Zora says, “you have a responsibility to pursue it. Okay?”
I stand up, shaking my head. “The only responsibility I have right now is to my bed.”
Zora, clearly a little tipsy, leaps to her feet and puts her hands on my shoulder. “Dani! If you don’t screw this man, I will!”
Here’s the thing: I know Zora is joking. She’s smiling. She’s still talking in that ludicrous voice.
And yet, her stupid joke still makes me a little jealous.
It’s just a tiny bit. But it’s enough to let me know that I’m in way deeper than I guessed.
Because who is Angelo, really? Just some jerk-off in an expensive suit and a nice watch. So what if my body wants his? So what if I’m dreaming about him?
Fuck biology. Fuck my rebellious body. Fuck my disobedient mind.
“I’m going to bed,” I announce with finality.
I walk into the bedroom and take a quick shower. Then, circumnavigating my discarded clothes, I drop into bed.
I know one thing for certain: I don’t care about Angelo, and I’m not going to dream about him. That’s what I tell myself, as I feel the mattress eating me, as unconsciousness drapes over my eyes.
I’m not going to dream about him.
But when my waking eyes close and my dreamy ones open, there he is, hard and naked, a cocky smirk on his beautiful, flawless, infuriating face.
9
Angelo
A few days drift by and business labors on. Nothing happens with the Albanians, which I find absurd. I don’t see Dani again, which I know I should not find absurd but which, somehow, I find even more ridiculous than the Albanian situation. I think about her, but not just her body. I think about her fiery tongue and the way she lets me slip into a different skin, a version of me where I can have fun and be carefree.
It unnerves me. Perhaps it’s better that our paths have not crossed again.
It’s the morning of the interviews Levi has arranged. A selection of women have been brought to the office for me to choose from—potential fake wives. I wonder if any of them will have Dani’s bright, knowing eyes. I wonder if any of them will make me want to spar with words with them the way I do with her.
As I ride the elevator, adjusting my cufflinks, I create an impossible scenario in my mind.
The elevator door opens and Dani is standing at the rear of the line wearing a skirt that goes right up to her ass, showing off her strong, lithe legs, and there’s this tan line just below the hem from sunbathing in shorts, so half her leg is tan and the other is temptingly pale, making me think of how pink her pussy will be.
She turns to me with a sassy tilt of the head. “Are you really gonna make me wait?” I grab her, drag her past the other candidates, and bend her over the desk. She’s wearing—fuck yes—blood-red heels that she keeps on the whole time. I don’t even take off her lacy underwear, just push it so the side, so that, as I bury myself to the hilt in her wet, wanting pussy, I can feel the graze of the fabric.
I shake my head. Jesus Christ, this woman gets to me.
Of course, she is not here. When the elevator door opens, I walk past a line of women dressed just as I imagined Dani, but they do not stir anything in me. That’s strange, surely. I am a single man and these women are—objectively speaking—attractive. But instead, I sigh and walk into my office without so much as a backwards glance.
Levi is waiting at the window, back turned to me, smoking a cigarette and blowing big plumes out of the window.
“Since when are you smoking again?” I ask, walking over to my giant oak desk. I drop into the seat and toy with the letter opener, playing five-finger fillet. The table is pockmarked from where I’ve played it before.
Levi just keeps smoking.
“Levi, man, I asked you a goddamn question.”
He turns to me, all jittery. “Sorry, Angelo,” he sighs, taking a long drag. “Long night. Shit, these?” He tilts his head at the cigarette. “We’re all gonna die one day, right? Maybe sooner rather than later in this game.”
“Not me,” I tell him. “I plan on living to be one hundred and king of the city. Don’t be morbid. And put that shit out. It reeks.”
With a shrug, Levi finishes the rest of the cigarette and drops it