Page 10 of The Midnight Club
Ori wasn’t sure how she felt about his vigilance, but she couldn’t deny that tonight, it had saved her life. Maceo sat up now and kissed her shoulder. “I’m not sure this is the safest place for you,” he murmured, his lips against her skin. His long fingers stroked her belly, making it vibrate with desire. “Why don’t you come back to mine?”
She was tempted, sorely tempted, but she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, I don’t want to give the impression that I can’t look after myself. Tomorrow, I’ll go get a deadbolt”
Maceo sighed, running a hand through his dark curls. “Simpler to stay with me”
She looked around at him and smiled. “Maceo, on Monday morning you’ll be my boss. I don’t think it’s advisable to be sleeping with the boss”
Maceo was silent, his lips still on her shoulder, his light green eyes fixed her hers. Goddamn,he really knew how to work that whole smoldering Italian thing …
“Fine,” he said suddenly. “But I’m staying tonight”
Ori was strangely relieved. “Thank you. I’d like that”
He pulled her back down onto the bed, on top of him. “And also, I’ll get my people to find out who your intruder was. If you like, we can go to thepolizia.But I warn you, a case like this, they won’t spend a lot of time on it. That’s just the way things are here”
He was trailing his fingers up and down her spine, which was distracting Ori so much that she agreed without even listening and soon his mouth was on hers, and he was rolling her onto her back.
They made love long into the night and Maceo was both tender and rough, attending to every part of her body, challenging her to do things she had never dreamed of. Ori knew in her heart that she’d probably never have another night like this, with a man who awoke in her a primal need and a feral desire such as this. Maceo Bartoli deserved his legendary ‘swordsman’ status. His cock, huge and proud, plunged deep inside her relentlessly, making her crazy, and she gave herself up to him entirely for the rest of the night.
Ori’s attacker, humbled and bleeding, knocked on the hotel suite’s door. He’d ignored the curious stares of the staff at reception as he had limped towards the elevator; the night manager had approached him, but he had warned him off with adon’t-fuck-with-mestare.
A bald, gigantic henchman opened the door of the suite, smirking when he saw the man’s wounds.
“Got your ass handed to you by a girl, did you?”
“Shut the fuck up, moron. Is he here?”
“Ready and waiting”
The man walked into the suite’s living room. Tyson Janek was impeccably dressed, even at this late hour, in a Saville Row suit, a heavy glass of bourbon n his hands. He stood with back facing the room, but turned as the man greeted him. His steel gray eyes were cold.
“Where is my stepdaughter?”
“She attacked me, and then her boyfriend got involved. I thought it best to back off and re-evaluate”
Janek’s face was expressionless. “My stepdaughter does not have a boyfriend, Mr. Harrison. Are you telling me that there was a man with her tonight?”
Harrison nodded.
Janek put his glass down on the table. “Filthy little whore,” he whispered, almost to himself. He was silent for a few long moments, then looked back at Harrison. “Find out who the boyfriend is and end him”
Harrison—who had no trouble killing women, but balked at taking on men twice his size—looked alarmed. “Sir, I think that might be a mistake”
Janek looked faintly amused. “You do?”
Harrison kept his mouth shut, knowing this look of old. It was the calm before the storm. Janek would appear amused, then from nowhere would explode into a rage which made Hurricane Katrina look like a brief rain shower.
Janek picked up his glass. “So, she has a boyfriend. I knew the blessed little virgin act wouldn’t last” He considered, then glanced back at Harrison. “Fine. Keep watching them, but I want to know everything about the boyfriend”
Harrison was relieved. “Consider it done”
When he was alone, Janek brooded, nursing another drink. He had come to Italy after a mutual friend had told him he’d seen Ori in the city—alone,the friend had told him. Tyson Janek had seen his political career collapse because of his affairs with the wives of his friends, but he was convinced he could turn things around in a year or two. After all, who would honestly care about it after the initial scandal? How many times had JFK fucked up? And yet he was still considered a god.
Tyson went to his bathroom now and stripped off. At fifty-five, he was still hard-bodied and had the handsome, all-American good looks that had propelled his career so far. Even now, so near to the scandal, people were already whispering that he was so good-looking, who could blame those women for falling for him? Who could blame a red-blooded male for taking advantage of what was thrown in his path?
Once Kathryn had—fortuitously, in Tyson’s opinion—died young of cancer, he had been able to focus all of his attention on Ori. On those nights he used to go to her room, force the door open, and see her cowering on her single bed, there was no one to hear him and stop him then. Nor would there be now …
When she left home—practically the day she turned sixteen—Tyson had lost some of that control over her, but while AJ was still under his parentage, he knew he could still be sure that Ori would not tell anyone about Tyson’s particular peccadillos.
