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“Answer me, dammit.”
She heaved her body up to fight his weight. “Get off me!”
“Or what, Elena? What will you do, my hot-tempered little virgin?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “Get off me or I’ll scream.”
Instead of doing as she asked, he reached out, clamped his hands around her wrists and wrenched her arms over her head. Leaning forward, he said, “They’re used to hearing screaming coming from these back rooms—that’s why the music is so loud. Go ahead, Elena, wear yourself out.”
She didn’t scream, but she renewed her fight, twisting and wriggling while she began to curse him using every filthy word she knew in both English and Italian.
He shifted his body, and she suddenly felt more of him. Too much of him. She saw his jaw tighten. His nostrils flare. She stopped thrashing.
“I thought you were going to scream,” he taunted. “What are you waiting for?”
Above her head, he collected both of her wrists into one hand, then ran the fingers on his free hand down her throat and over the swell of her left breast. She sucked in her breath, shook her head. “No! Lucky, please…”
“I’m going to ask you some questions, Elena. And you’re going to answer them. Say, yes, Lucky, I’m going to answer your questions. All of them.”
His voice was soft, his breath eighty-proof. Could a person get drunk on fumes? Elena wondered. For she had to be drunk; why else would she have made him that stupid offer? Why else was she suddenly feeling like a cat needing to be stroked?
“Elena—”
“Yes, Lucky,” she managed. “I’m going to answer all of your questions.”
“Frank has no idea you’re here, right?”
She swallowed hard, shook her head. “I don’t think so. He shouldn’t discover I’m gone until around seven tomorrow morning.”
He slipped her top button out of its bound buttonhole. “And then?”
“And then he’ll find the note.”
His hands were warm on her flesh, torturously gentle. His fingers moved to the second button. “The note says what?”
Intoxicated, yes—his breath was making her dizzy.
“What’s in the note, Elena?”
She licked her lips, stared at his mouth. “I told him that I went to visit friends in Miami. College friends.”
She felt his sweet breath touch her breasts and knew another button was lost. She tried not to think about it, about what he could see. About the fact that the bra she wore was pale blue and as sheer as fishnet.
“Mother suggested a vacation,” she said. “I told Frank to tell her that I would call in a few days.”
Another button.
Elena heard herself moan when his lips brushed her mouth. Oh, God… “Piacere,” she whispered.
“Please what, Elena?”
She closed her eyes. “Please…no more. Please stop.”
Immediately his hand lifted off the fourth button, and she felt him draw himself upward. Though he remained straddling her, he let go of her wrists. In an ultrasoft voice, he demanded, “Open your eyes.”
She blinked them open, fought to breathe.
“The lesson here, sweet Elena, is that I could take you with or without your consent. I could take…everything. All of it, as you say. I could hurt you. Scar you. Even kill you. Never play a game you can’t win, Elena. And there are damn few you will ever win if you play with me.”
His gaze dropped to the swell of her breasts, and Elena knew his interest centered on her puckered dark nipples. He stared at her for a few seconds longer, then he began to work the buttons back into the holes.
He was on the second button from the top when he let out a strangled groan—a sound of pure agony that stiffened his body like a knife had been driven into the middle of his back.
Elena watched as he wrenched hard to the right and rolled off her. A second later he was sprawled beside her on his back, his expression fighting an invisible pain.
Lucky recognized the rush of pain and knew what it meant. Flattened out on the bed, he gritted his teeth against the burning sensation racing the length of his spine, and the knowledge of what the outcome would be in a matter of seconds.
Not now, he thought, not the hell now. Not here and not in front of her.
He continued to lie there while the hot pain worked its way into his thighs, then began to melt away, taking with it the feeling in his limbs.
“What is it?”
Sweat beading his forehead, Lucky glanced at Elena. She was sitting up and staring down at him. He would have liked to have been sitting up, too. But without looking like a snake dragging a fifty-pound ball and chain, he wasn’t going to be able to haul his body up.
“What’s happening?” She slid off the bed. “It’s your back, isn’t it? Something happened to your back.”
“What do you know about my back?”
She stepped between his open legs where they hung limp off the bed. “I heard Joey talking to Frank about some kind of surgery you’re supposed to have.”
“You just happened to hear?”
“All right, I was eavesdropping. And why shouldn’t I? In a matter of weeks I learned that my father who isn’t really my father is living a double life. Has two grown sons. And that they all work for the mafia.”
“We don’t work for the mafia, Elena.”
“Sorry. You are the mafia.”
Not liking that definition any better, Lucky checked his watch. The paralysis he’d been experiencing for the past three weeks was erratic. He could be up and moving within ten minutes or down and out for an hour.
“I take it this has happened before. You don’t look too surprised.”
No, he wasn’t surprised. His doctor had warned him that the scar tissue from his old wound had begun to strangle his spinal cord. Internal adhesions—those were the words used—were constricting the blood flow. He’d had a few problems with the scar over the years. But it had gotten a helluva lot worse since Milo’s boys had worked him over a few months ago and he’d wound up in the hospital losing a kidney.
“Should I call someone?”
“No.”
She reached out and pulled his shirt from his jeans. When she began to unbutton it, he grabbed one of her wrists. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going to check out the problem to see what I can do to help.”
He shoved her hand away. “What you can do to help is go back home.”
“You can’t feel your legs, can you?”
He looked down to see that she’d curled her hands around his legs just above his knees and that she was squeezing. He knew that because he could see it, not because he could feel it. “Of course I can feel my legs.”
Her hand moved to his front pocket.
