1
FIVE YEARS AGO
Christy
I’m less than two steps into the apartment when the door closes behind me with an ominous click. Dimly, I hear the snick of a key locking me in. It’s dark, with only one muted lamp on, on the other side of the room. My eyes follow the light to a table at the elbow of him—Tony Sabatini. Heat hits me, burning me from the inside out. I clash with bright blue sapphire eyes and my world comes crashing down around me with a thunderous roaring in my ears. Even though he’s sitting in a chair at least fifteen feet away from me, I take a step back from the raw aggression rolling off him in waves. Everything in me screams to run. Run fast, run far, and don’t stop until he’s lost my scent.
Yet fear holds me in place. No, I’m lying. It’s not fear. It’s that same curiosity that killed the cat. I don’t understand what is happening to me. I desperately need answers. If I stay, I’ll get them. That, and I can’t feel my legs.
He blinks and finally so can I. As I do, a tear runs down my cheek and I realize I haven’t blinked since our eyes met. A shiver hits me, at odds with the heat threatening to consume me. Shock sends my stomach into painful twisting at how wet and aching I am at the apex of my thighs in response to those jewel eyes running over me as heavy as a touch.
What the fuck is happening right now?
I’ve been staring at pictures of him for years, almost daily for the last four months. None of them came close to capturing the full impact of Tony Sabatini. Beautiful, stunning, I already knew that. In person, he is breath-taking, leaving me in awe.
A large nose, obviously once broken and reset, should take away from his beauty. Oddly, it adds to it. My eyes trace over the way his caramel skin is taut over sharp cheekbones. My fingertips are tingling with the need to learn the feel of his skin. His broad forehead is hooded over those sapphire eyes, giving them a deeper intensity, as if he sees into my soul—my every secret and desire I try to hide. My lungs stutter to a stop, terrified he knows the real reason I’m here.
Another blink, the fire eases slightly. “Ms. Teller, please have a seat.” Smoky and deep, his voice is as smooth as silk. He motions to the leather chair in front of him. My legs still refuse to move. A tilt of his head as an eyebrow lifts. “Ms. Teller, what happens next is up to you. You are only here because you want to be. I will not prevent you from leaving. I’m a busy man with other matters requiring my attention. Decide. Now.”
Despite the heat in the warning, ice slides down my spine. I’m captivated by his large hands clenching into fists before he loosens them again. Why the hell am I desperate to have those hands on me? Nothing is making any sense right now. Leave, leave now.
Only I find myself moving forward on unsteady legs. It didn’t matter what he said. There was an underlying demand compelling me not just to stay but to come to him. A throbbing stirs low inside me with the need to please him. I don’t understand it. Yet I can no more deny it than to stop breathing.
With the first step I take toward him, I swear he exhales in relief. It can’t be. He is tightly coiled power, every inch of him muscle, every ounce of him lethal. What could it matter to him if I stayed or left? Does he feel this... connection, desire, lust, whatever it is, too? Can he explain it to me? I move faster now, eagerness to answer the question dimming my fear.
The living room is set up as if it were any regular apartment, except it doesn’t feel lived in. There’s a brown leather sofa against one wall with a table on each end of it. Matching wingback chairs in brown leather are on opposite ends of the sofa, facing each other. A glass coffee table gleams in the center.
I make it to the chair opposite him, my legs give out from me as I lower myself into it.
“Tell me, Ms. Teller. What are you doing here?” The words are few, I want more, his voice is addictive.
Working to take a deep breath, I remember Lisa’s instructions: Enough of the truth for it to sound real. I stare at his hands steepled in front of him, wondering what is on the top of the signet ring on his right pinky. How are his hands so elegant when he’s done so many dirty things, killed so many people with them? “I need a job and a place to live. Somewhere and something not too demanding. I’m on my last five hundred dollars and rent is due in two weeks. Lisa is an old friend of mine; she suggested this. She loaned me the five thousand for the first month’s rent.”
“Why do this? You’re an intelligent woman with a degree as a nurse, Lisa mentioned. Why are you not making use of your degree and experience?” There is no accusation, simply curiosity.
Damn it, I should have asked her everything she told Tony about me. “I’m not ready to go back. I had some...things happen. I don’t have it in me to take on the emotional and physical demands it requires. For a little while, this is all I can do.”
“Have you done this before, fucked men for money?” How odd. His speech is so cultured even the word ‘fucked’ isn’t grating. I’m aware he speaks Italian. I wonder if it’s why his voice is sexy yet there is no trace of an accent.
