Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) (14 page)

“Mike,” I howled, “fuck, Mike, I’m gonna come… keep going baby… oh keep going, please…”

Mike’s phone rang, a jagged sound that broke right through the haze of pleasure. Both of us froze. Right. Pizza. Shit.

He cussed, pulled out of me--it left me very suddenly hollow and empty--and answered it. “Just leave it,” he snapped, “I’m balls deep in—” he listened to something, and then grimaced. “Right, yeah. Sure. Be down in a sex. Sec, I mean; shit…” He muttered more profanities as he pulled out of me. I was giggling, and he glowered at me. “This is your fault.”

“I accept all the blame,” I told him, and wriggled on the bed for him as he grabbed his shorts and quickly tugged them on.

“Don’t move,” he ordered me. “Stay just like that.”

Mike sprinted out the door and down the stairs. After a minute, I heard a door slam, and then pounding as he ran back up the stairs. A second later he was back with two pizza boxes that he dropped on the floor near the couch. Before the hit the ground, his shorts were almost off again.

“Now where was I,” he muttered.

I spread my knees, and dipped a finger into myself, drawing it over my taxed clit as I bit my lip. “In here,” I breathed.

Mike fell forward, and caught himself on his hands before he crushed me. His hips nudged my knees further apart. “Oh, yeah,” he grunted as he reached down and angled himself to thrust in slowly again, “I remember…”

He bottomed out, hitting some deep, almost uncomfortable place inside me, and then fell forward and snaked an arm around the back of my neck. His other hand reached between us. “I’m hungry,” he muttered as he pinched my click between his fingers and fucked me once, hard, “time to come.”

I couldn’t tell what they were doing, but his fingers moved fast as he grunted against me. I clutched him close, clinging to him as his body moved, rocking my hips every time his cock hammered into me, and started to whimper against his shoulder as his fingers played me and he thumped again and again against the tender spot inside me and then we were rising together, fast, breath hot between us. Mike’s grunts and groans became more strained, and every time I exhaled it was with a cry that grew louder and louder.

“Ella, baby,” Mike gasped, “fuck… I’m gonna come… come with me…”

I said his name, I thought, or maybe I swore or just screamed, I didn’t know, but at almost the moment that Mike’s body stiffened, I melted inside, liquid lightning exploding up my spine as I was hurled headfirst over the edge of ecstasy and into the warm, comforting abyss of orgasmic oblivion. Mike flexed inside me, swelling until finally he came, urged on by the pulsing walls of me that gripped him tight and worked his orgasm free. He roared, and his hips moved again as he rode it deep into me.

I came to kissing him, and then shivering as his mouth kissed and sucked my neck, my shoulder. He muttered into my skin, breathing hard. “So fucking beautiful, baby… fuck…”

I smiled, and drifted, and trailed my fingers up and down his back, content to have him resting inside of me, still suffering those little aftershocks together; every time I got another tremble, and my pussy clenched, I felt him catch his breath, his cock jumping inside me in response.

Once we’d recovered, Mike retrieved the still mostly warm pizza and dropped both boxes by the bed. We didn’t bother to dress, and it was so warm up here that we didn’t even cover up. We just draped legs over one another and used the pizza box lids as plates as we ate. I was absolutely famished.

“We should do that again,” I said around a mouthful of food.

“I was planning on it,” Mike grunted.

I smiled at him. “No, I mean like… again tonight.”

“It’s like you can read my mind,” he chuckled. He handed me a bottle of water. “Drink up, you need your fluids.”

We inhaled half a pizza each, like it was a race, and polished off a bottle of water each, before Mike wet down a wash cloth to clean our hands and mouths with, and then dropped it off the bed and onto the floor.

Then, it was time for a rematch.

* * *

I didn’t remember falling asleep. No one does, I guess, but when I woke, it was with a smile. I hadn’t had this feeling in… well, in all actuality I hadn’t had it ever. Robert had never left me feeling like this the next day—pleasantly sore, still almost trembling and weak from what I’d endured. I had that well-fucked malaise that I’d heard about but never really believed existed.

When I worked my eyes open, I looked up to see Mike standing over me.

Wait, no—not Mike.

In half a heart beat, I went from zero to sixty. No chances. My legs flew out, right for the sweet spot just over the ankle, and I swept the huge, glowering ogre that had been watching me sleep right off his feet. He went down, and caught himself on his hand, laughing, and scrambled back up.

I didn’t give him time to recover. I abandoned the blanket, leapt up from the bed and landed a knee right into the pervy asshole’s hip, throwing his balance sideways and into Mike’s makeshift table. He went down again with a crash, cussing now, and sputtering something I didn’t bother to translate before I twisted my hips and shot a roundhouse out at his head, intent on putting him down so I could land a few neutralizing elbows when he hit the ground.

