Rushed(85)

He stroked his fingers up one more time, and I felt my orgasm crash over me, my thighs clenching around the fingers that were stroking me. "Yes, yours," I whispered, blinking as my fantasy slowly started to fade away, leaving me shaken.

What the hell was I thinking? Playing around with Tomasso? No way in hell. First, I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t the relationship type. That normally meant little to me—there was nothing wrong with mutual play, in my opinion, but I wasn't sure about myself. He was the sort of man that I wanted to have in my life. He was untouchable and something that I could never let myself indulge in. If I did, I'd too quickly give away my heart, and that was something I couldn't risk breaking again. Finally, since Travis, I was the one in charge again. Men fell to their knees to worship at my feet and pledged themselves to me, not the other way around. How could my fantasy have me so quickly pledging myself to him?

Sighing, I wiped at my eyes, feeling a strange tear trickling down my cheek. Pissed off at myself, I sat up and yanked off my soaked panties and bra, storming over to my suitcase and pulling out some fresh underwear. I looked at the casual clothes that I'd packed and pulled out a t-shirt, pulling it on before deciding against the pants I'd packed. Looking around, I saw the shorts that Tomasso had given me the day before. I felt a sense of warm comfort come with pulling them on, and I was startled when a knock came at my door.

"Yes?"

I opened the door and saw Margaret Bertoli standing in the hallway. "Luisa, I was wondering how you're doing. Tomasso left for his work, and I know it's not comfortable spending all your time in an unfamiliar house, let alone a closed off bedroom."

"Thank you, Se?ora Bertoli. I'm fine," I said, brushing my hair behind my ear and trying to regain my composure. "I was actually about to see what there was to eat around here.”

Margaret smiled and nodded. "That sounds good. Well, Carlo is out late for business, so how about the two of us have a relaxed dinner? Say . . . raid the fridge in t-shirts and shorts? I'm sure there’s a tub of ice cream in the freezer there if you’re interested."

I couldn't help it. The older woman's youthful enthusiasm and relaxed charm washed away the last of my doubts and worries. "That sounds perfect. Let me brush out my hair, and I'll join you."





Chapter 7





Tomasso





Four days later, the police were pissing me off. Twice, I'd had to stop my rounds as they always seemed to be in the area when I was going for a pickup. "This is getting to be bullshit," I complained to Pietro. "Fucking Fritz is more focused on trying to catch me on some piddly shit than on finding who was responsible for that explosion.”

"That's been turned over to the FBI," he said as we had coffee in a late night diner. "The Seattle police are stuck in neutral, with the federal agencies taking up all their spotlight, so they're left doing what they've always done—chase their own tails and try to get to us."

I shook my head, reaching for the sugar and pouring a long stream of the white crystals into my cup before stirring it. “Either way, it’s still bullshit."

He shrugged and sipped at his black coffee. "I've been dealing with it since before you were born, kid. Actually, it's not as bad as it used to be. The Seattle PD's been trying to get the Bertolis since before your uncle's time. For a while, around the time you were born, there were a couple of real go-getters on the detail. One of them was one of those super-cops who thought that he'd be polishing the commissioner's badge some day. He was a major pain in the ass."

"What happened to him?" I asked curiously. We were in a coffee house owned by my family, and at two in the morning, the customers were few and far between.

"Almost no man is a perfect human being," Pietro said with a chuckle. “He was a tough cop, but he also had a weakness for high school girls. And not seniors, either. More like freshmen. So, when the media just happened to get a video of him propositioning one who looked like she could’ve been underage, he went away. Didn't even need to get our hands dirty at all with that one."

"And since then?" I asked.

"The Bertoli case has been passed around like it’s a bad luck totem," Pietro said. "As long as we keep the street violence down and keep the gangs from growing, they won't make too much noise. It's ironic, because doing those things helps us even more than it helps the cops."

I chuckled and sipped my coffee. "Still, it's getting on my nerves."

“Just keep patient. You have the brains and you have the physical skills, so now, just learn some patience," Pietro said. "Actually, I asked you here tonight to talk about something else, something I didn’t want to discuss inside your father's house."

"What's that?" I asked, setting my cup down. I rubbed at my eyes, feeling the sand behind my eyelids.

"You’ve been neglecting one of your other duties," Pietro said matter-of-factly. "While I know there has been some tension between you and Miss Mendosa, she’s a guest, and she hasn’t been allowed to leave the house for nearly four days. Just today, my son had to come from the office to bring her some fresh clothes to replace what she'd lost in the explosion."

I sighed, trying to come up with the words to tell him how difficult it was for me to spend time with Luisa. Ever since the Space Needle, I couldn't get her off my mind, nor the way she’d flat out rejected me. It wasn’t something I was used to, so it was difficult to deal with. Normally, women threw themselves at me. The worst part was, I still wanted her so badly that I'd dreamed of her twice in those same four days.