Her jaw slackens a fraction as she turns toward the plexiglass door, smoothing her hands down over her curves, and then falls open on a sharp gasp. There’s no audio with my footage, but I know what she sounds like.
I know everything about her.
When her hand drifts over her stomach, nimble fingers traveling lower to mix the pressure of pain and euphoria, I click out of the app, unwilling to allow my voyeuristic tendencies to cross that line.
The first time I watch her come undone, I want tobethere, not watching from behind some fucking screen. I want to be the reason she comes, want my name to be the one she purrs as her pussy spasms and her nerve-endings explode.
Pocketing my phone, I move off the bed and begin clean-up; my boss, the don of Boston’s most notorious crime family, might like evidence, but I’ve never been one to give it to him.
Sincehehiredme, Rafael Ricci’s had to come to terms with trusting my judgment.
Once I’ve cleared the body from the room and bagged his remains to toss in my basement wood-burning stove later, I get to work cleaning the aftermath.
The routine starts by exchanging the stiff motel linens for clean ones I picked up on my way in, removing the plastic mattress cover—which I slip on before I’ve begun my interrogation—and getting to work removing any gore that’s splattered elsewhere.
After I’ve scrubbed the brown shag carpet of its biological traces, I deodorize and disinfect, the weight of my medical background refusing to let me leave until things are up to hospital code.
Using a bioluminescence device, I scan the area for any remnants of the dead man, heave my bags over my shoulder, and slip out the back exit.
Tossing the bags into my trunk, I slide behind the wheel of the black Buick I rented when I got into town and reach into the glove compartment for the book of poetry I keep there.
I know she memorized the pages torn from it at an early age. I know she pours over every book of poems she can find from the public library, trying to recreate the same feeling my copied words elicited in her as a child.
Even if they weren’t meant for her at first.
I barely knew her as a child. Wasn’t around much, and when I came to town, her parents kept me occupied.
But she certainly knew me, and in the two years since her eighteenth birthday, she’s made her intentions clear.
I know she won’t find what she’s looking for elsewhere, because it’s not in the words, it’s in the gesture.
Poetry gifted, not poetry borrowed.
Words that made her feel considered, if only because her father despised her love of literature.
That was long before he asked me to keep an eye on her.
Long before my thoughts turned depraved and hungry.
CHAPTER2
Elena
“You dropped this.”
My heart kick-starts, shifting into overdrive as I lift my gaze from the worn wooden pew in front of me. Familiar, rich brown eyes stare back at me, heavy and menacing in their unwavering perusal, as if trying to peer into my very soul.
The sharp, angular curve of his jaw gives me pause; I’ve never seen him without at least a hint of stubble, and that he’s likely shaved specifically for this occasion causes the cracks in my heart to double in size.
Frissons of unease ripple inside the organ, partly at having this dangerous man’s undivided attention, and partly because being inside St. Leonard’s so soon after my return home feels like a conflict of interest.
A tendril of jet-black hair swoops down over his smooth forehead, and my fingers twitch where they’re pinned beneath my thighs, itching to push it away.
Always looking, never able to touch.
He holds out a slip of paper, crumpled between two long, muscular fingers. Everything about this man screamsfit, and I can’t stop my eyes from raking over his dark form hungrily, despite the context of the situation.
Impossibly tall, probably six-foot-four, maybe even six-foot-five, my father’s hitman towers over the congregation, looking more out of place than if the Devil himself had stepped inside the aged building.