“No, but I didn’t ask.” Brielle’s voice was low. Shaky. She curled her fingers around Elie’s wrist as if she might try to still his fingers as they moved up and down her thigh, but she only rested her hand there.
“Why wouldn’t you ask? You spent a good deal of the day working to prove you were faster at getting information than the others. Wouldn’t you want to know if you were?”
Dario leaned forward, both hands around his phone, his dark eyes boring into Brielle’s as he wholly focused on her. Elie had seen him look like this when he was interrogating a prisoner. Compelling. Utterly focused. Dangerously so. A relentless, merciless pursuit for answers. Voice soft. That low rasp he had that only added to the effect of warning the one he questioned they might be in the room with a predator, not a human. As looks went, it was extremely intimidating.
“I get caught up in what I’m investigating, and the last one, the one on the Colombo crime family in Los Angeles, nagged at me when I was looking into them. Stefano had set boundaries we weren’t to go beyond. That didn’t seem to fit with a normal investigation. When we’re looking into someone, you want to know everything there is to know about them so there aren’t any surprises.”
“So, you disobeyed the order.” Dario’s voice dropped an octave. The lines in his face deepened. The flickering firelight played over him for just a moment, revealing his extremely handsome features, the cruel set of his mouth, and the flames of hell burning in his dark, pitiless eyes.
“I’m an investigator. Of course I did. I would never allow anyone to walk into a bad situation because I didn’t do my job. I went a little deeper before I sent the report.” Brielle’s voice strengthened.
When talking about the love of her work, her passion showed. She moved her body against Elie restlessly, leaning into his fingernails, her bottom rubbing along his thighs like a little cat. She was distracted by Dario, her body reacting naturally to the stimulation, while her mind struggled to answer honestly.
“The consensus was that you did win. You were thorough in every report and you were fast. There were times when others were faster, but then your report held more information than two-man teams’. Valentino and I have need of someone with your talents. On the other hand, you don’t seem to follow direction very well. Not even your man’s.”
Brielle tensed, not liking the implication that she might make Elie look bad in front of his friend. Elie soothed her, bringing his fingernails gently up the sides of her body over the robe, along her rib cage and the sides of her breasts. She had such beautiful breasts. So full. She thought they were too full, but Elie loved the way the soft, perfect flesh flared out from the side, giving him access as he ran his fingers up her body and stroked her breasts with his fingernails as he had her thighs.
“Your tenaciousness is what most likely makes you a great investigator, but with what I do, if you don’t follow orders, you could put your nose in the wrong place and it could get you killed. I wouldn’t know what you had done because I didn’t give my approval. I couldn’t take the necessary steps to ensure you were safe.” Dario’s stare refused to allow her to look away from him. “I won’t lie to you about what I do. You have to know what you would be getting into. The people who work for me have to be loyal to us. If they aren’t, they don’t live long. It’s that simple.”
Brielle’s teeth bit down on the side of her lower lip and she chewed on that spot for a moment. More little goose bumps began to rise on her skin, an automatic response to the way Elie was running his nails so gently back and forth along the sides of her breasts and dipping underneath and then back up.
Elie bent his head to her bare neck, lips to her ear. “Be ma petite chatte, bébé, I do find it sexy when you rub against me the way you do.” He followed the wicked enticement with a bite on her earlobe, his teeth closing on the thin skin and pulling back for a moment before releasing her.
She arched her back more for him, an automatic response to his command, rubbing her back along his chest, doing the same with her bottom along his thighs. He widened his thighs just a scant inch, forcing her thighs apart at the same time. The stretchy robe was accommodating. He decided the robe was going to be one of his favorite pieces of clothing. His hand slipped around her breast to find the opening. Her skin was smooth. So damn soft.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying, Dario,” Elie said, sounding all business. “You want my wife to work exclusively for you and her loyalty should belong to you but you’re aware I’m a rider and, by extension, an adopted member of the Ferraro family. So, my first loyalty has to go to them. You can’t exactly ask my wife to divide her loyalties between the families. That wouldn’t be fair to her.”