I can’t stop the bitter smile his words cause. To stop from staring at him, I focus on the swirling sapphire blue of his silk tie. “I was married. Apparently, as far as my husband was concerned, I was. Even though I had
no idea until the end.”
“Did he force you?” The words are dangerously soft.
All I can do is shake my head; my throat is too tight.
I blink, and the scary moment is gone. “How long were you married for?”
“Six years.” I focus on my hands even though I would swear he is urging me to meet his eyes.
“Lisa mentioned the ending of your marriage was one of the things that led you here. Did it end acrimoniously for him? Will he come here looking for you?” Deep smoke is curling all around me. Craving surges inside me for him to whisper in my ear, for the heat of his breath against my skin.
Stop it! Stop it, right fucking now. Focus, damn it. Forcing a deep breath, I shake my head. Annoyance at him and myself has my voice sharper than I intend. “What’s with the twenty questions? Isn’t it enough I’m here with the money?” Shit. I’m supposed to be sweet and smiling and enticing. Not a cranky bitch. Damn it, nothing is going the way I planned. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand. Lisa kind of said this was pretty straightforward.”
His eyes roam over me from my hair down to my forehead, over my nose, my cheeks, lingering at my mouth. He does it slowly, as if he has all the time in the world. It scares me so badly I fight not to tremble. Those eyes stop at the base of my throat where my pulse is pounding so hard I wonder if he can see it. He continues down over each breast and damn my body for betraying me as my breasts swell and my nipples tighten to the edge of pain. Down they finally move, allowing me to gasp air into greedy lungs. The bastard, I’m clenching my thighs tight, shame flaring inside me as I wonder if he can smell how wet I am from across the room.
When he speaks, at last, I struggle to focus on the words and not what they do to me. “Most women in this building earn ten thousand dollars a month, some almost fifteen thousand. Men come here for the assurance of privacy. Women come here for security. For me, and my men who work here, the women are the number one priority. They are safer here than anywhere else. The women keep far more money than they would working anywhere else.”
He waves a hand my eyes cling to as I wonder how it would feel on my body. Stop it.
“I don’t give a fuck what they do or with who, as long as they pay their rent on time and they keep their nose clean. No drugs are allowed here, aside from ecstasy, and weed and even that is kept to a minimum. I don’t want it stinking up the place. In any given week, I’m approached by as many as five women asking to work here, some of them willing to pay more than the five thousand a month.”
I had no idea. Lisa didn’t mention that.
His voice hardens, the lines on his forehead deepen. “Every woman is vetted. I need to ensure you aren’t bringing trouble with you. I asked you if your ex will come here looking for you if he found out you were here because he wouldn’t be the first man who walked away then came back angry when he finds his ex is selling herself. I’m asking you questions because I need to know who you are and why you’re here.”
I open my mouth, but he doesn’t let me speak. He shakes his head.
“You speak of this as a for now kind of thing. I prefer women who aren’t passing through. The more a woman sees this as their home as well as a place of business, the greater respect they have for me as well as my crew who protect them. Whatever the hell Lisa told you, you can forget. Not just anyone who wants to be here is approved. I have my reasons and if it’s a problem for you, you can leave.”
His words sting, damn it. Nothing is going to plan. The weird reaction to him doesn’t make any damn sense. I hate him. I loathe him. This meeting is supposed to be the first step in my plan to kill him. Why was it with one look into his eyes, it was if I’d been walking around with my axis off-tilt, and he set it to right, set me to right?
One moment there was nothing but the blues and the grays of the world. Now there are vivid reds and purples and colors I’ve never known before. Every cell inside me is awake now in breathless anticipation...for what I don’t even know. Only now that I’m finally awake, I’m aware of...everything. I almost wish I could unsee it all, unfeel it all. It’s too much, every sense is overwhelmed to the point of pain.
Tony Sabatini is the answer to this. Even though I hate the way I ache for him, for his touch, for the taste and feel of him—something whispers he can soothe the ache deep down inside me. My skin is too tight and sensitive, and there, where I have never been wet before, I can feel my panties clinging to me. What is happening to me? Dropping my head, “I’m sorry. This is all—none of this is anything I’ve ever done before.”
Those eyes are burning me from inside out. I give in and meet them. Oh god, they see everything.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I need him to forgive me.
“How much are you going to charge?” The question rumbles out of him.
It takes a minute to understand what he’s talking about. I blurt out the response practiced a dozen times. “Five hundred an hour.”
“And that includes?”
I blink a dozen times, blindly staring at his tie. I never got further than the question in my mind.