Beauty and the Barracuda (4 page)

What she felt for Sansone when he simply smiled at her, teased her, ran way deeper than affection. She was totally and completely in love and terrified of it.

“And apparently my terror leads to me pantsing and committing grand theft auto…” She banged her head against the steering wheel. “Why is my life so hard? Jesus did
not
die for this!”

A knock on the driver’s side window had her jerking upwards. Outside the glass stood her younger sister, looking just as rumpled and mentally fucked as she was. Nyssa hit the button and the window rolled down.

Samara Blackwell blinked eyes identical to Nyssa’s own and slowly said, “I did something unholy last night and I need to be baptized.”

Uh…
“Sammie, I’m not ordained in any way, shape or—”

Her sibling slapped her hands across the roof of the car and leaned in before bellowing, “I have the taste of Luciano Antonelli’s skin sitting in the back of my mouth! I don’t give a shit if you have to look
up
the proper way to send someone’s soul to God online! You have to get this demon of lust out of me!”

Well, the day had just gotten a lot more complicated.

“Sammie, you had a one-night stand with Luc. You didn’t spend a week in a Mexican prison—calm yourself.”

“You don’t understand,” Nyssa’s sister whispered with a faraway stare in her gaze as she sat on the sofa, rocking back and forth. She’d taken a shower and was wrapped up in a borrowed robe, her face scrubbed clean and her feet tucked under her, looking far younger than her thirty years.

Her sibling had always been the one who was just a bit more fragile between the two of them, which had made Nyssa extremely overprotective growing up. Samara wasn’t some spoiled princess; she had a genuinely good heart and a gift for charming complete strangers. At one point in time that had made her vulnerable, but over the years, she’d learned how to spin it into a fulfilling radio and television career as a media personality who was incredibly intelligent and oblivious to her beauty. The way her wide hazel eyes blinked up at Nyssa gave her a brief glimpse of what Luciano had to have seen all these years.

“What don’t I understand?” she questioned, taking a seat on an armchair and stretching out until she faced the ceiling. If she handled Samara’s crisis, then it kept her mind off her own.

“It was
good
,”
Samara said in a quiet voice. “
Good.”

Nyssa smirked and turned her head. “How good?”

“Remember those videos Ma used to show us of ourselves as toddlers on our birthdays?”

Being that Carla Blackwell had recorded every other breath they’d taken since the day they came screaming into the world, Nyssa knew exactly
what her sister was referring to. “Yes.”

“That one of you at two where they’d just cut the cake and handed you a slice—remember your expression after the first taste? How your eyes closed?”

“Unh-hunh.”

“Remember how you
then
shoved your entire face into that same slice until you were satisfied?”

“Yup.”

“I just spent more or less eight hours doing that very thing with Luciano’s crotch.”

“Oh that is…disturbing.”                                                                                                  

Samara threw up her hands. “It is!”

Nyssa pointed to herself. “I’m disturbed because I have no desire to imagine you playing
hide the kielbasa
with Luc.
You’re
disturbed for reasons you still haven’t explained as of yet.”

Why exactly was her sibling acting as though she was shocked by the fact she’d finally had sex with a man who’d been stalking her every move for the last six years? Luciano had made it abundantly obvious what he wanted with Samara from the first moment they’d met inside the offices of Blackwell & Sultana.

“The man stares at you like you’re the answer to all his hard-ons,” she said. “The savior of trouser tents, the charmer of boxer snakes, the redeemer of dick, the messiah of—”

“You can stop talking now,” Samara interrupted.

“Yes, I could. But what would be the fun in that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” The other woman replied softly. “
Not
losing your eyes in a tragic mauling by my hands?”

“I thought good fucking was supposed to make you a
happier
person.” Nyssa cocked her head. “Why you no happy?”

Samara’s lips curved. “Stop trying to make me laugh! This is serious!”

“No,
this
is you overthinking the fact that you spent last night learning the fine art of sword swallowing.” She waved her hands about. “You’re walking as though you have on a pair of men’s Wrangler jeans and every exposed part of you has a lip-shaped bruise. Bask in the afterglow of almost having your tonsils knocked loose by the cock of one of the most gorgeous men this side of Philly.”

Her sister’s lip curled. “How do you have a career with that mouth?”

Nyssa shrugged. “I occasionally let people look up my skirt. Does wonders for your credentials.”

Groaning, Samara fell to her side. “I can’t talk to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re mental.”

She snorted. “Sweetheart, you can’t talk to me because I’d simply encourage you to go and allow Luc to flash you his belly ruffian all over again.”

The other woman sighed deeply. “This is why we can’t be friends.”

“You want me to lie to you, Sammie, to tell you that you made some huge, irrevocable mistake. You want me to tell you that you should completely regret your time riding Luc’s hambone, but I refuse to, and do you know why?”

Samara eyed her. “Because you want to say at least twenty other euphemisms for penis?”

“That’s
exactly
why!”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Nyssa answered quickly. Maybe a bit
too
quickly if the way Samara’s eyes narrowed was any indication.