But a giant hand caught my ankle as my foot came in. This guy instantly let it go; he didn’t even give it a push or try to throw me off balance—he just prevented me from clobbering him and then disengaged.

“Calm down,” he said, his accent thick, his voice booming.

I feinted another kick, though, and when he reached for it I pulled my leg back, used the momentum to snap my other foot out, and caught him squarely across the temple with the ball of my foot.

The big man’s head snapped to the side, and he had to catch himself on his elbow. “Son of a bitch,” he swore.

I didn’t waste time. I braced one arm with my opposite hand and prepared the throw my weight down behind an elbow, when Mike came in through the door.

“Tony? Shit, Ella! Whoa, stop!”

Mike distracted me just long enough for Tony, I guessed, to recover and surge up. I thought for a moment he meant to get his hands on me, but instead the blanket I had thrown off swept up and covered me, and then closed around me.

“Holy hell,” a voice outside the blanket said while I scrambled away and pulled it down so that I could see and be covered up at the same time. “You weren’t kidding, Mikey; she’s a fucking badass.”

I glared at the ogre, and then at Mike. “What the fuck is going on?”

Mike raised both hands, and hurried to me. He drew me a little away from ‘Tony’ and then paused while we tall took a breath.

“Uh, Tony, this is Ella; Ella, this is my big brother, Tony.”

Tony stuck out a meaty hand. “Nice to meet you, pretty lady. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He smiled, and there was blood in his mouth. “Apparently, it’s all true.”

Mike

Once the introductions were done, and Ella had a second to calm down, the tension unwound pretty fast. Tony was a gentleman, as always, and stepped out of the loft entirely while Ella got dressed. I watched her, amazed first by the fact that she woke up fighting like that, and second at the way she moved while he was naked and getting dressed. All those smooth, muscled curves made her look like some deadly, sexy cat slinking into her clothes.

“Alright,” she said with a sigh when she was dressed. “Bring him in.”

When he came back in, I said my peace straight away, just to set the right tone. “What the fuck are you thinking, man? You couldn’t call before you came over?”

Tony shrugged. Shouting at him didn’t make a damn bit of difference. “I did. Went straight to voice mail. I think your phone is dead.”

I hadn’t plugged it in last night. I’d been distracted, obviously. “Okay, well, you coulda knocked though.”

“I did, nobody answered,” Tony said. “So I let myself in.”

Ella raised an eyebrow.

I sighed, and dropped onto the couch. Ella sank into it next to me. Tony didn’t. He surveyed the two of us, and grinned.

“So, I guess things are working out?”

I rolled my eyes and shrugged, but Ella nudged me in the ribs.

“Yes,” she said. “Things are working out. Sorry about… but anyway you know it’s a little rude to watch someone sleep, right?”

“Tony’s a little off in the head,” I grumbled.

“Tony can speak for himself,” Tony said. He turned back to Ella. “I’m real sorry about that. It was outta line. I didn’t know who you were right away.”

“Tony, it wouldn’t have mattered who she was, man—”

“It’s okay,” Ella said. “Apology accepted.” She said it with the kind of patience that I thought maybe meant she assumed Tony was slow or something. He wasn’t, really, but it wasn’t a bad way to interpret his weirdness.

“Anyway,” Tony said, all that instantly behind him, “I got the stuff on Pembry.”

“Pembry?” Ella asked. She frowned at me. “What stuff on Pembry?”

“You didn’t tell her?” Tony asked me.

“No, Tony, I didn’t—just, what is it?”

He shook his head slowly. “Can’t keep secrets, Mike; even I know that. Anyway, here.” He tossed a flash drive on the arm of the couch.

“Tony,” I said, “I don’t got a computer, man…”

“It’s fine,” he said, “look at it later. I’ll give you the rundown.”

Before I could stop him, he did.

“So this guy Pembry, did you know he’s divorced? Like recently.” Tony chuckled. “She divorced him. It was mes-sy, too, a real blood bath. Took him for basically everything; alimony, child support, even some of that hard-earned pension. Rough.

“Apparently he was cheating, and get this—with a hooker!” Tony burst out laughing. “A hooker! And a cop! It’s classic. Anyway, he paid the hooker off, and when she threatened to talk anyway he had a conversation with her, uh, manager, you know, and anyway she kinda disappeared.

“Worse than that, though, he’s got six counts of domestic violence—no convictions, though. His wife never pressed charges. But, you know, I guess she wanted there to be a record. He’s got a long list of disciplinary actions at the department, too.” Tony shrugged. “Honestly, we could tip this guy over without the Family at all, just drop a few words in the right set of ears, you know.”

I winced when Tony mentioned the Family, in part because I saw Ella glanced between the two of us.

Sure enough, she picked up on the way Tony said it. “Who’s ‘the Family’? I thought Mike only had one brother… and your parents have passed, right?”

