End Game (17 page)

“That’s all I allow you to give me.”

“You’ll allow?”

Amusement shines from his eyes. “Who do you think is in charge here?”

I smile against his chest, feeling suddenly rebellious.

“Don’t do it, Marisa.”

I do it.

I bite him on a second spot, hard. He reacts faster than I can process. Suddenly, his hand is around my throat, squeezing, and I’m splayed on my desk.

“I told you not to do it. Do you have a hard time hearing, or are you just stupid?”

My teeth clench together. “None of the above.”

His legs flatten against mine. I feel his cock digging into my flesh like a steel bar. “Or maybe you wanted to provoke me because you like having my hands on your ass. You like being punished.”

Before that night, I would have never even fathomed that kind of sex. The way he talked to me, the things he did—all of it was degrading. Disgusting. Except it wasn’t disgusting. It was incredible. So maybe I do want him like that.

He turns me around so that I’m flattened against my desk, and then he lifts my skirt up over my back. His fingernails scrape my skin as he pulls down my pantyhose and underwear. I sigh when I feel the warmth of his hands on my ass, but that sigh rises into a yelp almost immediately.

SMACK!

The sound carries through the office, probably even through the door. My cheeks flame when I think about what my coworkers would think if they tried to investigate and found a locked door, and heard the voice of two people. Jesus, this is crazy.

The fear and embarrassment makes me want him to hurry up. His palm rubs the spot where he spanked me, and I bite down hard as he slaps the left side.

“Joe, not too loud. They’ll hear—”

“What’s that? Are you trying to give
me
orders?” His voice trembles with laughter.

I sigh loudly. “I’m serious.”

“I’m serious, too.”

His hand rips across my skin, inflaming the already raw flesh. My voice cries out and I immediately cover my mouth in horror. Joe’s hand smoothes over the burn spreading over my skin, and then finally I hear his belt looping out of his pants, which drop to the floor. I look over my shoulder, and he coils the belt in his hands. There’s nothing funny about the look on his face. It’s intense. It makes the breath hitch in my throat.

“Joe, please.”

The belt cracks through the air, landing on my burning skin. I cover my mouth just in time to scream into my hand. Tears of pain swim in my eyes, but Joe immediately drops the belt and soothes my body.

“That’s going to leave a nice mark.”

His fingers grab my hips and suddenly a different sensation runs all of the pain out of my mind. His hardness slides up and down my clit, igniting a firestorm of desire inside my walls. I hate how reedy my voice is.

“Please.”

For once, he obliges me without drawing anything else from me. I stretch my hands and grab the edge of my desk as his hips push forward. He sinks into me, the thickness spreading me open. I move my legs apart without realizing, waiting for that perfect moment when he buries himself as deep as he can go. Then it happens. He grinds against me and the very head of his cock strikes my core. I clench around it, gasping into my desk as he keeps himself buried inside me. He pumps into me, yanking my hips back to hit inside me so deeply that pain mingles with the pleasure. It’s a sweet pain that only feels better and better the more he fucks me.

There’s a roar in my ears that pounds in tune with his thrusts. He fucks me like he needs it, like every cell of his cries out for me. He fucks me so hard that it knocks the air out of my chest. I’m almost afraid of the sounds he’s making, until he pulls out and turns me around.

Pure, shaking desire shines from his face.

I’m amazed by the strength in his arms. He lifts me up onto my desk with scarcely a sigh, and then my legs wrap around him. His hands grab my hips and he groans, face lifted to the ceiling as he enters me again. Holy shit, he feels even better the second time.

It’s like a mad race. He pounds the desk—my files spill all over the floor, the pencil holder rolls off, all of it feels like a metaphor for the most explosive sex I’ve ever had. He grapples my neck and holds me down, his expression contorted. I’m lifting up and up. Closer and closer. Then he grabs my tits and squeezes as one last thrust jars my body. He pounds again with a huge sigh, his cock still rock-hard as my own orgasm twitches in my core and explodes like a bomb.

Joe gives me a sleepy grin and pulls out of me, tossing aside the condom wrapped around his dick. I’m still too shattered to move a muscle.

