“A good question for your lawyer.”
He smirks and lifts his cuffed hands to rub over his lips. “You should turn the cameras off, Lusia.”
I freeze. I haven’t given him anything but my last name. “Officer Santiago” is how I introduced myself. My eyes lift from one of Emilia’s more horrible accusations–that her brother not only encouraged but was involved in a six-person homicide to clear out an up-and-coming gang.
When I look at Angelo again, he looks calm. It makes sense. The Rossi family is used to the police. Emilia wasn’t afraid when she was sitting in an interrogation room in her underwear. She treated it like it was a normal walk in the park.
Angelo’s different. He’s treating this like a board meeting where he’s the one in charge.
“The cameras stay on,” I answer.
“Luisa Santiago,” he says, turning my name into a song as he looks me over.
I’m not some girl that’s going to swoon for the bad boy. I’m the girl that guys think they can manipulate with a few comments, assuming I don’t get hit on often since I have more than a few extra pounds and I’m a thick pear shape.
I’m not hard up for attention–even if I don’t have the time to return that attention–and I don’twantany of this man’s attention unless he’s answering my questions. Still, staring into his dark gaze feels like being hypnotized.
“A beautiful name, you know. Does it have meaning?” he asks.
What’s the angle?
“Hablas Español?” he asks.
“Yes. I speak Spanish.”
“Italian is close to Spanish,” he comments.
I shrug.
“Let’s try this word: Topina. Does it ring any bells?” he asks, leaning forward.
“Top?” I guess. The word is close.
“Nope,” he says. There’s a sparkle in his eyes, but his smile drops. “Let me see the file.I’ll confirm what I have and haven’t done. I’ll get bail. I’ll even offer you dinner. I’ll offer you everything I didn’t give you before.”
I do not know what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter. The door opens, and a man comes in who speaks in Italian. Angelo answers, but his eyes don’t leave me. “I hope you’ll remember me next time, Topina. Didn’t think six years would scrub your memory. It didn’t scrub mine.”
“No idea what you’re talking about, Rossi. I hope you and your lawyer can come to agreeable terms about acceptable ways to speak to police, and–more importantly–the judge,” I say with a quick dismissal.
I feel his gaze on me as I walk to the door, stroking over me. It’s not calculating, it’s not murderous, it’s something else. Something that raises the hair on the back of my neck makes me blush and has me feeling warm.
“Prendi ogni centimetro, Bellissima,” Angelo says in a low growl of a voice that raises goosebumps on my skin.
I slip out of the room and Eric gives me a look, but I breeze by. “Time for paperwork.”
When I’m safe at home, I sit on my bedafter trying to scrub those words off of my skin. There’s no way. It’s not possible I slept withAngelo Rossi. There were no names back then. I was out with friends, getting over a breakup, and eager to fall into anyone who offered.
I remember a sexy man with tan skin and a cocky, yet charming attitude. He was fun to sass. He took me to some hidden room at the back of the club. I purred to him in Spanish as he kissed my neck and fingered me. I blew him. He was so thick I was worried he wouldn’t fit in my mouth.
In his car he’d grabbed my then brown-red hair in his hand and purred those words,
prendi ogni centimetro, Bellissima, before stepping on the gas and lifting his hips gagging me on his cock.
Once we’d gotten ... somewhere, maybe a hotel, maybe his house, I don’t remember, he’d fucked me senseless. I hadn’t believed that it was possible to have multiple orgasms until he existed. He’d set a new bar. No names were exchanged. He’d switched between English and Italian until I answered him in Spanish. Then it had been English and Spanish between us.
He’d given orders, told me how much heloved my thick ass and gorgeous thighs. Nothing had been gentle. All of it needy, hungry, and demanding. Six years ago.
Shaking my head, I fall back, fighting the urge to touch myself while thinking about him cupping my breasts and licking my nipples as if he was on a timer. I think about his teeth in my skin, the growled compliment of “You take me so fucking well. So good to be rough with you.”