“What the hell are you doing now?”
“I’m getting your knife so I can stab you in the leg. I wager a thousand that you won’t feel it go in or out.”
Lucky grabbed her wrist again. “Go sit over there.”
She tucked a black strand of hair behind her ear. “And if I don’t, what will you do? Get up and make me?”
He let go of her wrist and drilled her with a look that normally sent his men running for cover, but it didn’t move her back even an inch.
“That’s what I thought.” She shook her head, reached out and resumed unbuttoning his shirt.
This time, as her fingers brushed his bare chest, Lucky closed his eyes and allowed himself the pleasure of actually feeling her hands on him. A minute later he felt cool air on his chest and knew she’d finished the task.
Angry all of a sudden that he’d succumbed to her so easily, he said, “Anxious to get rid of your little problem, are you?”
“My problem?”
“Your virginal status,” he clarified.
“Years ago it would have been considered a gift. But I suppose these days the real gift to the modern man is variety and experience.” She glanced at his legs. “It looks like I’m stuck with my problem, and you’re stuck with yours. I wonder which is worse—inexperience or inadequacy.”
Lucky reached out and grabbed her arms, then jerked her forward onto his body. “My legs are useless at the moment, but everything else is working fine. Am I right?”
Her sweet mouth parted, and she sucked in a breath of air. “Sì, ho capito. Now let me up. You’ve proved you’re still…capable,” she managed.
“If you’re willing to do a little of the work, I could show you just how capable, Elena. We could start working on that experience you lack.”
She squirmed, tried to roll off him, the friction only adding more fuel to his capability. He closed his eyes, hoping that would help take his mind off what her body was doing to him, but her sexy scent filled his nostrils, and the result was another inch.
“Lucky…”
Her voice told him she was aware of what had just occurred. He let go of her, knowing he was making himself suffer needlessly. He had no intention of sleeping with Vito Tandi’s daughter. He might want to, but he wouldn’t. Temptation was a fool’s game, and everybody in Chicago knew Lucky Masado was no fool.
Chapter 4
The rules on sex, dating and men are as follows, Lannie. Don’t ever let your body rule your head. Don’t say yes when you mean no. And never let a man get you cornered or down. Down as in off your feet and on your back. If it happens, Lannie, be prepared to feel the snake come alive. Am I making myself clear, darling? If you feel the snake, you’re in trouble and you must knee the beast and run. Run like hell, Lannie. That is, unless you want to be caught. You’ll want to be caught one day, darling. All women do. But we’ll talk about that when you’re older. For now I’ll ask Romano to teach you some self-defense.
Her mother’s words had been offered to her when she was twelve, and Elena had gotten several more lessons on sex, dating and men in the years that followed. And defense lessons from Romano.
Elena stood between Lucky’s legs, aware that what she’d felt moments ago had been the snake. Her gaze drifted to the front of his jeans. Not thinking too clearly, she asked, “Does this happen often? You know—” her eyes darted to his face “—ah, your back locking up and your legs going limp. I mean, numb.”
She focused on the vivid scar that curled around his hipbone just above his jeans. It had to be the one, she thought. The legendary scar that went on forever. Did it go up or down? If it went up, it likely climbed his back to merge with the scar on his neck.
Accustomed to touching people in her line of work, Elena reached out and ran her finger across the visible five inches of the questionable scar. “I went to school at a medical institute for myofascial therapy. My interest, in the beginning, was just to help my mother with her pain.” When he said nothing, she continued to carefully examine the portion of the scar she could see.
Her professor at the college had told her that her personal experience with her mother had given her compassion, as well as the dedication needed to become an effective therapist.
She asked, “When you lose the feeling in your legs, how long does it last?”
He didn’t answer, which told Elena that he was either being stubborn for pride’s sake, or that the paralysis was still in an inconsistent state.
She continued to study the thick fibrotic tissue, pressing into the scar with her thumb, adding more pressure as she moved it over the scar with immeasurable slowness.
On an intake of breath, he grumbled, “Go ask Blacky for a bottle of Scotch.”
She kept her eyes on her fingers as she examined the scar. “You don’t need more to drink. What you need is—”
“Scotch, Elena.”
His tone was razor sharp and she looked up.
“Two bottles.” When she still hesitated, his nostrils flared. “Now!”
Elena backed away from him and left the room. She found Blacky standing at the end of the red carpet enjoying the show on the catwalk. This time the half-naked woman was a six-foot redhead with breasts the size of Florida grapefruits.
She quickly instructed him to bring two bottles of Scotch to number sixteen, and when she returned to the room, she saw that Lucky had pulled himself up against the headboard.
“Blacky’s on his way with your order,” she said tightly. “What else will you be needing besides a new liver and a breath mint?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Sì. Come here, Elena. Come push one of these pillows behind me so I can sit up straighter. I’m helpless, remember?”
“As helpless as a viper, you mean.”
His gaze drifted over her, slowly and deliberately. “Come here.”
She did what he asked. Rounded the bed and climbed onto the mattress. In the process of shoving a pillow behind him, a hard rap sounded at the door. It was the only warning they got before the door opened.
Elena looked up expecting to see Blacky, then gasped when Moody Trafano walked into the room wearing his lizard’s grin and carrying Lucky’s two bottles of Scotch.
This just wasn’t his night, Lucky decided as Moody Trafano kick the door shut. “Where’s Blacky?” he inquired, knowing the answer before he asked the question.
“Taking a nap in number five.” Moody’s gaze locked on Elena. “You should have been nicer to me at the bar, doll.”
