Was I an animal from birth? Had the real me been dormant all this time?
I took Antonio’s hand and slid down into the whipping wind of the landing pad. I felt a twinge of guilt for even touching a married man, but I stifled it. We had too much to do.
He paused for a moment as the rotors wound down. His head keened a little, peering inside me. “Some things are in the stars. I was meant to protect you. And you were meant to rule.”
fifteen.
theresa
ntonio hustled me down the stairs, waving to the pilot who was waiting for the craft. Montecito Hospital was less luxurious than Sequoia, but it spanned four city blocks.
Antonio seemed to have planned everything in the half an hour I’d spent giving Jonathan my ring. We careened down two flights of stairs before cutting through a bridge across Pacific Boulevard and catching an elevator. Everyone faced the door, and he pulled me into him until my shoulder blades touched his chest. He put his finger on the back of my neck, drawing on it from my hairline to the place where my spine disappeared under my shirt. I shuddered, and his dick got hard before we made it to the lobby.
I had no idea what to do about that beautiful erection, or what it did for me.
Or what it made me. The interloper. The other woman. The siren call to a taken man’s filthiest desires. Not a speechwriter in sensible shoes, but an accountant and a killer with the grime of Tijuana still in her hair.
I was all those things, and more. And less.
I followed Antonio to the parking lot, listing them in no particular order.
Tramp.
Trash.
Fool.
“My god, Spin,” Zo said when we got to the deepest level of the parking lot.
I hadn’t said a word, because I didn’t know what role to speak from.
“You look like shit,” he said, hugging Antonio and kissing each cheek, left then right. He pointed at me and apparently chose courtesy over truth. “You look nice, of course.”
Whore.
Slut.
Mistress.
“It’s about a mile away,” Antonio said with no preamble. He opened the back door for me and sat in the front with Zo.
I didn’t mind being his whore, his one and only plaything. The shoe fit, and I wore it with pleasure. But being his mistress, his second, ate at me. He had a wife, and I wouldn’t be the one to break that, nor would I become what destroyed my own life, no matter the circumstances. I wasn’t exonerated because we hadn’t known she was alive.
“Where are we going?” I asked in the car, feeling like I didn’t belong there or anywhere.
“Up a hill.” Antonio twisted in his seat to face me. “You’re taken care of. Don’t worry.”
I’d made a concerted decision not to think about Valentina while we were getting out of the precinct, but in the backseat of the car, with him unintentionally using a phrase for the whores of married men, I lost the battle for my own composure.
“Stop looking at me,” I said. I couldn’t do this in front of Zo. I couldn’t break down. I had resources. I’d kept myself from falling apart in worse situations. Goddamnit. My chin wiggled, and my sinuses filled up. I couldn’t recall a prime number over two.
Antonio put his hand on my knee. I let my fingers slip around his, and I closed my eyes, just feeling his hand around mine. A deep breath. His presence in the car. The glue that held my mind together.
“Don’t,” he said.
I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut against tears.
“You are first,” he said, reading my mind.
I didn’t want him there. His left hand was on mine, with its bare ring finger. I pulled my hand away. “You’re married. I can’t touch you. It’s not right.”
He snapped his seat belt off and thrust himself over the front seat, extending his body back to me and leveraging himself against my knees. His body bridged the front and back. His face was an inch from mine, and his smell of the forest after a fire consumed me.
“Sit down,” Zo said a hundred miles away. “You’re gonna get us pulled over!”
“Sei mia,” he whispered.