Owned by the Mafia Bad Boy (Books 1 - 4)

by Raven Dark

  I put my head back, gut twisting. Fuck, I hated this. I hated that I couldn’t just tell her the truth, that mine and Gala’s relationship was a sham, and the only way to protect not only Gala, but myself. I hated that instead I had to behave like some womanizing dick, and that, worse, I’d have to put Anika in the only position a woman like her could have in my world.

  “She accepts it because she has to. It’s the way my family is. Mobsters are expected to have mistresses.”

  “So you are a mobster.”

  I allowed a wry smile. If my father has his way, I will be.

  Contrary to popular belief, my father wasn’t a Mafia Don, wasn’t related to any of the five families, but he’d been trying to push me to marry into one of them since I was a teen.

  “What does it matter if I am or not? You already have me figured out.”

  An angry sound left her and she stood up, her feet brushing the carpet. I turned in time to see her right behind me, eyes furious. God, she was gorgeous when she was mad.

  “Ok, listen to me, Davros. Understand this. I agreed to be your slave for—”

  “Ack.” I put a finger close to her face. “Anika, if I have to say this again, I’ll whip your fucking ass. You aren’t a slave.”

  “So you say.” When I glared at her, she sighed. “Fine. I agreed to be your sub for six months to protect my father. I’ll play side whore only to protect him, do you understand me?”

  “You’re pushing again, Anika.”

  “What? How?”

  “You aren’t a fucking whore. Say that again, and I will spend the night treating you like one.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” When I grabbed her shoulders, she shoved my hands off, pushing me back. A tiny noise escaped her, broken and unfamiliar. It jarred me, realizing she was crying. For a moment, I thought she was afraid of my threat, but when I reached for her and she swung my hand away, I saw it in her eyes. She wasn’t angry. She was hurt.

  “Davros, you really don’t get it, do you? You don’t even see anything wrong with what you’re doing, fucking with me like this. Forcing me to accept being with you only when it’s convenient, when you’re bored with her? Are you that heartless?”

  Her words cut far deeper than they should have. Had another woman said them, they might have rolled off me, but coming from her, with the pain I could see in her eyes, they sliced at something deep inside me, something I’d thought my father had pounded out of me long ago with his fists.

  Slowly, I dropped my arms to my sides. I was going to have to bend on this, wasn’t I? Damn it.

  “Anika, sit down.” I barely whispered the words.

  “No. Just tell—”

  I took her shoulders gently and waited until she snapped her gaze to mine, looking as thrown as I was by my actions. “I am telling you. At least I’m telling you as much as I can. Now sit.”

  Anika backed up and sat slowly on my bed. I followed and sat beside her, taking her face in my hands. “Listen to me.”

  The hopeful look in her eyes made me wish I could have given her the world.

  “I know this is going to be hard for you to accept. But if I could end things with Gala this instant, I would, and not just because I don’t want to be with her. I would give anything to let you have all of me, to just lose myself in only you, but I can’t.”

  “Is it that hard to be with one woman, Kane? To feel real love? Don’t you—”

  “Please, don’t finish that sentence.” I put my fingers to her lips. “I can’t say anymore than this. You’ll just have to try to accept that what happens between Gala and I isn’t what it seems. There are other factors in play here. If I broke it off, it would endanger everyone involved. Do you understand me, angel?”

  “But…no, I don’t…. I don’t understand at all. Isn’t she mob?”

  I looked away.

  Her face paled. “How high up is she? Is her father really a Don?”

  More silence.

  “Shit. But that would…if you married her, that would make you…” She stood up, almost looking like she swayed. “That would make you a Don by marriage.”

  “Anika—”

  She spun to me. “I don’t get it. How would marrying into a life of crime protect anyone? It would put you in even more danger. You’d be like Gavini. Kane you’d be the mob—”

  I put my finger to my lips, flicking my gaze to the walls, indicating that anyone could be on the other sides of them. She closed her eyes and sank onto the bed, looking like she was trying not to fall on it. At least when she continued, she spoke at a whisper.

  “I don’t understand. Why would you do that? How does marrying into…into that…help anyone?”

  It won’t happen. I’d die before I became a fucking Don. “Trust me, it’s the only way I can.” I took her hands, hating the way hers shook. “Please, don’t ask anymore. Just trust me, nothing is what it seems. That’s all I can give you.”

  For an agonizing moment she searched my eyes as if looking for answers in them. She must have seen something that convinced her, because her shoulders dropped in surrender. She looked toward the ceiling and gave a shaky sigh. I could see the effort it took to trust me, to believe in me. God, I wanted to give it all to her, every part of me. I didn’t know what she thought was going on, and I knew I was asking her to accept something most women wouldn’t accept for anything—that the appearance of my womanizing was somehow not what it looked like, without offering her anything to explain what it really was. And worse, I was asking her to believe that of a man she, like most of the city, had been raised to believe cultivated his empire on lies and deceit.

  Anika said nothing for a long time, and her silence made me feel like I was hanging off a cliff, waiting to drop. I detested that it felt so critical that she accepted things, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. When she finally met my gaze again, her features looked closed off, distant.

  “I’d better wash up before we…” Her eyes lowered and she looked to the side. Anywhere but at me.

  My gut twisted. “Anika.” I tipped her chin up and turned her face to mine. She made it so hard to be cold, the way I knew I’d have to be later with my father, with Dominic. “I need to hear you say it. Do you trust me? Do you believe I do what I do with Gala because I have no choice?”

