he was also ghosting into my night reveries.

He had become my incubus, the silhouette that flitted into my dreams unbidden.

Inciting, fuck, igniting my sheet-clutching and writhing erotic fantasies.

Of him holding me down, kissing me, stroking my heated skin, nipping my neck, lashing my nipples and tonguing my clit.

They were incandescent dreams that lit up my nights like a thousand stars. They left me panting and yearning for something that might never be.

Whichever form he took, Lorenzo was an omnipresent figure in my thoughts, a seduction, a temptation that I couldn’t resist, no matter how hard I tried.

One night, in my tiny cottage, overcome with curiosity, I stalked him online with a Google search.

Little was written about him apart from an obscure Italian newspaper mentioning his influence over several business dealings in Naples.

I found links to a one-page company website, which I perused, but it was sketchy in detail.

Yet, from the little I’d gleaned from Bianca, he and his family were influential beyond measure.

She’d been their linchpin in Australia while he led their European operations. From the glint in her eye and the hints she’d dropped over the years, not all of it had been legal or above board.

It hadn’t fazed me much; heck, I’d be born into a vicious biker clan.

I’d seen vice in all its forms and phases by age ten.

But my mother and I had run from that life and abandoned that world, keeping our lives a secret and away from the monsters.

Likewise, I sensed Lorenzo was a man of secrets, a man of power, and a man who was, in all likelihood, not to be trusted. Yet still, he haunted my every dream, his image burned into my mind like an indelible brand.

I shuddered, remembering our brief encounter, which infused me with need, then laughed out loud, recalling his morbid humour.

However, I was also aware that while he may have provided a comforting and passionate escape from a fleeting moment, he was not the kind of man offering any foundation for a future.

There be dragons here, I thought, for only heartache and devastation would come with loving such a man.

After all, I had life experience with being devoted to a charismatic man who had the gravitas to lead hundreds, if not thousands, to enact their will.

Besides, Lorenzo was outside my scope and purview.

He was a sophisticated operator who lived halfway around the world.

That was my heart song as I tried to convince myself that this was just a fleeting fancy, a product of my heightened emotions.

But trying as hard as I did, I couldn’t erase the gleam in his eye. Nor the curl of his sensual lips, the rumble of his gravelled utterance, the way he’d spoken to me, the way he’d raked his eyes over me.

The heart wants what it wants, I thought.

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