“Don’t kiss me,” I said. “Just don’t, I’m—”
But he did, and so gently that the kiss itself was a request for a kiss. I squeaked involuntarily, because I didn’t want to kiss him. I didn’t want to do what I’d said I wouldn’t do. I wanted to stay strong in my conviction that until we worked out what was happening with his wife, there would be no touching, no kissing, no nothing.
And he ripped all of that away. In the first microsecond of the kiss, when his parted lips brushed the length of mine as if introducing themselves for the first time, I lost every ounce of will I had against him. I needed him. I wouldn’t make it through this without some part of his body against some part of mine. I was going mad, surely. Mad with violence or mad with need, but mad mad mad.
I opened my mouth, and his tongue greeted mine. It wasn’t a lusty kiss but a joining. A reassurance. A nod to our connected destinies.
I put my hands on his cheeks, and he pulled back ever so slightly.
“I’m scared,” I said. “And I love you.”
“She admits it,” he said, smiling. “Amore mio, you may have to carry our love alone, but it won’t be heavy.”
“It will be, and I don’t have the strength.”
He pulled back to kneel on the front seat. Before turning toward the windshield, with his left hand on the back of his seat and his right on Zo’s headrest, he said, “Then it’s agreed. We live. We live, and we share the load. Dimmi di sii?”
His confidence was infectious, and I let myself believe him for a second before spiraling back into doubt. “Si, Capo. Si.”
“Great,” Zo said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but there’s a cop two car lengths behind.”
Antonio slapped Zo in the back of the head and twisted back into his seat.
Zo stopped at the end of a twisted path, at a modern little house with no windows in front, and we all got out of the car.
“What’s the plan?” Zo asked, rubbing his forehead.
“Tonight we sleep.” Antonio clapped Zo on the shoulder. “Tomorrow we plan. Give me your piece.”
Zo unbuckled his shoulder holster and gave it to Antonio.
“Grazie,” Antonio said, then motioned at the car. “You have one in there for Theresa?”
The crickets creaked, the wind crackled through the palm trees, and Zo looked at Antonio as if he’d lost his mind.
But Antonio just stood straight with his hand out. “They took everything on the way up.”
Zo reached into the glove compartment and took out a small gun. He checked for bullets and slapped it into his boss’s palm. “She know how to use it?”
“Blow your left nut off from ten meters.”
“All right.” He shrugged, resigned. They shook hands, and Zo drove away.
Antonio punched a code in the door, and we entered. He dropped the weapons on the counter with a clatter. The back of the house overlooked the San Gabriel Valley. I saw the barest of furnishings. A couch. A table and three chairs. Blinds, not curtains. Not a single painting, picture, or scuff mark broke the white expanse of the walls.
“This your house?” I asked.
“It’s your sister’s. I’ve never met a fixer like her.”
“Margie? God, I—”
He crushed me in a bruising kiss, and I responded by accepting it, yielding to what was right, what fit, what made sense. His hands yanked up my shirt, his tongue owning mine.
I pushed him away. “Stop.”
Whatever agility he used to hurt people, he used on me, twisting me around, pushing me against the window overlooking the valley and tying my shirt until the tension held my hands behind me. “Cosa c’é?”
“I just…” His scent distracted me. His breath in my ear. The hard-on pushing into me. My body made excuses, but damn it, I had a long explanation planned, one that was well-suited to a sane and civil dinner or a car ride. “I can’t. I… we need to talk about—”