of my thigh, just beneath my dress. It slid inward, drawing a heavy breath from me. “Do you want me to touch you?”
“No.”
But I did.
More than I’d ever expected.
Maybe it was desperation to escape my engagement. Or maybe it was the fact that we’d connected on a level I’d never expected. Manuel. Carlotta. Two sides of the same coin.
Where did that put me and Frankie?
“Tsk, tsk…” Frankie’s fingers inched up. “You’re in a confession booth. Surely, it’s a sin to lie.”
“You’re no priest.”
He pulled at my panties and released, so the fabric snapped at my sensitive skin. “I’m whatever the fuck I want.”
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
He countered my sarcasm with his own. “I prefer you call me Daddy, but Father works, too.”
“I prefer you let me go.”
“Another lie. I’m starting to think I’ll have to spank that habit out of you.” His fingers ran a path across my slit over my panties. “Wet, to no one’s surprise.”
I bucked against his hand, trying to maintain the conversation. “Why are you here?”
It occurred to me to ask how he’d even found me, but before I could question him, he cupped me and pressed the heal of his palm against my clit.
“For part two.”
“Of what?”
“Our deal. I hid a dead body for you—”
“We went on the date. I don’t owe you anything.”
“Our date hasn’t ended.” He dug his erection against my ass. “Confess a sin.”
My heavy breaths fogged the tiny confessional. We stood on the priest’s side, because of course, we did. “And you’ll let me go?”
“To be determined.”
I tried to fight off his arm. He didn’t budge. I could yell, but getting caught in this booth with him would be worse, so I conjured the easiest confession I could think of. “I’m wet for you.”
“Already knew that. Try again.”
“After our date, I ran to my room, fingered myself, and cried out your name when I came.”
“Better,” he ground himself against me, “but I figured as much. Try again.”
He pinched my nipple through my dress, and I blurted out, “I stole a flower bud from you.”
Fuck. Me.
This was the type of torture designed to deliver confessions. Waterboarding. Breaking bones. Nothing was more effective.
Frankie froze, his fingers still attached to my budded nipple. “Why?”
It was the last thing I should have blurted, but now that I had, I wasn’t sure if I was scared or relieved. Maybe both. “Because I wanted it.”
“Not good enough. What did you want it for? No one steals a poisonous flower for no reason.”
“Well, I did.”
“Bullshit. You’re forgetting that I know you. I can call your bluffs a mile away.” He nudged my panties to the side and brushed my clit with the pad of his thumb, eliciting a moan from me that echoed within the narrow walls of the confessional. His finger gathered my wetness, then rubbed it in a circle around my empty ring finger. “Case in point. You’re wet for me, no matter how much you denied it. What’s the lily for?”
I couldn’t answer him.
I didn’t know how he’d react or if I could trust him.
He continued to toy with my slit. “Are you trying to kill yourself, Lily?”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t.”
“Sounds like you do.”
My heart beat an erratic rhythm at the thought.
Frankie Amato was Sicily’s heartthrob. My sister and her friends used to gossip about him after school, whispering about the dirty things they’d do to him when they thought I couldn’t hear. I used to latch onto their words, searching them on my laptop in the privacy of my room.
The truth was, I’d let Frankie Amato do all those things to me—and more.
But the idea that he might have cared about me?
I didn’t know how to process that, other than an electric spark inside me I couldn’t control.
“You’re deflecting,” he accused. “Is the flower for you?”
I didn’t answer.
He slid two fingers inside me with ease, instantly drenched with my wetness. “What’s the flower for?” I still didn’t answer, not even when he pumped his fingers in and out, a steady and teasing rhythm that left me soaked and panting. “You’ll tell me if you want to come.”
“Careful,” I warned. “Don’t break my hymen.”
His fingers pushed deeper, so far in, he had to be touching it. We were playing a dangerous game. I loved it. Thrived on it. Had never had this much excitement in my life. “I can break it right now. It’d be so easy. Do you know what the best part is?”
“What?”
“You’d like it.” He didn’t give me