Page 59 of Rubies and Revenge

“What would you do if I said no?” I ask. “Gone downstairs anyway?”

This time, when her fingers inch toward me, I don’t move away. This time, I hold still as prey sensing danger while she skims her nails from my wrist, up my arm, and into my hair, where she brushes it over my ear and curls her fist around it. I suck in a breath, heart beating loud in my ears. I should say stop. I should push away from her. But instead, I wait as my blood simmers in my veins. Pinned without a fight, unable to move my head, and imagining Tamayo leveraging her grip to make me wait, make me beg, make mekneel.

Her lips are still at my ear. “Downstairs doesn’t have what you want, hm? What you need.”

Pat curses behind us, and then the sounds of the club crash into the room for a moment—the door opening as they step out—and then muffle again. Despite watching the mirror, I don’t see them go. I only see Tamayo, her arm flexed across my body, the back of her neck long and graceful. I don’t know why, but the line of it makes something inside me itch with a need to touch, to be touched.

She tilts my head and drags her nose along the length of my jaw, back up to my ear. “Stay with me. Let me lose myself in you.”

“I should leave you hanging like you did me.” I should leave, period. This is different than before. I’m not coping with Marcus’s putrid touch. I’m not distracting Tamayo from the fact I met the Birdwatcher. There’s no ulterior motive between us this time except plaindesire.

She smiles, her lips brushing my lobe. “You don’t want to leave.”

“How do you figure?” I arch a brow, as if that’s not the exact struggle within me. Give in or get out?

Her teeth nip my neck, making a shudder sizzle down my back and shaking my resolve loose. “Hmm, it’s the way your legs keep pressing together, princess. The way goose bumps pop up wherever I touch you.”

I ball my hands into fists on the bartop in an attempt to steel myself. If I push away now, I could walk out. I could do it. “What do you want, Tamayo?”

Her hand resting on the back of my chair slinks over the distance between us to my spine, down to the waistband of my leather skirt, and plays with the seam. “I want a lot of things. I want to watch your skin pinken under my hands, want to taste you, want to give something for that pretty mouth to do other than argue.”

I sit in the chair, surrounded by her body, the smell of vodka and citrus heavy on her breath. And all I want is to be swallowed completely. Devoured until there’s nothing left of me except what she deems necessary. The black, greedy abyss inside of me sated, because she would deem it so and that would be enough. I would be enough. Just me.

Her forehead rests against my temple. “Will you let me?”

“You made me wait for days.” My voice is barely audible. My hands are loosening, and as they do, my convincing logic as to why I should leave jumbles into discordant need.

“Why wait longer?” She turns my head until our noses brush, our lips millimeters apart. I gasp, small and quiet. We haven’tkissed yet, not once, despite my coming on her fingers. Despite her pinning me against the bathroom vanity. This will be the first time, and I want it more than I want her hands on me.

She must know, because her smirk widens the moment I try to lean forward. The movement pulls my hair in her fist, her hand not moving, and the slightest pain tingles over my scalp. Giving in won’t affect our deal or my goal. I can take what I need from her and still do what must be done. Just like my parents, like the Accardis, like Tamayo herself. She might be a gangster, but I’m a mafia princess. My nails are claws and my curves alluring bait, lethal and unassuming.

“Tamayo,” I huff, wanting more, more, more.

“Hm?”

“Kiss me.”

And she does.

ZARINA

She’s soft at first, our lips slotting together and mapping out each dip and curve. I stop holding back, my hands latching onto Tamayo’s arm across my chest, digging my nails into her skin, between her tendons. And when her tongue begs entrance, I grant it. Each press together, every pull apart, builds the flames inside me.

I turn in my seat, and she steps forward between my legs, my leather skirt riding up to allow her entrance. Her free hand digs into my waist at the same time she sucks my tongue into her mouth, and I groan. It’s like the sound flips a switch. One moment, I’m sitting in the chair, one hand in my hair, her other on my waist, and the next, I’m lifted up onto the bar. I grab her shoulders for balance as her touch roams from my waist to my thighs, hooking my knees to wrap around her.

Her lips slip down my neck, over my chest. My corset top pushes my breasts up to greet her mouth.

I arch into her. “Jesus,” I breathe.

“I prefer Daddy.”

I snort, eyes rolling. “I’m not calling you daddy.”

She pulls back, lips slick and pink, and somehow thedebauched look only serves to make her unamused eyebrow raise more sexy. “I recall saying we’d discuss eye rolls and titles at a later date.”

“Is right now the right time?” I snip. Despite the desperate need to have Tamayo’s hands all over me, her mouth devouring me. I won’t yield easily. I don’t know how. And doing so would go against every instinct inside of me.

Tamayo shakes her head. “You’re a brat.”

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