1
Giovanni
I’ve been in underground poker tournaments in Naples. Witnessed nightclub shootouts in Milan. But here, at my best friend’s kitchen table in the American suburbs, is most definitely the most dangerous location of them all.
Because of her. Gabriella Taylor, my best friend’s eighteen-year-old daughter who’s currently trying to star in a real-life adaptation of Lolita, or the music video from English rock band The Police for “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”
Although she’s clear across the kitchen, standing by the stove, she’s still way too close to me.
The thought of laying low at my buddy Tim’s house for a few weeks looked like a good plan, on paper, until my eyes got one look at her.
“Am I doing it right…Gio?” she asks, putting her best Italian accent on my name as she prepares after-lunch coffee in what is clearly a brand new Bialetti coffee maker, the kind you find in every house back home…where I should have stayed despite the fact I was just as equally a dead man there as I will be here if Tim sees the way I’m looking at his daughter.
Oh, principessa…the ways you tease me.
My eyes rake over her tiny little body, her white tank top way too tight and the heat from the kitchen making it way too revealing. If that weren’t enough those cut-off denim shorts look like they got cut off about six inches too high, the cotton pockets hanging well below the bottom of the denim exposing her way to young ass cheeks.
I move in my seat, trying to get relief from my suddenly locked and loaded manhood which is ready to teach this little tart a lesson about teasing men like me. But that’s just it, she’s a tart, a young virgin who has no idea what kind of evil man she’s tempting with her forbidden, and surely untouched fruit.
Maneuvering again I can’t eliminate the pinching and twisting feeling in my pants, my erection demanding to be freed.
“Is this your first time handling one of those things?” I shoot back, answering her question with one of my own.
“How could you tell? Is it obvious I don’t have much experience handling hard things.”
“Hard things?” I swallow.
“You know. It’s hard,” she says, tapping the back of her knuckle against the hot stainless steel. “And it’s hard…as in hard to resist,” she adds, tossing her minuscule weight to one side so her shorts hiked up so high I can practically see where her leg attaches to her pelvis.
I haven’t been at the Taylor house for more than three hours, and I haven’t spent less than three minutes of that time not imagining myself inside of her.
I should go. I should grab my unpacked duffel bag and leave. Now.
I’ve got enough money to rent a room somewhere, and pay cash at that. I can catch up with Tim later in the week, but if I rent a room somebody is going to ask for ID, and that’s where the problems begin.
And the number one problem I have right now is her, the girl who was supposed to be living with her mom somewhere in the South of France after Tim's wife ran off with a rich Greek shipping heir.
It’s clear where Gabriella got her looks from, and it’s also clear she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. The only question is, how far does this little troublemaker really want to push this?
I’ve sat across the table from some of La Cosa Nostra’s toughest bosses and didn’t flinch. But why am I doing everything I can to keep my eyes off her, yet failing miserably?
And who’s more miserable right now? Me, or Tim. He’s the doting father who worked his butt off as an accountant so his family could have a good life, only to come home to his wife with another man in the same home where this piccolina in front of me was conceived. And my mind is conceiving a lot of ideas of all the things I could do to her right now while her father is sleeping off the lasagne alla bolognese his daughter prepared for my arrival lunch.
I have to admit, I’m impressed with her skills in the kitchen. If she were a bit older and were willing to learn some skills in the bedroom, I’d make her mine this very second. Of course with the caveat being she couldn’t be my best friend’s daughter.
Usually when I’m abroad people offer me spaghetti alla bolognese, not knowing that Italians don’t eat it at home and find it to be completely inauthentic, unlike her actions toward me…I think.
How in the world am I going to survive here one night downstairs on the couch when I know she’s just a few steps away, alone, in her room wanting me to come and teach her things a little girl needs to learn one day.
But not at the hand of a thirty-nine-year-old man whose hands have spilled blood, broken laws, and crushed the hopes and dreams of rival families all in the name of La Cosa Nostra. I just need to keep my hands off her for seven days, until she leaves for graphic design school. Until that time I can keep myself busy outside the house during the day, and just come back here to sleep. Once she’s gone I won’t have any way to get to her, not to mention she’ll be way too far away. Then my problems will be solved for good or at least the bambina in front of me will be out of my life.
“Tim, you want to join us for coffee?” I call out, making sure he can hear me from the other room, but when I don’t catch his response I listen harder and all I can hear is the sound of him snoring. Gabriella’s lips curve up at the ends as she slithers toward me like a snake in the grass, ready to offer me that forbidden fruit of hers, but thankfully it’s only a cup of coffee.
Or at least it should be, but of course, it’s not.
Bending her knee, she places her shin on my thigh and leans across me for no reason, setting the coffee down in front of me, and her breasts a hairsbreadth from my face. If I stuck out my tongue I could flick her rock hard nipple that’s poking through the paper-thin fabric of her tank top, but instead, I remain leaned back in my seat.
My hands find the edges of my chair and I grab them hard, trying to will myself in place like I’m in a straight jacket, my arms pressing into the sides of my massive frame.