Page 46 of Dishonored

Not.

Aria had done enough research and digging into the personal lives of the Accardo family to know there was tension there. For what reason, she wasn’t entirely sure. Oh, sure, she suspected it had a lot to do with Caesar’s behavior and tendency to fuck anything he preferred with a hole between its legs, but that only left her with more questions than answers, really.

Like why he would act that way at all.

No man simply woke up one day and decided to make it his goal in life to fuck his way through the organization’s wives, and whoever else he felt like. No man was born with that kind of inclination.

It was a learned behavior.

Or … a byproduct of something else.

Honestly, Aria was just surprised Caesar’s father had let him go on as long as he did. Cosa Nostra had its own set of rules and expectations, and she bet Caesar had pushed every line he could, and snapped a few altogether along the way.

How was he still alive?

Questions for another day.

“I’m offending you?” Caesar asked, grinning a little bit. “That kind of sounds like another one of those you problems, Angelo.”

Angelo’s loud, angry reply echoed through the speaker enough that Aria could actually hear the hum of his words. She couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but it was enough to tell her that he wasn’t pleased.

She was just about done with this show.

Done with the game Caesar was playing.

“Shut off the phone,” she told him quietly.

For the first time since he had entered the hotel room, his gaze drifted to her, and lingered for a moment before drifting up and down her body. His unashamed perusal of her, and the way his stare lingered at the junction between her thighs, and the swell of her breasts under the tight, shimmering fabric of the dress was enough to heat her blood.

Men looked, sure.

They never really appreciated.

Aria had only been with a couple of men before her husband—and he took great enjoyment in making it miserable for her—and then, Caesar. All of her sexual encounters had been for the purpose of furthering her family’s agenda should the need arise, although she had always been careful not to be caught, or to blackmail a man to the point she had him crippled under her control. Other than a boyfriend when she was a sixteen-year-old girl, there had never been a sexual relationship that she went in to because she thought she would actually enjoy it or wanted it, for that matter.

It had not been worth the risk to her life for a taste of dick just because she felt the urge to lay down with a man—being caught would have shamed her family, and ruined her reputation. So, before Caesar, sex had simply been something she used to her own advantage, or a need she fulfilled for her husband. Not for her own enjoyment, and even Caesar hadn’t been meant to be anything but something she used.

Except it didn’t work that way.

The club had happened—one single moment with a man who without knowing he had done so, taught her that she was as much of a sexual human being as the next woman even if she did well to ignore it, and it did feel damn good. He’d made her want to get on her knees for him, and taste him on her tongue. Something she had only been forced to do before. He also taught her that sex was dirty, addictive, and it simply took the right person for it to make a goddamn difference.

So, maybe it made her hot to see him stare because she knew why he did. Maybe it messed her up a little to think he wanted to do it again because she wasn’t even sure if she could refuse. She didn’t know if her new weakness would allow her to.

And that was bad.

“Hang up the phone,” she repeated when Caesar kept staring. This time, her tone came out sharp, and authoritative. She wasn’t fucking around anymore—he’d wanted this meeting, and so they were going to have it. “Now.”

Angelo’s voice kept humming on, too.

Raging on, really.

Caesar gave her a cocky smile as he pulled the phone away from his ear, and ended the call without a word to his father that he was going to do so. “Happy?”

She didn’t even get to reply.

The phone started ringing again.

“Turn it off,” she demanded.