They fucked. This wasn’t sex, or making love, this was fast and frantic and furious fucking. The bed was squeaking with every movement and if the headboard was against the wall, it would have been banging out clouds of dust from the drywall. Paolo had never fucked anyone this hard before but now that he had started, he couldn’t stop. Cora didn’t seem to mind, she kept telling Paolo to go harder, deeper, faster, like Paolo wasn’t already. Cora’s nails claw down Paolo’s back, breaking the skin and drawing blood, and the pressure of Paolo’s fingers on Cora’s hips were leaving bruises that kept blossoming outwards from her touch. They marked each other, visible signs of their need, and just when Paolo was thinking that there was no way he hadn’t come by now, he could feel orgasm building in his toes.
“Close,” he panted, slamming into Cora again. “So close, Cora. Gonna — gonna come in you so soon. Fuck, gonna fill you with it.”
Cora keened out her approval, a ragged breath of air that spiraled upwards and brought the taste of Cora right into Paolo’s mouth, filling the space between them. Paolo wanted it, wanted that taste forever, wanted this for a million forevers, and Cora said, “Give it to me, Pablo. Breath and blood and come, all from you, come on, please, don’t make me wait.”
Paolo thrust and came and kept thrusting through his climax, filling Cora with more come than Paolo’s ever had before. Like that set off his own reaction, Cora hit her orgasm as well, and the fluttering of her muscles around Paolo milked out more from Paolo’s dick. The two of them hovered in a moment that stretched out, where the entire focus of their beings was on the spaces Paolo was filling up inside of Cora, and then the taut moment snapped and Paolo collapsed, right on top of Cora.
He felt sated and yet empty and so very, very tired.
“Rest, cher,” Cora murmured, and shifted them both so that they were lying on their sides, the warm expanse of Cora behind Paolo, pressed up against his back and pulling him close, one hand resting in the curls of hair above Paolo’s dick. “Done me so good, we both gotta recover. Rest and we could do it again.”
Again. Paolo was exhausted but just thinking about the next time has his dick giving a twitch, a valiant effort that Cora felt, her hand so close.
“Mine,” Cora murmured, amused, and the low tone lulled Paolo to sleep. “All mine. Forever.”
“Mine,” Paolo said back, as he yawned. “Forever?”
Paolo’s eyes close against his will and he was nearly asleep when he heard Cora say, “Forever, cher.”
*****
Benjamin liked doing business with self-indulgent people. It made them easy to lead, easy to entertain. Easy to dispose of. Carlo Vincenti was a piece of shit, but better, he was weak. Benjamin knew how hard August could yank that hook once it was set. He did his part by playing fairy-god-dealer.
Vincenti liked little girls who cried and begged for him to stop as he held them down and fucked them. He liked it even better when he could share them with his brother-in-law, Giuseppe. So that’s what Benjamin got him. He needed Vincenti on his side in this unofficial war with Paolo Agnelli and his family. He had heard rumors that he was up to something in New York. He would go there and find out what. He needed to go and see that his daughter was alright anyway. She hadn’t touched a cent of the money he sent her.
Eclaire and Edesie were unrelated, but reconstructive surgery had turned them into identical twins. Big money maker. They also looked fifteen. August didn’t let anyone earn with kids, but Vincenti didn’t know that and no one was going to tell him.
Eclaire and Edesie were Vernon’s girls, and one of his guys brought them over to the house. He escorted them right up to Vincenti like they had to be herded or they’d break and run.
“Misty, Jasmine,” Benjamin pointed out the girls to Carlo and Giuseppe. Both girls were looking away, playing shy and scared. They were so short, their shiny heads barely came to Vincenti’s chest. Carlo and his Giuseppe were probably leaking in their pants.
Carlo Vincenti reached for Eclaire, hesitated, looked at Benjamin for permission. Benjamin nodded a go ahead. Vernon’s guy shadowed Vincenti and the his brother-in-law as they took the girls upstairs.
If Vincenti outlived his usefulness, Benjamin looked forward to having him taken care of…permanently.
“So that’s what it means to be on top. Pimping kids to a couple of diddlers.”
Dagobert was there, wandering in from nowhere as usual. The guy was dressed in jeans and ratty sneakers. He looked like shit, in the middle of a perpetual hangover. No one looking at him would guess that he was one of the foremost land owners of New Orleans; having snapped up land at a song once Katrina hit.
Benjamin shrugged, and headed for the dining room sideboard. “Who doesn’t enjoy it?”
“I might. You don’t.”
Benjamin sloshed some brandy into a glass. He hadn’t slept in going on thirty hours. It was getting to him. “Yeah, you don’t know shit about what I like.”
“I’m kind of wondering about that.”
“No one asked you.”
“Look at all these lovely specimens.” Dagobert did a slow hand sweep to include the whole house, the naked boys and girls Benjamin could see through the open deck doors where the hot tub was.
“Either you finally stuck your dick in the wrong mouth and are now – ” Dagobert made a snipping motion.
Benjamin laughed. Dagobert needed a real job, a real life. Retirement didn’t look good on him. It made him too fucking nosy.
“Or suddenly found the lord and discovered faithfulness,” Dagobert said, followed it with a sharp, crackling cough.
“Might want to lay off that stuff,” Benjamin said, tilting his glass towards Dagobert’s drink. “Maybe take your own advice, get yourself one of these whores, have yourself a good time. It’s on the house.”
Dagobert chuckled, coughed again. Guy was a goddamn mess.
The kitchen was the only place in the house that didn’t stink of sex and alcohol, didn’t have naked, writhing bodies. This was the kind of shit Benjamin could do without, but it was part of the job, entertaining, supplying vices. Nothing cemented a partnership more than a little bit of illegal fun. Peter did it better, but Benjamin still liked to keep his own hand in.
Benjamin pulled out his phone and opened his contacts. Cora’s number was on his speed dial though he’d yet to use it even once. He had nothing to say to his elusive child; she was so alien to him, wholly her mother’s child. He was proud of her success, but didn’t really know what to do with her. When he moved to New Orleans he’d had to tell Peter who she was; just in case he met her somewhere and decided he loved her. But then the whole fiasco with Travis Connell happened and she moved away anyway…
He shoved his phone back in his pocket without sending a text.
*****
Twenty-two hours later, Benjamin was in New York, in front of Cora’s door after talking his way past the guard. He glanced down the dim hall, dingy by his standards but no doubt satisfactory for most people, before ducking inside and pulling the door shut. He slipped the picks into his jacket pocket, straightening his cuffs as he strolled through the tiny apartment.