I'd chide myself in the morning, but for now, I enjoyed it.
Reveled in it, even.
As his hands grew bolder, I didn't stop him, too enchanted by the privacy in this packed club.
Unable to stop myself, I lowered my arms to cup the back of Luciu's neck, content for him to hold me close, goddamn delirious about how he was holding onto me.
At that moment, after one too many flutes of champagne floating around my system, it had nothing to do with his position or his money or his power, just that he felt so fucking good.
One large hand slid upward, and I let it, spearing up to cup my breast before it moved higher, coming to rest about my throat. Loosely, but the threat was there.
A silken promise.
And I loved it.
I ground my ass into him and felt his hardness and nearly melted.
I swore that I'd have bent over if he'd have pushed me against the balcony rail. I’d let him fuck me then and there. That was the power of this moment, the freedom I felt, but something buzzed against my back.
And it wasn't a vibrator.
"Porca troia," he grumbled under his breath, loud enough for me to hear against the music.
I twisted around, darted a kiss to his cheek and rasped, "Don't worry. You take it. I'll just go and freshen up."
A strange heat surged into being in his eyes, and he murmured, "When you come back, we'll dance more."
It was a command, not a statement, and I smiled at him, not coyly or enticingly, but with joy.
That was when I should have realized something weird was going on. Maybe he'd slipped me an edible or something because one thing I was not, was joyous.
Aoife had called me many things over the years, Savannah too, and most of them revolved around the words 'obstinate,' 'pain in the ass,' and ‘strong-minded.'
And those were the kind descriptions.
What friends used to label me.
Joyous Jen wasn't a nickname that I thought was going to take off.
"I'd like that," I whispered, and though the words were too soft to hear, I knew he understood.
A wicked smile curved his lips, a triumphant one, and I was content for him to have this moment as I strutted out of the private booth and strode over to the bathrooms.
Where things got even better.
There was a private restroom which with a place this big, was a blessing.
Seriously, if the luxury of the owner's box wasn't orgasmic, this was.
I moved inside and made to lock the door, but as I did, someone shoved it open and barged in. There was a tug of war over the handle, but I lost the battle. It wasn’t like I had much choice. It was either let go or fall flat on my ass.
"Excuse me!" I pretty much spat as I staggered upright, trying to stabilize myself on shoes that were more suitable for digging into a man’s ass than walking on tiles. "This is the owner's restroom," I sniped.
The woman was, in a word, beautiful. She was also everything I wasn't.
She had curves on top of her curves, and a little like Aoife, she rocked them.
This woman wore an elegant black dress that covered her from head to toe. By comparison, I felt like a cheap whore in my napkin, a short, slutty outfit I'd worn in the vague hope that I'd entice my ex-boyfriend to drop the lawsuit he had against me.
She reminded me of a brunette Rita Hayworth, with the deep cutout in the bodice that revealed a set of banging tits, plump and full, enhanced by a pendant that dangled between them. With a fishtail skirt that showed off the roundness of her hips, she was hot.
And she knew it.
She was also checking me out as much as I was checking her out, and where I was awestruck by her beauty, she was the opposite.
She looked at me like I was a cheap hooker.
Then, she raised her left hand which had a simple gold band on the ring finger.
I swallowed, but I had no idea why the sight of it triggered a visceral reaction in me. As much, if not worse, than what Luciu had made me feel earlier.
"You American sluts are all the same," she rasped, and her voice was hard but husky, like she was ordinarily soft-spoken, but I'd pissed her off.
Which, considering we'd known each other less than thirty seconds, was a feat not even I thought I could achieve.
I grated on people. I knew that. But this much?
"I'm sorry if I'm using the wrong bathroom," I started, confused and embarrassed by her disdain.
Normally, I wore people's disapproval as if it were an expensive perfume, but with this woman… it was like a duchess was dressing down a servant. I felt every inch of my poverty, every inch of my shameful upbringing in the face of this glorious creature’s scorn.
"This isn't the wrong bathroom. I'm the owner of Russu."
I blinked. "Huh?"
Great comeback. But, actually, her words comforted me.
There was obviously some misunderstanding...
"I don't think so," I told her calmly, not wanting to get into it because the woman was clearly mad, potentially drunk or high, and I didn't want to get into a catfight. "I know the owner. I just left him."
She hissed. "I know you did, buttana. Luciu is my husband," she snapped, and then she raised her hand and she slapped me so hard that I staggered back, and while my stiletto heels did great things for my ass, they weren't exactly stable.
As I stumbled, with so little support and the shiny tiles beneath me, I just went down. Like a house of cards. Boom.
A shriek escaped me, but before I could do anything, she was in my face, and she grabbed me by the hair then forcibly hauled me onto my feet.
"You will leave here, buttana. If I ever see you again, if I see you even sniffing around my husband, I will kill you."
Five
Jen
December 23rd
From the confines of the safe room on the O’Donnelly compound, I’d admit that I was losing my mind.
I was only here because Aoife was taking pity on me and didn’t want me to be on my own at Christmas, and now, I was just wishing I’d gone to a party or had decided to spend all day reading because this sucked.
We’d been minding our own business when shit had started exploding. Literally. Exploding.
This wasn’t a Bill Nye kind of explosion. This was real life, warfare tactics.
Knowing the O’Donnellys had a safe room under their house, like this was normal, was somehow worse than anything.
They’d anticipated this.
At some point, they’d imagined this could happen.
What in the hell kind of world were they living in?
The safe room made my ex’s swank penthouse look grody. This place was decorated like a Vogue photo shoot was going down in it tomorrow, but that didn’t make things any better when half the women in here were trying not to stare at the clock on the wall like it held the answers to the universe. As they tried not to wonder if their husbands would be murdered in their parents’ home the night before Christmas Eve.
Worse still?
Savannah’s crazy ass was out there.
She’d actually elected not to come to the safe room where it was—shock shock, horror horror—safe.
Terrified for her, anxious for the men who were Aoife’s family, wondering who the hell had sent an army to a personal, private residence, I turned to my phone for comfort.