His fingernails very, very gently ran over the top of the curves of her breasts. He brushed little strokes tracing the curve down around her nipple as if painting. The fabric of the robe stretched over the back of his hand, rubbing with every slow, subtle movement. Brielle shivered. He wished he had put the clamps on her before he sent her to dress in the robe. They would have been perfect under the stretchy fabric. He would save that idea for another evening.
“I wouldn’t ask your wife to divide her loyalty like that. I have another investigator, Elie. Bernado is a good man and has never once done a single thing to indicate that he might ever turn on us. Having said that, you know me. Valentino is the man I trust one hundred percent. After him, I don’t know. I like to hedge my bets, so to speak.”
“There’s a man by the name of Carmine Catani in your organization,” Brielle said, her fingernails suddenly digging into Elie’s thigh. “Dario, I should have told you right away. I haven’t had a chance to investigate him so I shoved him into a corner of my mind, but he definitely is betraying you. He sent the photograph of Elie to Santoro.”
There was a small silence while Dario continued to hold her gaze. His face seemed to harden even more, settling into even crueler lines. “Did you forget to tell me because you knew I would kill him for his betrayal?”
“No, he sent Elie’s photograph. I would have gone after him myself.”
Elie heard the absolute honesty in her voice. It took discipline not to tense beneath her. She was a rider and every bit as capable as any shadow rider of targeting a man for justice. In her mind, anyone threatening Elie was fair game, just as he believed that anyone threatening Brielle was. His woman wasn’t going to hunt Carmine Catani. He had to make that absolutely clear to her.
He made a mental note to make it a priority to go into the shadows with her and see just how sick she really was when she entered the tubes. Truthfully, it was hell on the body. In the little time he’d had with her, Elie had come to know Brielle very well. And one thing she absolutely didn’t do was complain. For her ever to have said anything about getting sick riding the shadows meant she was really sick when she was in the portals.
Dario couldn’t fail to hear the honesty in her voice when she declared she would have gone after Carmine Catani. He’d spent far too long interrogating prisoners and knew truth when he heard it. Dario simply nodded. “Knowing what we do, would you have problems conducting investigations for us?”
“No. Unless your intention is to harm innocent people.”
Dario sat back. “I think you would find working for Valentino and me much more exciting than for Stefano. He, no doubt, will offer you a job. He’s got two other teams working for him. We’ve got one man and a shit load of work. If you’re interested, we’ll draw up the proposal with the salary and the four of us will sit down and come up with a plan that will work for all of us.”
Her chin rose. Elie nearly smiled. He knew right away what she was going protest. It was her job and she didn’t think Elie needed to be there. He widened his thighs just a bit more and hit the remote on the plug, so that it pulsed and danced, heating as well. At the same time, his fingers on her breast found her nipple and pinched down like the clamps had. A slow burn that kept getting hotter.
Brielle gasped and squirmed, arching back against him, grinding her bottom against his lap, and lifting her hips. Elie was very grateful he’d studied all the angles ahead of time. The extremely large pottery bowl he’d found that went so well on the coffee table, with the thick, concrete-looking base, was finally good for something. It was large enough to hide his woman’s lower body in the throes of her arousal.
When Dario stood, turning to leave, she suddenly seemed aware of her exposure, even in the dim light, but she didn’t try to close her legs or pull the robe down to cover her gleaming pussy. Her body undulated, hips bucking in time to the rhythm of the plug and squeeze of his fingers. Her head fell back on Elie’s shoulder, tossing from side to side.
If Dario could see anything in the dim light as he strode to the door, he didn’t acknowledge it; he just called out to Elie he’d text a date when Valentino could meet with them.
Elie didn’t reply. He widened his thighs even more. “Did you like that, mon petit jouet très sale? Someone watching us? Seeing how beautiful you are when you’re aroused? And obedient? When you’re my toy? Does it make you even hotter?” He bit down on that little sweet spot on her neck that made her shiver. “Do you think he saw the plug in your ass when you arched your back and rubbed like a little pussycat all over my chest?”
She nodded her head. “Yes. I liked it. It was crazy wild.”