by Naomi West
I stop in my tracks, mid jog. Love.
A cannonball settles in my stomach and a motorbike honks for me to get out of the road. I continue to jog across to the row of jewelry shops in front of me.
Is this really such a surprise? That I’m in love with her? The word causes about 800 spiderwebs to get spun in my chest. It’s intense but it shouldn’t be a surprise, right? I mean, I did save her life. Kidnap her so that I could protect her from Esposito. I willingly turned the wrath of a mob boss onto myself. And then, more recently, I jumped out of bed to go buy her a piece of jewelry. Jewelry that is a symbol of how I feel about her. The commitment I want to make to her.
The thought has me jumpy. But only because it’s new. Not because it doesn’t feel right. It does feel right. Weirdly right.
She and I fit together in a way I could never have imagined before I met her. I’ve always been bossy, dominant, in bed. But I was never interested in integrating that into my regular life. I never wanted to have a woman around for repeat performances. But that’s not the case with Row. Every moment we’ve spent together this thing between us has grown. My need to be close to her is ballooning.
The thought of Esposito trying to keep her as his makes me so sick I want to puke and punch a brick through a wall at the same time.
Suddenly, like a bomb going off in my head, I realize what I need to do. How I can end this with Esposito. I’m pulling my burner phone out of my pocket and calling the one man who I know can help me with this. I don’t usually enjoy talking to him. But our conversation is brief, succinct, and leaves me with a real hope blooming in my chest. He’s on his way to Greece. He’ll be here in the morning. He’s going to help me. Help Row. Help us. I take a deep breath. It’s time to get this going. I know what I want.
The bell jingles as I step into a shop and start scanning the cases. The man behind the counter, French accent, obviously a transplant to Santorini, patiently helps me as I describe what it is that I want. He shows me several pieces that I reject before he tells me he has one more in the back. But it’s very expensive.
I hold up my baseball wad of money and his eyes light up. In a few moments, he’s back. And this time my eyes are the ones lighting up. It’s perfect.
I pay, tuck it in my pocket and dash back into the night, picking up some gyros on the way home.
I unlock the many security systems I have set in place and head into the kitchen, toss the food on the counter.
“Row!” I call out.
“In here!” she yells from the living room. Where she’s laying in one of my t-shirts on the blue sofa, reading a book. Her hair fans out over the back of the couch, pretty much in the same spot I fucked her silly.
The sight of it gives me an instaboner. But I ignore it. For now.
“I got you something, and I want to give it to you right now,” I say with no preamble, just striding into the room and shoving the little purple bag into her hands.
Row’s eyes go from curious to shocked as she pulls a small velvet jewelry box out of the bag. She glances up at me. And then back at the box.
“Open it,” I tell her, demand lacing through my voice.
She flips open the box and gasps. Her eyes filling with tears and that instant comprehension that I love so much.
She pulls the piece of jewelry out of the box. “You bought me a collar. So I wouldn’t ever have to worry about wearing his.”
We’re both thinking of her nightmare, where Esposito yanked her on a leash, his sexual slave. And now I’ve done what I can to expel that fear. I’ve gotten her a gold choker, thick but not overbearing. A small constellation of sapphires are sprinkled across it, giving it a touch of whimsy.
I nod and take it from her hands. I start to put it around her neck but then I pause. “Do you want to wear this, Row? It means that you’re mine. It means that you’re only mine, no one else’s for as long as you wear it. And I’m never taking it off.”
“Yours forever?”
“Forever,” I say resolutely.
She stares out the window for a second, considering. “But I don’t have anything I can give you to show that you’re mine forever.”
Her words ignite a storm of fireworks in my heart. In my stomach. Across my skin. In my soul. “You can give me your body. Let me play with you. Push you. Fuck you however I want. It’ll be up to me to make you feel so good.”
We’re just a breath away from one another. I can smell the intoxicating scent of her.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes.”
Instantly, I’m clasping the necklace around her throat and ripping my shirt off over her head. She needs to be completely naked the first time I see her in my collar.
She kneels on the couch before me. Her eyes so big, her hair tumbling everywhere, her breasts straining out toward me. My collar glints in the evening light, showing me whose she is. And I’m lost. Utterly lost to her.
“There’s no going back,” I tell her.
Two mornings later she stretches beside me in the bed, curling into me like a kitten. Ever since everyone is safe and I’ve started to figure out my plan against Esposito, this has started to feel less frantic. It’s almost like being on vacation with the woman I love.
I trace a hand over her hair and open my eyes just enough to see her gorgeous breasts in a shaft of sunlight. I lean my head down and take the tip of one in my mouth, lave across it with my tongue. She mewls.
