Spin (Songs of Corruption #1)(35)

He found my engorged clit, and I stiffened. He pushed me onto the arm of a chair. My arms braced me as his hand stroked.

“How did you come here, Theresa?” he said as his fingertips blinded me with sensations, making me vulnerable.

I couldn’t think. “The one ten freeway.”

He pulled away, moving his hand so his thumb rotated on my clit as he stood over me. I felt intimidated and powerless, and I was as afraid as I was aroused.

“Look at me,” he whispered tenderly. “Spread your legs.”

I did it, looking and spreading until both hurt.

He was perfectly put together, with one hand in me the way it had just been inside a transmission. “What were you doing by the yellow house?”

“I wanted to see where you lived.”

“That’s not my legal address.”

“I hope not. It was a mess.”

He answered my sarcasm by sliding two fingers into my soaking hole. “I didn’t get a call about anyone trespassing at my house.”

“Oh God, Antonio, I’m so close.”

I noticed, as I got closer, that he wasn’t telling me what he was going to do to me. Where was the dirty talk? Something was wrong, but I was too close to the incoming tide of my sexual pleasure to think clearly about what that meant.

He put his hand on the back of the chair and leaned down, his strokes getting lighter and softer, keeping me on the edge. “I want to like you, Contessa. I want to. But I can’t trust you.”

His words didn’t sink in soon enough. My wet, engorged sex was still in his hand. On the third stroke, I exploded in an orgasm that was supposed to be a release, but instead was humiliating. The emotional disconnect cut the pleasure short, and I twisted away from him, breathing heavily with my bra half pulled over my br**sts and my skirt bunched at my waist.

“What was that?” I said.

“I wondered how you just show up in my neighborhood.” He took the grease-smeared hankie from his pocket and wiped the fingers that had been inside me. “You weren’t looking for my house. You were looking for something. The district attorney sent you. You’ve been working for him the whole time, haven’t you? It’s on the side of a barn, like you say.”

“You think my ex sent me to f**k you?” I straightened my clothes, seething so hard I didn’t even care what I said or how I said it. But the more I wanted to say what was on my mind, the more crowded my mind became. “You think he’s whoring me out? What kind of world do you live in? And let me assure you, the lack of trust is mutual. Talk about what’s on the side of a barn. You react to questions like I’m spraying acid on you. You have no real law practice. A hundred different businesses. You can bust a guy’s face on the hood of a car. Maybe the police questioned you so many times because you’re a criminal lowlife.” I brushed past him, but he caught my upper arm. “Let go of me,” I growled from deep in my throat.

“I run legitimate businesses.”

“What better way to do the laundry?”

His tongue pressed between his lips, and his eyes drifted to my mouth in a nanosecond of weakness. “Be careful.”

“Good advice. I’m staying away from the dirtbags from now on.”

He tightened his grip on my arm, and we stood like that, breathing each other’s air, until a light rap came from the other side of the door.

“Spin?”

He waited a second and kept his eyes on mine as he answered. “Yeah, Zo?”

“Tow’s here, and they don’t know where to take the Beemer.”

Silence hung between us. His jaw moved as if he was grinding his teeth. I held his gaze. He could go straight to hell, and I still wanted him. The knock came again.

Antonio whipped his head around and shouted, “What!”

Zo’s voice was timid. “The tow guy has another call.”

Antonio pulled me to him so hard I knew I would walk out of there with a nice bruise. He pressed his lips together as if he had something to say but didn’t know how to say it.

I answered as if he’d spoken. “I know what’s between us. I know it’s real, as real as anything I’ve ever felt for a man. And I know you don’t really believe Daniel whored me out to get information. Even if you think he’d do something like that, you know in your heart I wouldn’t. But none of that matters. Even though you don’t believe I have ulterior motives, you’re scared of it.” He loosened his grip just a little, and I took that as my cue to continue. “That’s not the way to be together. It’s too long a bridge to cross. Let’s both be grown-ups and walk away before this gets uglier.”

It took a few seconds, or forever, for him to remove his hand, his fingers slipping over my sleeve as if magnetized. I took a long breath, memorizing his scent, the thickness of his hair, the cleft in his jaw, the angle I held my head to look into his deep brown eyes.

“I’ll have someone drive you home,” he said.

“I can get a cab.”

“I know. But someone from here will drive you.” He opened the door.

Zo was right behind it, hunched and tense.

“Make sure she gets home,” Antonio said.

“Sure, boss.”

I followed Lorenzo and looked back for the briefest second, enough to catch Antonio closing the office door.