Page 46 of Where Wild Hearts Dance
And now I’m cursing the fact she’s a bit too well-connected for my liking.
“I’m not taking your money, baby,” she drawls, as she turns to let me do up the zipper on the back of her dress.
I glare at her. “Yes you are, because nothing untoward happened here, okay? I fucked you. I paid you. Alright?”
Her brow twitches. “Benito…” She bends at the knees and brings her face to mine. “Who was that girl?”
Her Russian accent is thick as gelatin.
I roll my shoulders back. “What girl?”
“The girl who was here when I arrived.”
I feign a frown. “There was no girl here when you arrived.”
She tilts her head to one side. If there’s one thing a man will never get past a call girl, it’s relationship bullshit, which irritates me because I’m not even in a fucking relationship.
I sigh impatiently and force a note of boredom into my tone. “If you mean the girl who came to check I was still alive after hearing gunshots, that was my boss’sfuture sister-in-law who happens to study dance at the studio below this apartment.”
Karina’s head tips backward and she eyes me from beneath long, flawless lashes. “She came to check on you.” She smiles. “How sweet.”
I stand, leaving Karina crouched low. “She is not sweet. She’s a brat.”
“Milaya…”Darling… She straightens and meets me, eye to eye. “A brat is a teenager. The ‘brat’ who came to check on you this evening was no teenage girl.” She stands flush against me and brings her lips to my throat. “She wasall woman.” She lifts her lashes slowly until they graze my jawline. “And your dick knows it.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. I don’t need to hear this. I uncurl another roll of notes. “Here’s a tip.”
Her eyes pop at the five hundred I just gifted her for nothing.
“This conversation is closed.”
She slides the notes into the pocket of her Vivienne Westwood trench. “What conversation?” she asks with a wicked glint in her eye. “From what I recall of our hour together Benito, there wasnoconversation.”
I plant a slow kiss on her cheek. “And that’s why you’re the best in the business, Karina.”
Her smile, for once, is authentic and only intensified when she clasps her fingers around my chin, channeling my focus on what she says next. “I’ve known you a long time, Benito. You like this woman…”
I’m about to open my mouth to argue but she slams a hand over it. I wouldn’t permit that from anyone buther. “So stop fucking around and do something about it.”
I roll my eyes. She doesn’t understand mafia family dynamics, but she even slays that thinking to a pulp. “I don’t care whose fucking sister-in-law’s niece’s auntie’s next-door-neighbor-but-twelve she is. I’ve never seen youfeelbefore. So it doesn’t matter who she is, only that she’s yours.”
Before I can assert that Contessa Castellano isnotmine, and in fact, that would be her worst nightmare realized, Karina is heading out the door and down the steps. I stand at the top, wearing the same pair of boxers and an unbuttoned shirt, watching her departing back.
“Stay safe,” I call after her. She turns and jangles a set of keys, and the Tesla logo glimmers in the fluorescent light. That woman knows exactly what she’s doing and who she’s playing.
The second the door closes behind her, another one opens and in a matter of seconds I’m staring at a completely different set of long, flawless lashes—only these are a hundred percent natural.
“That was a short date,” Contessa says, a smirk lifting one corner of her mouth.
A thread of annoyance winds itself around my brain. “Who says it was a date?”
“You mean you didn’t even offer to cook dinner?” Her jaw falls in mock horror.
“You’ve seen my apartment,” I say, shrugging one shoulder. “I barely have enough room to make coffee.”
Her cheeks turn pink and I know she’s rememberinghow she had to come to my aid in operating the coffee machine. But something sobers behind her eyes. Possibly the realization that I did indeed only intend to fuck the woman that just left.
“Well, goodnight Bernadi.”