“God rest ‘em,” Tony muttered, and crossed himself. “I mean the Family. The nuclear kind. I work for Don Carlo Luchese; the local Boss. Our families go way back.” He pointed at me. “He wants Mikey to work for him, too, but Mikey’s got a thick skull.” He shrugged.

Ella took it all remarkably well.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I did not realize that. What do you… do, for the… Family?”

Tony grinned; any excuse to talk about his trade. “I’m what you call an Enforcer. Like, the Don has rules, and when the rules get broken, I get sent in to correct things.”

“As in breaking knee-caps?” Ella wondered.

“Nah,” Tony said. “You break a knee cap, they don’t recover from that. Useless, basically. I break arms, or fingers—stuff that hurts, but heals okay. Only men, though.” He shook his head slowly. “Not women and kids. That’s just wrong.”

“Well that’s good,” Ella said, as though it brought Tony’s whole character suddenly into focus for her. Oh, well, as long as you don’t hurt women and kids, I mean, sounds like a lucrative career path. Geeze. Made me wonder, insane as it sounded in my head, if maybe Ella had been some kinda plant by Tony all along—one of Don Luchese’s nieces or soemthing. She just seemed too chill with the Mob thing.

“You gotta have a code in this work,” Tony said gravely.

“I’d imagine you do,” Ella said. “So… but Mike doesn’t work for your boss?”

“Not yet,” Tony said.

“Okay.” Ella touched my arm, lightly, and shifted a little bit next to me. “So, you got some stuff on Pembry?”

“All kinds of stuff. Leverage. Half the time you don’t gotta break arms, you just need leverage.”

“Like blackmail,” she said.

“Yeah,” Tony smiled. “Same thing — blackmail, leverage; interchangeable. We figure we put a little pressure on Pembry, it’s a problem that solves itself.”

“Well, we might have done that already,” Ella said.

“Oh yeah?” Tony glanced at me.

I finally felt like he remembered I was in the room. I told him about the reports Ella and I had filed. Tony listened with interest, nodding slowly once in a while, and then clapped his hands once when it was over. “Hey, perfect! Wow, guy sounds like a creep. Once he’s off the force, I can cap him no problem. We’ll say he retired to—”

“No,” I said. Tony was exhausting. “You still can’t kill Pembry, Tony.”

“I do think killing him would be a little… well, overkill,” Ella said casually. “He’s been through a lot already, sounds like. Once he’s off the force or on lock down or whatever, I don’t think he’ll be a problem.”

“If you say so,” Tony said. “But, you know, the offer stands.”

“I appreciate that, Tony,” Ella said. She took a deep breath, and then leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Well, I should get home to change clothes so I can come back to work.”

I got up with her, kissed her like I meant it—Tony politely turned his head—and showed her to the door. “So… maybe I’ll see you later? My place or yours?” I glanced over my shoulder at Tony, then leaned a little closer to her. “You okay with all this?”

Ella looked passed me, and then met my eyes… and then dropped them a little. “I… let’s just talk a little later. It’s a lot. I just need to think some things over.”

I felt my heart drop a few inches, into my stomach. I didn’t show it. “Yeah. Okay. Well… you know, I’ll see you soon. Last night was…”

“I know,” Ella said. She kissed me again, on the cheek. “I’ll see you soon, Mike.” Before she left, she waved at Tony. “Bye, Tony. It was nice to meet you. Sorry about the…” she waved at her own face.

“I was asking for it,” Tony called to her. “See you again. You and Mike can come by for dinner! I’ll cook! I make this Pasta Fazoni; it’s my own special recipe. You’ll love it.”

Ella nodded politely—yes, that sounded lovely, she seemed to say—and then left quietly down the stairs.

I slid the warehouse door closed behind her, and rounded on Tony. “You dumb son of a bitch.” I wanted to hit him. I hadn’t decided I wouldn’t, yet. “If you fucking ruined this for me, Tony, we are done.”

Tony’s jovial face crumpled. “Whoa, whoa… she took it well, it looked like. She’s a doll, Mikey, I can’t believe you didn’t—”

“She don’t rattle easy, Tony,” I said, “but no, she did not take it well. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Watch it with the lord’s name,” Tony snapped. “Anyway, if she can’t deal with your family, you don’t need her anyway.”

“I don’t want to deal with the Family, Tony!” I barked. “I want out of all that. And this is why!” I waved a hand at the door where Ella had left. Fuck me… I finally had something nice in this world and…

I shook my head. I couldn’t think about that right now. If the Family taught me anything, it was that you needed more than one solution to most problems. “Whatever, just… let’s just go over what you’ve got on Pembry. What can we use?”

Tony sighed, but dropped it like I asked, and then settled into a talk I could barely pay attention to. All I could think about was whether I’d see Ella again.

The loudest voice in my head kept telling me, over and over, “No, man. You fucked that up for good. Just like everything else.”