“Someone you used to know or someone you used to fuck?” he pries with palpable arrogance in his voice.
I hesitate, unsure of where this conversation is headed, but certain it isn’t in the direction of what is deemed appropriate employer-to-employee talk.
Before I can answer, I see Eric’s scruffy beard in my peripheral.
“Not now, Eric. Close the door,” he barks, as he lifts his hand, with his cigarette in it, toward the door.
I look to Eric, who has rage in his eyes. He peers at Carmine once more before obliging and shutting the pocket door to the study begrudgingly.
Carmine fixes his stare back at me. “As you were saying?” he motions for me to continue.
“Someone I used to know, is all,” I answer, trying to think of something to say to derail this conversation from going where I fear it’s headed.
“Did he fuck you like you deserve, this past love of yours?”
I blush. Despite fantasizing about Carmine from the night I unknowingly met him, this feels so personal. Too personal. He’s my fucking boss.What the fuck am I doing?
“How is that any of your business?” I demand. This time, I rise from the chair in front of his desk. Once again, I have the perfect opportunity, the perfect reason to storm out … but I don’t. Instead, I shift my weight in my heels and stand there in front of his desk as if I am on display for him.
“It’s a simple question, Sienna. Did he fuck you?”
I say nothing. I don’t know how to answer him, but judging by the wetness I feel between my legs, my body is answering his question for me. No. Leo never fucked me like I wanted. He was good, but he didn’t rail me like I craved. I always thought that made me dirty, that I wanted it rougher, harder, more passionate.
The striking differences between Leo and Carmine’s physical appearances couldn’t be more apparent. Even though the last time I saw Leo we were only teenagers, I don’t even think his adolescent body would have been capable of morphing into the chiseled god that stands before me.
Leo had softer facial features, yet still had a rugged handsomeness to him. But Leo’s handsome face doesn’t hold a candle to the chiseled face of perfection that stands in front of me. Carmine’s dark-as-night hair that is slightly slicked back in the middle only accentuates a face so perfect it makes me want to nestle it between my thighs, rendering him helpless.
Not to mention, their eyes couldn’t be more opposite. I used to get lost in a daydreaming, love-struck kind of way in Leo’s soft brown irises. But Carmine’s dark eyes don’t give me the opportunity to daydream. They are a haunting, pitch-black nightmare, waiting for me to peer into them so he can put me under his spell in a split second.
“Please, sit back down. I’m just trying to get a feel for the kind of woman you are, that’s all,” he says as he finishes his second cigarette.
I sit down, and as soon as the butt is put out, he walks his way over to the front of his desk. He leans his weight back, so he is half-sitting on the edge. His legs are staggered, and I try my hardest to look away from the noticeable and substantial bulge he has formed beneath his pinstriped pants.
His tall stature, even half-sitting in front of me, is overpowering. Trying to distract myself from gazing between his legs, I look up, and it’s then I notice that he is playing with a chain with a strange, large key on it. He must have had it tucked under the collar of his shirt, because it’s a distinctly large skeleton key. I would have noticed it when I first saw him.
I begin to study the key and notice the top is adorned with a winged bat. Next to the skeleton key on the chain is acoquipendant that makes the hairs on my arms raise. It looks identical to the chain the woman from across the street, Miranda, has from back home. Another coincidence, likely, but how many coincidences can there possibly be before it becomes telling of something to come?
Suddenly, the note attached to the locket feels more ominous. What is that damn key to?
“You never answered my question. Did he fuck you like you deserve, or did he waste his time, tiptoeing like a boy around that perfect body of yours?”
I should kick him in the balls and fucking quit.
“Excuse me?”
Still half-sitting on the desk, he leans his upper body closer to me so that he is just hovering above me as he licks his lips. “A woman like you deserves to be devoured by a lover who takes their time appreciating every inch of you.”
Fuck, I’m so wet. The way the words fall off his lips, practically moaning to devour me, is becoming too much to take. The pulse I have been experiencing on my clit is now beginning to throb violently with need.
I swallow, trying to distract myself from the slickness I feel trapped between my legs. “Is that why you called me here, Carmine? To devour me? I thought you needed me to work for you?”
“Don’t act like you don’t want me to devour you.”
“Don’t be arrogant,” I say so my gaze is in line with his. He lifts his hand, caressing my cheek before letting his thumb fall on my lip.
“I’m not arrogant, I’m confident,” he says through a Devilish grin.
“Confident about what?” My voice is reduced to a whisper. It’s like the need I feel for him is robbing me of the ability to speak at an audible level.
