Page 7 of Sacred Blood

I rented her an apartment. Spent more time with her than I should have. Shared more of myself than I normally allowed. Then one afternoon I walked in and found her entertaining two paying clients in the apartment I was funding.

Monica wasn’t interested in me. She was interested in what I could provide. The lesson had been swift and brutal.

People were opportunists.

Never take them at face value.

Never invest yourself.

Keep women where they belong—at arm’s length.

I’d kept that vow ever since.

Until I saw the woman in Vinny’s restaurant.

Up until that moment, I'd been blissfully unaware that it had been a very long time since a woman had intrigued me.

Attraction had never been the problem. Club Carnage practically delivered beautiful women to my doorstep. If I wanted company, I could have it before the night was over.

What had become rare was interest.

Genuine curiosity.

The desire to know what made someone tick beneath the surface.

Most people were predictable. They wanted something. Money. Status. Access. Influence. Once you understood their motivation, the rest was easy. Yet the woman sitting in Vinny’s restaurant bothered me for reasons I couldn’t explain.

She hadn’t flirted.

Hadn’t tried to get my attention.

Hadn’t even looked my way.

If anything, she seemed determined to ignore me entirely, which should have made her forgettable. Instead, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. And that bothered me far more than it should have.

Gio watched me, his expression knowing, which I hated. No one got to see me unless I allowed them to. Never had punching him in his smug face been as tempting as it was at that moment.

Control, Tano.

I shifted in my seat and took a sip of my drink. “She wasn’t who I thought she was.”

He nodded. “There are a bevy of beauties on the dance floor who would love to fuck a handsome doctor. Why don’t you go downstairs and pick one out?”

Standing, I stretched and glanced down into the main section of the club. My gaze caught on a woman with chestnut curls that ran the length of her spine and ended just above a pair of ass cheeks that made my cock hard.

With her back to me, I couldn’t see her face but when she let out a giggle that even the booming bass of the music couldn’t drown out, I knew it was the same woman from the restaurant. She chose that moment to flip her hair back and turn on an angle. Her eyes took in the scene and then traveled up, up, and landed on mine.

Zap! There it was again. Like being shot in the heart. What the hell was going on with this woman, or me for that matter?

The Dungeon Playroom was now forgotten. I mumbled something to my brother and hustled down the stairs. But when I arrived, she was missing from the table. Scanning the room, I caught sight of the sexiest ass I’d ever seen hustling through the exit. Bingo!

But I was seconds too late to catch her, watching helplessly from the sidewalk as she climbed into a cab. That perfect ass was the last I saw of her before she slammed the door. I watched the cab pull away from the curb and caught sight of her face when she turned her head to look back at me through the rear window. Her eyes grew wide, almost fearful, and then she was gone.

There was a mystery there.

And getting to the bottom of it was more than tempting. Just the thought of gripping those long curly locks in my hand while I spanked the secrets out of her made my cock hard.

Chapter Three