I’ve yet to tell her that. That I love her. And I haven’t gotten the impression that she’s about to tell me either. But that’s ok. We’ve come a long way in a really short period of time. We’ve barely known one another a week. I’m trying to enjoy the moment. To touch her every chance I get. She’s gotten even more submissive in bed ever since I put the collar on her, and it’s brought out an animal in me. I always knew I was a brute, but even this surprises me.
Last night I taped her mouth shut and fucked her on the kitchen floor.
She arches against me and I drag a hand down to the crack of her ass. I’m gonna claim her there soon. I need to own every part of her.
“Well isn’t this sweet,” a voice says from the corner of the room, and I’m out of the bed like a shot. I have my knife to the intruder’s neck in under a second.
“Perhaps you could ask your wife to put down the gun?” Fabrici Patrizzio, former mob boss and Alessia’s father, says to me. “Considering you were the one who called me.”
“Jesus, Patrizzio. I didn’t tell you to break into my house and watch me fuck my girl.” And then his words sink in. I turn around and am completely shocked to see that Row has snatched my gun up from the nightstand and is currently pointing it directly at Patrizzio’s head. She’s breathing hard, up on her knees on the bed, butt-ass naked.
“Row, baby, it’s ok. Patrizzio, wait for us downstairs.”
He smirks at both of us and turns to go downstairs.
“Patrizzio? The mob boss? What the fuck is he doing here?” Row asks.
“Jesus Christ, you’re going to make me come in my fucking jockeys if you don’t put that gun down, Quickdraw.”
Row glances down at the gun in confusion. “What?”
“You crouching on our bed, naked as fuck with nothing but a gun and my collar is literally the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell her. “We’re definitely acting this out later.”
I toss her a robe. “But for now, we’ve gotta get dressed and go talk to Patrizzio.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows Esposito. And he’s gonna get us out of this whole mess.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m setting plates of eggs and toast in front of all three of us, while Row serves up some fruit salad she just made.
Patrizzio grins across the table at her. I hate to admit that he’s a pretty good looking guy. Kind of silvery hair and a Sicilian face. He’s got eyes just like Alessia.
“Darlin’, I want to apologize. I never meant to catch the two of you in flagrante delicto.”
Row s
miled back and waved her hand through the air. “That’s ok. That kind of thing doesn’t bother me much. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” She salts her eggs and then passes the shaker over to Patrizzio.
He grins at her and then turns to look at me. “You’ve got yourself a winner here, boy.”
I set my jaw. I refuse to be amused by this situation. We need to square things and fast.
“Look, the sooner we work the kinks out of this plan, the better.”
Patrizzio nods and starts eating. “I haven’t dealt with Esposito in fifteen years or so. Certainly not since I gave up the hustle, but I can’t imagine he’s changed all that much.”
“He hasn’t,” I confirm, glancing at Row. “Certainly not in his tastes.”
Row cuts in. “Fill me in, please. I hate being in the dark.”
Patrizzio leans back in his chair and surveys the two of us. “Your boyfriend here gave me a call a few nights ago. He asked me to come to Santorini so that we could have a little time to work out a plan.”
“How are you involved in this?” she asks.
“Well,” Patrizzio scratches at his stubble. “We’re looking to find a way to end this with minimal bloodshed. And though that wasn’t particularly my specialty when I was a mob boss, I was a dab hand at negotiations. And Esposito and I go way back.”
“Kennedy wants you to broker a deal for us.”
Patrizzio nods and then turns to me. “Alessia would kill me if she knew I was doing this. To her, there’s no reason to get back in the game.”
My stomach drops. I know this already, of course. I know how Alessia and Dare feel about mobsters. “Fabrici, I just don’t see another way. Either I go to him, and he kills me on the spot. Or we run from him for the rest of our lives. Always looking over our shoulders. And we know, at some point, he’s going to find us. The man is damn near a billionaire and can hold onto a grudge like nobody’s business.”
“So,” Row says. “You think if you send in Patrizzio, he might be able to wage some sort of deal where Esposito lets us go?”
“Yes.”
“Like, with money? You’d pay him for me?” she asks.
“No,” Patrizzio polishes off the last of his food. “He wouldn’t be interested in money. He has plenty. He’s only interested in things he can’t buy at this point. He’d want something else from you.”
I nod, my eyes on my plate. I know exactly what he’s talking about. “He wants a soldier.”
Row looks back and forth between the two of us, calm, comprehending. “You mean he’d want you to be a hit man again.”
“Indefinitely,” Patrizzio adds. “Look, kid. I’d try to get you out of this any way I can, but honestly, that’s the only way I can see this one shaking out.”
I push my food away. “I pretty much thought the same thing.”
I can feel a strange feeling flinging off of Row, something vibrating. I can practically hear her gears grinding in her head.
“All this just because he wanted me?” she whispers. “When he first met my father, that was just business. A way to fleece a few bucks from him. But then he met me and put everything else in motion.”
I shrug. “You’re very want-able.”
