Page 80 of Veiled Amor

“I don’t know. This hasn’t happened before, and the alarm system is wired to my apartment only. The building structure has a separate alarm in the hallways.”

Sure enough, when he pulled open the door, the hallway alarms were piercing too. Lucia pulled at his shirt. “Be careful.”

He turned a grin on her, using a hand cupped around her nape; he leaned in and captured her lips for a short kiss. The thud of her pulse beneath his hand was smooth and another factor to make him loathe leaving her. He felt her go up on her toes to hold his face.

“I won’t take long. Lock up behind me,nena; I have my keys.” Another prolonged kiss, he waited until she did, then headed for the stairwell, the elevators automatically shut down when the building alarms activated. He took a call from his security firm while he ran down eleven flights.

If he were a believer in such things, he could swear his brother had intervened somehow.

He didn’t believe in divine intervention or bad luck.

And he was done letting his guilt over his dead brother get in the way of him and Lucia.

Now Capone needed someone to maim for interrupting them.

TWENTY-TWO

“Two orgasms forward and then five steps back.” - Lucia

The man she was so crazy about had left her high and dry, and she was going to kill him.

Okay, two incredible orgasms were not high or dry.

But ugh.

She was frustrated, and the alarm was mental torture as it pierced the air in a recurring sequence. Had she been under questioning, she would have been like The Goonies Chunk and told them everything.

She loved Capone, after all. Obsessively. Loved the caring, protective man he was.

She kind of hated how much she was sexually tangled up in every move he made. But she was still going to murder him for taking off like his ass was on fire. As if he’d been waiting for any excuse to bring their lovemaking to a halt.

Did she believe he’d do that?

Hopefully not. It felt as though he’d been right there with her every step of the way. The hard bulge under her hands didn’t lie.

And the way they’d gone at each other like a raging wound, and only their mouths could heal it.

It was a lie, though, wasn’t it? She couldn’t kill him, even if she wanted to. She’d been dangerously in love and dining on his scraps of attention for years. At her lowest, just hearing Capone’s voice could sustain whatever bad shit her father put her through. Without knowing it, Capone had become her light in the storm, and a little something like a diverted sex date wouldn’t put her off.

He’d walk through the door, give her a dirty look, and then she’d pounce.

Lucia paced around the noisy apartment as time went on, her long-since excited hormones now dormant and sulking in the background. Unable to get away from the deafening shrill. She stood at the windows overlooking the darkened city and waited.

What felt like months, when it was more like fifteen minutes, he came back. As he walked through the door, he had his head over his phone, typing. And then the blistering sound came to a stop. Leaving a ringing in Lucia’s ears. “Thank goodness,” she exclaimed, licking her dry lips. “What happened? Was there a fire?”

He appeared harassed, his lips pulled in a tight line of irritation. No pouncing for Lucia then. “The power grid to the building tripped and set everyone’s alarms off.” As that, his phone rang, and he gave a code to whoever he was speaking to. “Is it reset again? Okay,gracias.” He hung up. “My security company has reset the system.”

“Oh, good.”

“You okay,nena?”

Standing over by the windows, she unconsciously wrapped both arms around herself, nodding at him. “Yeah, besides being deaf now. That thing was loud.”

Capone grimaced. “Sorry it took so long.”

Dumping his keys and phone on the low coffee table, Capone clicked on the ceiling recessed lights and headed to the kitchen, he cracked open a bottle of beer and downed half. “Hey, Lucia, you want something to eat?”

Food? Really? Lucia frowned as though he were talking in an alien language. He wanted food now? In-fucking-credible. If only her lust were as easy to turn off as it was for him.