"Luca." She called, her voice a warning.
He ignored the warning, his fingers moving higher.
"Be nice," she said, trying to remember what she’d been saying before his hand started doing that. "I don’t want to keep her waiting. Her husband is refusing to get a life insurance policy and she’s been going back and forth on this already—"
"I don’t give a fuck about her right now."
"Luca."
"I genuinely do not."
"Which also—" she moved his hand, or tried to, "—which also reminds me, you really do need to make that compulsory. "
"I will do anything," he said, "if you just give me some love right now. Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking. Five minutes, Bambola."
"When we get home."
"And then we get home and you’re exhausted and you fall asleep and I lie there staring at the ceiling like a monk." He let his head drop against her shoulder, and she felt him exhale — long, mournful, theatrical. He spoke like a lost puppy that had been left outside in the rain.
"How about," she said slowly, "I give you just a peek?"
Luca lifted his head. "Ugh." He let his head fall back. "You’re killing me, babe."
"If you wait," Vee said carefully, measuring each word, "I’ll do that thing you like. Tonight."
A tremor moved through him.
"With the tongue?" His voice had changed registers entirely. Lower.
She held his gaze. Let the silence sit for exactly one beat longer than necessary. "With the tongue." She ran her tongue slowly back and forth across his lips.
He caught it with his mouth. His hand came up to her jaw and he pulled her into a proper kiss. Her fingers curled into his shirt. His tongue was doing things that made coherent thought genuinely difficult, and for a moment Vee forgot completely that she had somewhere to be.
Then he took her hand and guided it down, pressed it against the front of his trousers, where his cock was already very much awake and expressing strong opinions about the current situation.
Oh.
Right. Okay. That’s—yes.
She pulled back from the kiss, breathed and removed her hand with what she felt was admirable composure. "I gotta go."
"Still gonna do that thing?" He asked immediately.
"Yes."
He nodded slowly, processing. "Tonight."
She was already at the door. "Yes — bye." She threw him one last look over her shoulder and pressed two fingers to her lips, sending the kiss across the room to him with a small, private smile.
Then she was gone. Luca stood exactly where she’d left him, alone, half hard. Staring at the door.
Tonight, he thought.
Luca smiled and adjusted the discomfort in his pants with a long-suffering sigh. "Hang in there, little guy..." He looked down once, as if giving a motivational speech to a soldier abandoned at war, then shook his head at himself. Veronica Scalese was going to be the death of him. He exhaled, fixed his trousers with as much dignity as a man could manage after being tortured by his own fiancée, and stepped out of his office.
The corridor outside was dim and quiet, Commissioned still in its daytime skin. At night, the club belonged to music, champagne, smoke and women.
Luca entered the surveillance office. "How’s it going, boys?"
Three men turned from a wall of screens. The room was small, dark, and humming with equipment. Monitors covered nearly every inch of the far wall, showing different angles of Commissioned—the entrance, hallways, bar, private rooms, garage.


David Valentino.
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