“Oh my God.”

There are really no other words.

He leans down, smiling, and grabs my shoulders to help me up. “I didn’t plan on fucking you on your desk, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity.”

His voice sounds strained, as if he just finished running a marathon.

“Why?”

“Cause you’re so goddamn gorgeous.”

That’s a sweet thing to say. From the way he looks at me, I can tell that he means it. His eyes are heavily lidded and his lips are set in a neutral line, almost as if he can’t believe a girl like me would be with him. It’s strange, because it’s what I think of him. He’s too beautiful, too dark, too experienced to want me.

But he doesn
’
t really want you. He just wants your body.

It’s like a blow to my chest. I step back from him and grab my pantyhose and underwear, shoving them back on. Sensing my mood, he gives me a puzzled look.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think I can do this.”

His face darkens and I feel a small bump of fear. Joe’s not used to being told “no.” Even though my mind is determined, my body wants him. I touch his waist as he exhales through his nose.

“I don’t understand why girls always have to complicate things.”

“I want more than just—”

“—than just me giving you the best sex of your life?” He doesn’t look angry. He looks amused.

I turn away from him and I grab my bra off the floor, feeling like an idiot. “Just forget it.”

His soft fingers at my jaw turn my head back towards him. His mouth is an inch away and I feel strangely light-headed like I always do when he touches me.

“You don’t know me. You just want me because you’re lonely, because I’ve saved your ass from your psycho brother, and because I fuck you like you want to be fucked. But you don’t want
me
.”

Even though some of that rings true—I
am
lonely—that doesn’t mean that I don’t admire him. He was very sweet with me at Coney Island. I just want more of that.

“That’s not true.”

He sighs impatiently. “You don’t know me.”

“I know that you’re bad at air hockey.”

He rolls his eyes. 

How? How can I show him that I want him?

There’s some kind of sadness in his eyes, too. That deep-seated emptiness that made me so unnerved by him in the first place. He got better as I got to know him. He lost that soulless look, but it’s back now.

Joe takes both shoulders in his hands. He strokes my skin with his thumbs and I bite my lip to keep from sighing.

“I thought I was pretty clear from the beginning. Just sex. Just fun.”

It was never that simple. He helped me with my brother twice and comforted me.

“I know, but I can’t help it. It doesn’t feel like just sex to me.”

“Well, it is to me.”

The hardness in his voice almost makes me want to pull away from him, to run and hide. He’s not trying to be cruel, but it feels like it anyway.

Of course.

I’m not special. Not to him anyway.

Just let it go.

I find my blouse and slip it on, buttoning it back up as Joe looks at me with a slack-jawed expression. I sit back down on my chair and open my laptop, trying to tease my hair into something that doesn’t scream, “I just had sex!”

Considering the man I’m interested in is in the fucking mafia, I should be glad that he doesn’t want anything more. What in the fucking fuck is wrong with me? Why do I feel so devastated right now?

When I look up, he’s still standing there. My lips press together. “Is there something you need me to do?”

His face softens. “Don’t be like that.”

I try to focus on the screen. I try not to hold in my breath when he walks closer, but it’s impossible. His finger strokes the side of my face.

“If you want to fuck me, then fuck me. If not, then get out.”

Joe’s snide laughter rings in my ears. “All right. See you later.”

The door slams a little hard behind him, the walls vibrating a little more than they should.

* * *

I don’t want to be one of those pathetic women, who hangs on to a guy even after he’s stated his complete lack of interest, but I feel like I might become one.

I regret it.

Why couldn’t I just enjoy it, like he said?

The office darkens as I shut off the light, and I trudge downstairs by myself, avoiding the noisy lights of the entrance.

Because I
’
m a fucking idiot, that
’
s why.

The door opens in front of me as I push, and I step into the night. The parking lot is eerily silent and the powerful lights flooding the area freak me out, for some reason. Everything is too white. My footsteps seem to echo too loudly as I approach my car.

Somehow, I know that I’m being watched.

