Shielded Wrongs (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 4)

“She sneaks out again after talking to you, and Enzo might put it together and fire you, Vanessa,” he warned, shaking his head as he moved to the other end of the bar. He gave the distinct impression that he dealt with her drama more often than was normal, and my already dismal impression of her sank even lower.

“That’s me,” I agreed, smiling up at her brightly. “You’re the girl who wishes Enzo would fuck her, right?” Ash snorted, filling a glass with water and sliding it down the bar toward me. “I’m in a bar and you give me water? What the shit is that?”

“It’s noon,” he said, shaking his head.

“Fair enough,” I agreed. “You’re still here, huh?” I asked as I shifted my attention back over to the woman.

I spun around on my stool, facing Enzo and Seb. Hazel eyes met mine briefly, a slight smile curving his lips as he spoke to the other man. “He didn’t seem happy when you took off last week,” she noted, not seeming to get the hint that I wasn’t interested in a conversation with her toxic ass.

“He worried about me. The horror, right?” I feigned exasperation, letting it shift off my face as a sly smile took it over. During my last conversation with her, I’d told her I’d toss Enzo back when I finished riding his dick. Things had changed for me since then, as ridiculous as it sounded. I wouldn’t be tossing him back willingly. I leaned in, dropping my voice to a whisper. “He punishes me with sex. Let’s face it. That’s no punishment at all. He’s got it, and he knows how to use it. He’s like the magical unicorn of orgasms, with a really big horn if you catch my drift.”

She leaned back, staring down at me with her face twisted in disgust. “He’d be ashamed to know you’re talking about your sex life,” she accused, her disgust turning cunning for a moment as I watched her consider if she could use the information to cause problems.

“Lorenzo,” I called across the room, dropping my voice down to a throaty rasp when he turned his attention to us immediately. His eyes narrowed on Vanessa briefly, but his undivided attention returned to me quickly after he dismissed her with annoyance on his face.

Ouch.

“Are you ashamed of me telling Vanessa how you like to fuck me until my legs don’t work?” I asked. Seb hung his head, pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger. I hardly knew the man outside of the few times Enzo mentioned him in passing, but I got that reaction a lot.

Enzo chuckled, patting Seb on the shoulder as he sauntered his way across the room to stand in front of me. Leaning his hands on the counter behind me, he trapped me between his body and the bar. “Carina, I’m not ashamed of anything to do with you,” he murmured, leaning forward to take my lips with his in a soft kiss. The gentle claiming did nothing to ease the unfamiliar jealousy that consumed me. The thought of him touching Vanessa in the ways he touched me, of her stripped down and vulnerable in his office.

It should have appeased me that he’d never touched her, and it did to some extent. But there was a part of me that wouldn’t be soothed by the knowledge.

I’d hated Enzo’s attempts to claim me as his, but the further I fell down the rabbit hole of feelings for him, the more I found myself returning those notions. He could own me.

As long as I got to own him too.

When he pulled back, he took my hips in his hand and helped me down from the stool. One hand sliding to the small of my back with his fingers curved over the top of my ass in my jeans, he guided me to the stairs. Leaning to curl his head over mine as we walked up the first steps, he whispered with a voice full of longing and amusement all in the same breath. “You’re jealous.”

“She wants your dick.” I gritted my teeth when he laughed in response.

“Plenty of women do,” he said, the unabashed arrogance stunning me. Such a simple observation, to know that women all around him wanted to fuck him. He usually seemed so oblivious to them, I didn’t know how I felt about his stealthy knowledge. “But they’ll never have it. It's your cock. Just like what’s tucked away in your jeans is my pussy,” he said. He opened his office door, following me through and closing it behind him.

“I don’t want to feel like this,” I admitted. “It can’t be healthy.”

Enzo chuckled, walking toward me as I spun to face him. His body nudged mine back until the glass wall touched my spine. He raised his left hand, wrapping it around the base of my jaw where it met my throat and pressing me back into the window firmly, tilting my head back with that hand. I panted up at him, my jealousy instantly bleeding into arousal.

The press of his hand at my throat was all it took for Enzo to seduce me. His hazel eyes blazing down on mine, while he held me still, and leaned his weight into me. “I like that you’re jealous. I want you to claim me as yours the same way I’ve done with you.”

His right hand slid inside my jacket, maneuvering it off my arms without ever releasing his hold on my neck. It fell to the floor with a loud thump and he slid his foot around the side of my leg to kick it out of the way.

In any normal circumstances, it would have driven me crazy. But with his hand at my throat and his possessive stare burning me up, I couldn’t be bothered to care. His brand of fire was cheaper than therapy, quieting the compulsions in my head until nothing existed but him.

Releasing me, he spun me to face the glass so suddenly that only my hands and quick reflexes catching myself stopped me from smashing into it.

Brutal. Rough. My jealousy spurred him on and tempted the beast to the surface. I recognized it as the other part of Enzo, the one I knew he tried to hide from the world around him. But to be with Enzo, I had to accept all of him.

The good. The bad. The dangerous.

His hands opened the fly of my jeans, sliding them down over my ass and tugging them off my boots. “She’s downstairs thinking about what you said. Imagining all the things I do to you and how I make you scream, Baby Girl,” he murmured. His hand came down on the flesh of my ass, drawing a strangled gasp from my lips.

The sound of his zipper sliding down behind me was the only warning before he placed his hand at the base of my head, gripping my neck harshly and pushing the side of my face into the glass. “Do you see her down there?” he asked. My eyes went to the bar Vanessa claimed as her own, watching as she restocked her liquor and straightened out her glasses to prepare for the night rush.

“Yes.”

“Do you like imagining that she could easily look up and see you getting fucked, Carina?” he asked, sliding the head of his cock through the wetness between my thighs. “I think you do.” His voice was a dark chuckle, seductive as sin brought by the devil himself.

Shoving himself inside me harshly, he did nothing to quiet the strangled scream that escaped my throat. He set a brutal rhythm, giving me no time to adjust to the feeling of him inside me before he took me in punishing thrusts. “Lorenzo,?