She looks up at me, her eyes bright and intense with a thought. I can almost see the light bulb go off over her pretty little head. “What if he didn’t want me anymore?”
“Fat chance,” Patrizzio says, picking his teeth with a toothpick. “You’re too cute, girly.”
“No,” Row says. “Listen. From what I gather, he didn’t want me for cutesy girlfriend stuff.”
I huff.
“He wanted me for some freaky shit,” she continues. “He wants to dominate me. Make me his slave, right?”
Patrizzio is leaning forward, listening hard.
“Well, what if he saw me already dominated by somebody else? What if he saw that somebody had beaten him to the punch? Do you think he’d still pursue me then? Wouldn’t I be sort of…spoiled in his eyes?”
“What are you proposing, cara?” Patrizzio asks.
“She wants to come with us to meet with Esposito,” I say as all the puzzle pieces click into place and what she’s saying starts to make sense. “She wants to show up there as my submissive.”
“It could work!” she insists. “We’ll pay him back all the money my father owes him with interest. And we’ll show up, apologize or whatever, and he’ll see that I don’t respond to anyone but you. We could even put on a sort of show or something.” She pops a grape in her mouth as Patrizzio sputters his coffee.
I’ve seen this man shoot someone in the head at point blank range. I’ve seen him pistol whip a snitch. I’ve seen him threaten cops and judges. I have never seen him so much as blink an eye. I’ve certainly never seen him sputter coffee.
“You mean a sex show?” he asks, an amazed grin working over his face.
“Well, probably not the whole kit and kaboodle. But, you know, enough for him to get the gist of what happens behind closed doors with me and Kennedy.”
“I’ll say it again, Squire. You’re a lucky man.”
I’m too busy staring at my girl to even turn toward Patrizzio. “Row, what the fuck are you talking about? There is no way in hell I’m taking you to Esposito’s doorstep. For what? So he can shoot me in the head and take you to his sex dungeon? Not a fucking chance, Row. Not a chance.”
“Listen to me, Kennedy,” her eyes are intense, more so than usual. “He talked to me about this. When he told me what he wanted to do to me. He told me that he wanted to teach me about it. He thought I was a virgin. His whole thing was getting there first. I really think that he’d be much less interested if he knew I was not only taken, but completely submissive to someone else. The game would be gone for him.”
I trace my hands through my hair. Jesus, this just got so much more complicated.
“I think she’s got a point,” Patrizzio says.
“How can you possibly say that?”
“Look,” Patrizzio says. “There’s an easy way and a hard way here. But you know exactly how bloody the easy way is. You’ve been down that road, Kennedy.”
I stand up and start pacing around the kitchen. His voice follows me. “We’re not talking a bodyguard or two. You know that we’d be talking twenty, maybe thirty men. And then Esposito himself. And he’s got kids, so eventually you’d have to get them too, if you really wanted to live in peace.”
Suddenly Patrizzio is standing next to me, one hand on my arm. “And you know I love the game. And you know I love you, kid. But that’s a lot of blood for anybody.”
I turn back to face them, Patrizzio next to me and Row, stoic and calm at the table.
“Arrange the meet,” I say to him. “But make it in a week or so. We have a lot of practice to do.”
Chapter Fifteen
Kennedy
Two weeks later I still can’t believe I agreed to this fucking plan. My stomach is in knots in a way it never has been before in my life. I’ve never been nervous. Not even when I was a contract killer. It’s just now, Row is by my side. Gorgeous and alive, and so precious I feel like I’m wearing my heart on the outside of my body.
She sits in the backseat of a town car that I drive, Patrizzio is in the passenger side. We’re weaving our way through the streets of Brooklyn. We landed early this morning.
Row wanted to go to the natural history museum in Manhattan, but both Patrizzio and I vetoed that idea. Both of us just wanted to get this fucking over with.
I swear to God that woman has nerves of steel. She wants to sightsee on the day that we’re headed to go bargain for our lives from a stone-cold murderer. Even now, she cranes her head toward the windows, peering out at the sights of Brooklyn.
She looks breathtaking. And very different than usual. She said that something Esposito had been attracted to was her girlishness. Her baggy clothes and youthful, simple look. He’d liked the idea of fancying her up.
So, she’d decided to change he
r look to a much more chic style, to prove that I’d already done that for her. Not that I wanted to do any such thing. I’d rather have gotten my teeth pulled than have her get her hair cut. But there she sits, with a spiky, chic cap of hair, not more than an inch or two long.
I have to admit that it really brings out her eyes. But still, I can’t wait for her to grow it long again.
She wears sophisticated gold tear drops at her lobes and an artful face full of makeup. She looks like a movie star. She’s wearing an elegant sweater dress and tall brown boots. Honestly, I could barely believe my eyes when she came out of the airport bathroom this morning. I’d seen the haircut, but everything else was a complete surprise.