I bundle my jacket around my waist, suddenly cold as I feel a breeze, but it’s not a breeze. There’s movement behind me. I spin around, as a sharp pain pierces my chest and a man throws something black—something soft over my head. The black hood swallows my scream as he twists my arms behind my back and I hear the scream of a car rapidly approaching.

“Nathan, what are you doing?”

It has to be him. He got me while Joe wasn’t around.

I grapple with him wildly, kicking out with my foot only for it to connect hard with solid metal. My scream of pain echoes in the parking lot and then he grunts, opening a door and next thing I know, I’m shoved inside.

“Shut the fuck up. Frank, shut her up!”

A man with a strong Jersey accent in the front seat talks to the man sitting beside me.

“Nathan! Nathan, don’t do this!”

The car moves and I lunge for the passenger side door, colliding with a man who blocks my exit.

“Fuckin’ crazy broad. Stay still!”

“NATHAN, PLEASE!”

I’m out of my mind with terror. Never has the edge between life and death been so clear. I’m abducted and in a car, and no one will come looking for me. Not Joe, certainly not my siblings. I imagine my clothes ripped from my body, the faceless men in the car shoving apart my legs to rape me. I try to rip off the hood, and a huge fist slams into the side of my head. Stars burst in the blackness as I keel over like a falling tree, blinded by throbbing pain. I land on someone’s knee, but he shoves me off roughly.

“Sit down and don’t fight, or you’ll get another one.”

“Please. Just let me talk to Nathan. Let me explain—”

“Who the fuck is Nathan?”

The low voice to my right, Frank, asks the question.

“Just shut up, Ms. Toffoli,” says the same man from the passenger seat. “It’ll be over soon. We just want to talk.”

Through the pain pounding in my skull, there’s confusion.
We?
Who is
we
? My hands fly out as the car makes a sudden left turn. “Who are you?”

A second blow connects with the back of my head and I slam into the passenger seat. Tears burst from my eyes as the pain radiates down my neck. The men in the car laugh as I curl into myself. Tears drip down my face, soaking through the black cotton hood. I want to cry out from the pain, so I stuff my fist in my mouth for half an hour and moan into it until the car stops.

The hood rips from my head and sudden brightness blinds my eyes. Frank, a stout man with pockmarked skin, yanks my arm. I stumble out of the grey Mercedes, looking around wildly. We’re in the midst of a crumbling neighborhood, the kind that I’d never walk through alone. Three other men surround me as I’m shoved down the street and into a dank building, which I recognize as a restaurant. There are dozens of holes gouged into the walls, small round holes that look suspiciously like bullet holes. The strangest feeling creeps up my back.

A man in his forties with a rectangular face stares at me from a table. He’s dressed in a pinstriped suit. Frank pushes the small of my back and I stumble forward on shaky legs. They want me to sit with this man, whoever he is. A decanter of wine sits in front of him and two wine glasses.

“Who are you? Why am I here?” I can barely force the words from my lips.

“Please, sit down. My name is Jamie. Jamie Tucci. I represent Carmine Lucchesi.”

I pull back the chair, hyper aware of the men crowding around the table. One places his hands on his hips and I see a flash of silver. A gun.

Oh, God. I’m going to die here.

I collapse into the chair, feeling faint as Jamie gives me a shrewd look. “I—I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.”

He takes the decanter of wine and slowly pours himself a glass. Briefly, he looks at me as it hovers over the second glass. Like I’d drink anything they’d give to me. I shake my head.

He swirls the glass and inhales deeply. “You’ve been missing payments for weeks, Ms. Toffoli. Where’s my money?”

I stare at him, aghast. “Are—Do you know Jack? Is this part of his—”

“You’re in Jersey,” he growls. “The Vittorios have no hold over me here. Your Dad and the Lucchesi family recently began a business relationship together. You owe us four payments. Ten grand each.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

“Listen, my Dad never told me about any of his business arrangements. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He straightens in his seat and folds his arms, looking unimpressed by my argument.

“Are you men in the New York mafia?”

Jamie looks around at the others in disbelief and turns back towards me. “I just fucking told you that you’re in Jersey. We’re the Carmine Lucchesi outfit. I represent him, which makes me God to you.”