“While you’re laughing, would you like to explain why
you
were dragging in at ten this morning?”

Nyssa’s laughter slowly died as she waved a hand. “I spent the night at Sunny’s.”

“Oh.” Samara then lifted a shoulder and said, “Meh.”

That made her sit up. “Meh? What do you mean
meh
?”

“What do you
think
I mean? You just said you spent the night at Sunny’s.”

“Yes, and you said
meh.”

“Because it’s not exactly unexpected, Nyssa. You sleep in his bed more than you do your own.”

“So?”

“So nothing ever happens.” Samara then went silently before slowly turning to look at her. “Unless of course you’re annoyed because something
did
happen.” She tilted her head. “Did you and Sunny—”

“No
,” Nyssa cut in before she could even finish the sentence. “We didn’t.”

“But your face says you
did.
Nyssa, you’re blushing. The same woman who once told another girl in school that she’d caught said girl’s boyfriend learning what a personal foul was in an
extremely
intimate way via the basketball team point guard is
blushing
.”

“Firstly, don’t make it sound like I was just going around terrorizing innocent people. She wouldn’t stop fucking with me so I mind-fucked her, end of story and”—Nyssa waved a hand—“if I’m blushing it’s because I’m in the throes of a hangover and still nauseous.”

“You’re in the throes of bullshit, is what you are.” Samara sat fully up. “What exactly happened between you and Sunny last night?”

“Nothing.”

“Deceiver!” her sister bellowed.

“You’re insane.”

“Am I? Or can I just see through that thin veil of deception?”

“No, insane…that’s you.”

Samara flopped around like a two-year-old. “Tell me!”

Nyssa rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell—”

“I
will
call him. You know that, right? And if I call him, he’ll tell me everything I want to know, so you may as well do it yourself and make everything easier on the both of us.”

Jesus Christ… “I kissed him, all right? I kissed Sunny!”

Her sister blinked. “Oh.” She stood and headed for the kitchen. “Meh.”

Nyssa got to her feet and followed. “
Meh?
What does that
mean
?”

“What do you
think
it means?”

“It means you want me to go into a blind rage before I strangle you to death and bury you in a landfill.”

Samara cast her a glance over one shoulder. “I feel like you have that written in a diary somewhere.”

“I do,” Nyssa whispered. “Along with poems about death and dismemberment. They’re mostly centered on you and all the shit you used to do to piss me off when we were kids!”

The other woman went rummaging through her fridge, appearing completely unconcerned about the threat. “You’re out of lunch meat.”

“Samara!”

“What?”

“You’re making me crazy!”

“Satan already did that! Don’t blame me for his works!”

“Satan and I don’t have our mandatory meeting until Sunday when Ma calls me for church and I fake sick so this is
all
you!”

Samara’s lips twitched. “Why are you so cranky?”

“Because you’re being weird!”

“Am I?” Her brows lifted. “Or are
you
being weird?”

Nyssa folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the kitchen counter. Her place wasn’t overly large but it was cozy. She didn’t cook much but when she did, her kitchen always got a toasty feel to it, which definitely came in handy during Philadelphia winters. Right now she wanted to stuff her sister in the oven and see how toasty
that
made the place. “I’m
not
being weird.”

“You are. You’re acting like you
wanted
something to happen between you and Sunny.”

“Something
did
happen. I
kissed
him.”

“Did it take place while he was riding your horse and carriage?”

“No.”

Samara quickly made a sandwich and took a seat at the small dining room table. “Then nothing happened.” She replied around a mouthful.

Irritated now, Nyssa took the sandwich and finished it, making sure to lick her fingers when she was done. Her sibling’s eye twitched. “That kiss was more than enough, thank you, and it counts as something.”

Samara used the sleeve of Nyssa’s robe to wipe the plate her sandwich had previously been on before grinning up at her. “You kissing Sunny is like me kissing a frat boy—weird, awkward and quite possibly something that could end in a rash.”

“There was tongue!” She placed both hands on the table and leaned forward. “And he mentioned it this morning!”

“When he mentioned it, was he encroaching on vaginal territory?”

“
No
!”

“Then…” Samara sat back in her chair, stared Nyssa straight in the eye and went, “Meh.”

It was only right that Nyssa launched herself at her sister.

***

There were times in a man’s life that he just needed to brood in silence—needed to sit in a dark room with a glass of whiskey and his thoughts. Apparently that was for men who didn’t have siblings, because the moment Sansone stepped across the threshold of his town home, he knew he wasn’t alone. How did he know exactly? Oh, because he had some unnaturally sized asshole with meaty fists and tugboat feet lounging around on
his
sofa, with a glass of
his
whiskey while watching
his
T.V. And were those
his
leftovers on the ottoman across from said unnaturally sized asshole? Why, yes, yes they were.

“Why, in God’s holy name, are you in my home?”

Luciano Antonelli—Sansone’s adoptive brother, client and
sometimes
best friend—gave a simple shrug. “I enjoy my luxuries.”