“Would you stop talking to me about shit happening in the room when your head is buried in that phone?”
“I’m working.” He finally dropped it to his side and smirked at me. “You need my full attention?”
“Stop smiling. You look like a lunatic.”
“He is one.” Dante laughed and lifted his chin at Mario, who now seemed to be shopping for someone other than Katie.
“Why are you here instead of scoping the area?” I asked.
“We got it handled. The crews need training, and we already know the area is secure.”
Dante was a mixed bag, a distant relative of Mario’s first wife and about the same age as me. I didn’t know much about him, because he went into the military right at eighteen, then came back the same and also completely different.
“Plus, I knew I didn’t want to miss this.” He walked forward in his combat boots and rapped his knuckles on the dressing room door. “Katie, Bastian. Let’s see the damn thing before Rome’s patience wears out.”
“Dante?” Katie squealed like she could exude actual happiness and excitement about something. The door swung open, and she flew at him. “My hero’s home from war!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grumbled. The woman hugged, slept with, or made some connection with every man she encountered. Why any of them wanted to be around her more than a minute was beyond me.
Except I was the one contemplating her status within the mob. I was the one on the edge of claiming her as mine.
As Dante set her down, he placed his hands on her bare shoulders and mumbled, “Let me have a look at this dress.”
She smirked and shrugged. “It’s mostly for show. Gotta draw them in, right?”
He nodded, but his eyes devoured her like every man’s in the damn store at the moment.
Sure, Katie was a sort of family to them, but she was also what we knew her to be.
Bait. And damn good bait too.
I stared at her as Dante spun her around in the boutique and wondered if they were all a little in love with her. This black dress sparkled with her movements, the beading a dark, shimmery reflection that drew the eye. It hugged her like a second skin and was sheer in the waist and near her thighs. Black feathers along the sweetheart neckline hugged her tits, made them look good enough to eat, serving them up on a fucking platter.
Although the dress reached the floor, the combination of the open back crisscrossed by a black ribbon, the bare shoulders, and her ample cleavage made this dress worse than the one before.
Dante whistled, and Mario clapped as he walked over.
Bastian leaned on the doorframe of the dressing room and nodded slowly. “It’ll bring any man to his knees.”
Katie smiled at him. “Thanks, babe.” She was in rare form. I felt it the moment I’d walked in and when she finally made eye contact with me, she didn’t disappoint. “And can you imagine me in it on my knees?”
Bait.
I was pretty sure I wasn’t okay with her being that any longer.
17
Katie
Ithought seeing Rome with Bastian would be easier.
He stood there in that boutique unscathed by my being there with another man. I was certain he had no true feelings except hate toward me after screaming at me to leave the bar.
Not that I cared.
Except that I did. Except that I couldn’t stop thinking of him sliding in and out of me, of how his eyes pulled me in, of how my body gravitated toward him and was repelled by anyone else now.
He was supposed to care a little too. We were supposed to be bound by our inability to bind to anyone else.