He spotted Madeleine during the introductions.
She spotted him back.
First round he worked his opponent—a talented Venezuelan contender—into the ropes in front of Madeleine and pounded the hell out of him. Blood and sweat flecked on her dress. As he spun away, Jack took a second to glance at her.
Knew that she dug it.
The fight went seven rounds, a bloody affair, before Jack got tired of slicing up the Venezuelan, went low for a paralyzing liver shot and then upstairs to the jaw for the knockout.
His man dropped face-first like a felled tree.
Jack raised his arms and looked straight at Madeleine.
She didn’t look away.
“You probably don’t want to go to the postfight party,” Manny said as the crowd started to leave.
“No,” Madeleine said. “I’d like to.”
Di Bello was run by the Chicago Outfit with an investment from the New England mob, so the party in the suite at the Sands was full of wiseguys. They all knew Manny, they all respected him. Most of their gumars wore his creations, gratis. He was welcome at the party, especially as he brought with him a woman as stunning as his wife.
No one was happier to see them than Jack.
His face was flushed and puffy, his left eye black, and his swollen jaw didn’t diminish a crooked grin. He alternated holding a cold beer bottle against his cheek and drinking from it while looking across the room at Madeleine.
Now she avoided his eye; it was getting too obvious.
And she was feeling too much.
Jack waited until she went to the bathroom and stopped her on the way out. He got right to it. “What are you doing with that mutt?”
“Excuse me?”
“What a waste.”
“Get out of my way.”
“Come see me tomorrow.” He told her his room number.
His manager tried to warn him. “Stay away from that trim. Her husband’s connected.”
“He’s not made, though.”
“No, but he’s connected, Jack.”
“The wiseguys wouldn’t lay a hand on me,” Jack said. “I make them money.”
“You make them tens of thousands of dollars,” his manager said. “Manny Maniscalco makes them millions. So if he asks them to break your hands, or splash acid on your face, or cut off your guinea dick, they would do the math. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
“I know, but look at her,” Jack said. “She’d be worth it.”
The next afternoon Madeleine said she was going to have lunch with some of her old show friends and do some shopping. Her feet took her straight to Jack’s room.
He might have had the decency to act surprised, she thought when he opened the door. Instead he grinned and let her in.
Jack didn’t make love to her, he fucked her.
She fucked him back.
Dug her fingers into his thick, curly black hair, ran her fingernails across his broad back, bucked against him like she was trying to bounce him off. He stayed with her, plunged into her like he was punching her, going for the knockout.
Madeleine got the first orgasm of her life that she didn’t give herself.
And the second and the third.
She didn’t even like the guy—arrogant, rough to the point of brutality, crude and foul-mouthed—but she was crazy about him. He felt the same way—Jack had never fucked such a beautiful woman.
Then again, few men had.
“Don’t give me bruises,” Madeleine said one day. “Manny might notice.”
“You still fucking him?”
“He’s my husband,” she said.
“The old bastard’s so grateful,” Jack said, “he wouldn’t notice my jizz on his dick.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Then why do you keep coming back?”
“I come back to get off.”
She kept going back. They started to take precautions, didn’t meet at his hotel but rented rooms away from the Strip.
Two or three days a week for the next three months.
Madeleine came home one evening—she really had been out shopping with friends—and Manny was sitting on the living room couch, a glass of scotch in his hand.
“I want you to look at something,” he said, patting the cushion beside him for her to sit down.
He opened a folder on the glass coffee table and Madeleine saw black-and-white photos—some taken from a closet, others from outside a window—of her and Jack in bed. They were graphic: Jack kneeling between her legs, Madeleine with his dick in her mouth, her on all fours with him behind her.