Page 45 of Complications

“Who the fuck am I gonna tell? My old man? He was hiding in prison. Complain to your dad? Fuck that shit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

The air of the car was charged with goddamn feelings that needed to stay dead and buried. That was the day I decided to keep my place in the family, and I did. It wasn’t all bad.

“Christ, Frankie. Let go of me.”

His fingers had stopped their tracing and cupped my cheek instead. The rough stubble must’ve tickled his palm, but it was hard to say. As usual, Frankie looked composed and fucking serene like a goddamn rock garden come to life.

“I’ve been trying, but it hasn’t worked, so I’m giving up.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means I’m done trying.”

And then the fucker tightened his grip on my neck and yanked me forward. Our mouths fused, and I gave up trying to pretend that I didn’t want him. Frankie’s tongue explored my mouth as if he’d never been there before. He tasted like mint and a hint of the espresso he’d had earlier in the day. Each stroke of his tongue was a reminder of how quickly I forgot to be me when he touched me. Frankie was in control of the kiss from the moment our lips touched. I was along for the ride, but I wasn’t ready to demand myself back. He could keep me for a while, and I could pretend the shit he spouted was real.

The stroke of his tongue sent a cascade of sparks through my veins, and not super fucking conveniently, straight to my cock. What started as a semi, because I was always a little hard when he was around, skipped all the steps in between and landed straight on rock hard and wanting more. His fingers flexed at my nape, and I found myself trapped and needy at the same time. A shiver ran through me at the sensations of feeling his fingers and mouth sweeping over me like an ocean wave crashing on the rocks. Need threatened to overwhelm me, but if I could stay exactly like this forever, I’d be down for it. Someone who was definitely not me made a sound that was clearly not a moan when Frankie pulled away.

“Fuck me, Jojo, we can’t do this here,” Frankie said. Rude.

“Do what here? It’s our job, asshole.”

“Don’t be a smart ass, Jojo. Making out with you happens to be my favorite thing, but we need to do our real jobs first.”

I chose to ignore the nickname for a second. And ignore the warmth that spread through my chest at hearing it said all growly. Unpacking all that shit could wait until later.

“Do you want to talk to Matteo or see what we can find before that?” Frankie asked.

His voice had lost the sexy-as-fuck gravelly tone, and he was back to the clipped speech that made me want to punch him. It always made me feel like he was too busy to breathe, and I was a fucking idiot for whatever question I had.

“Look first,” I answered immediately. “There’s no reason to bring it up if there’s nothing to the hunch.” After Frankie’s nod of agreement, I added. “Let’s go see what we can find in the files.”

“Check this out.”

After heading back inside to the office and making a quick phone call to the computer guy who handled all the shit I didn’t understand, we got a file dump onto the encrypted drive. Dropping a tracker was easy-peasy, but poking around a bank’s internal systems was a good way to trip alarms neither of us wanted to deal with. Even Frankie, who could hack better than most, knew when something was above our pay grade. And this shit was way above it.

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Sam was paid a shit ton of money in the second and fourth weeks of the month. He was using goddamn Cash App.”

“You’re lying.”

“I fucking shit you not.”

“There’s a number?”

“Yeah, here.”

I pointed it out on the screen, and Frankie started searching. He stared so intently at the laptop that he didn’t notice that I couldn’t stop staring at him. If my luck held, I’d get a few seconds of satisfaction and move on before he noticed.

“Why are you still looking at me?”

“I’m not.”

“Liar,” he answered like we were talking about the damn weather.