  Her chest rose and fell. She shook her head and the sadness in her eyes, the struggle there damn near ripped me apart. “I don’t know.” Then she lifted her hand and lay it on my cheek. I resisted the urge to capture it and press it there. “I want to believe you. I do.”

  She stood up and I forced myself to nod, not to push for more. I wanted so much more. I wanted her loyalty, her complete trust. She was trying, and that would have to do, for now.

  “I’ll be back in a bit.” She gave me a weak smile.

  I allowed a smirk, wishing we could stay in this moment—this gentle, giving moment—forever. “You have ten minutes, girl. Any longer, and I’m coming in there after you.”

  3

  The threat—that Kane would come after me if I took longer than the ten minutes he’d given me—filled me with such a strange mix of emotions, it unsettled me. On one hand, especially with that sexy smirk, the possession in his words sent a wicked heat racing through my blood and caused a low ache to start between my legs. It was easy to forget that I couldn’t fully trust him with the playful way he spoke. On the other hand, the promise was bittersweet somehow, as it reminded me of a lighter time, a more playful time between us. That first night we were together, when I could have almost believed there was something more than the lust that raged between us now.

  Alone in the huge en suite bathroom, I leaned against the door and closed my eyes, trying to make sense of the jumble he’d made of my thoughts. My life. Kane Davros—a Davros!—had made me want things I barely understood. He made me crave his dominance, his brutality in bed, the way a junky needs a fix. Not knowing how closely his family was linked to the Mafia, or just what sorts of shit that forced
him to do when he wasn’t with me, should have terrified me. On some level it did, but it also made me want to help him, save him from the damage and the violence I knew it had to bring to his world.

  Stepping away from the door, I stripped off the sheer dress and tossed it aside. If I never had to wear anything like that again, it would be too soon. And yet, strangely, as I looked at myself in the mirror, clad in the barely-there panties and top, the thought of wearing that same outfit for Kane made my stomach flutter. Whatever he’d said to the contrary, this was a slave’s outfit, and yet, I wanted to wear it, so long as it wasn’t for any mob boss, but just for him. Only for him, in his bed, while I watched his eyes burn with need, felt him grow harder inside me at the look of it.

  What the hell was wrong with me? My need to do such a thing was only another testament to how much that man had screwed up my head.

  He’d said the relationship between he and Gala wasn’t what it seemed. Unclipping the bikini top and slipping off the panties, I shook my head. What else could it be? Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have believed him. Except, what I’d seen in his eyes when he told me was impossible to ignore. Along with a desperation in his voice I’d never heard before, his grey-gold eyes had been clouded with concern, but also something more unsettling. I’d never say Kane was afraid; a man like him probably didn’t understand fear. But it was something close to it. A protective urgency, the kind you felt when you guarded a secret lives depended on. At the outset, he sounded like a womanizer, but I could feel it in my bones and in my blood, he was as trapped in his situation with Gala as I was with Gavini. I just didn’t understand how.

  A sudden thought occurred to me and I froze, staring into the mirror, watching my fists clench at my sides. Gala. Could it be that she was trapping him somehow? She was a Mafia princess, after all. I pressed my lips together. With the Mafia, who knew. It could have been her father, not her. I’d heard stories of Dons trapping people into becoming part of the family. Damn. Not knowing would drive me up the wall.

  I looked longingly at the large Jacuzzi tub in the corner of the massive bathroom, and wished I could sink into the soothing heat, with bubbles up to my neck. A sharp stab of the irritation I always felt at Kane’s extreme wealth hit me and I jerked aside the sliding door to the shower instead. I wouldn’t allow myself to need such luxury. Not while my father spent his days on a decrepit farm he barely kept afloat. A farm that, as soon as he signed it over, would belong to Kane. And no, my unwillingness to lose myself in an hour long bath had nothing to do with Kane’s threat to come in after me. It didn’t, goddamn it.

  “You’d better get in that shower soon, girl. You have eight minutes left. I should be hearing water running by now.”

  I stared over my shoulder at the door. “What the hell? You’re clocking me?” He’d said I have ten minutes, but I’d thought he was being figurative.

  When he spoke this time, it sounded like he was right outside the door. “Anika, I fold my clothes after I wear them, and I have to put my shoes left to right. Do you really think I’d be able to set a time limit without keeping it?”

  I wanted to be annoyed at him, but somehow the admission of his OCD made me suppresse a giggle behind my hand. The unexpected vulnerability warmed my heart.

  “I’m coming in a minute.” I flicked on the shower and got in, resisting the urge to drag out the shower. What would he do to me if I made him wait? Just a few minutes…

  My ass cheeks actually heated at the thought of his huge palm turning them red in punishment, the way he’d done more than once. My clit ached and I snatched up a mango scented shampoo bottle, lathering the shampoo into my hair. What the hell was he turning me into?

  With thirty seconds to spare according to the small clock on the bathroom counter, I wrapped myself in a towel. Then I drew a long breath, let it out, and forced myself to open the bathroom door slowly, giving the appearance of taking my time. Unfazed by his threats. The steam rolled out into the room, but Kane was nowhere to be found.

  “Kane? Where are you?” I stepped out into the bedroom and looked around.

  Where he came from, I didn’t know, but I heard his feet swish on the carpet as he moved in behind me, and then his voice rumbled low in my ear.

  “Take the towel off.”

  “Make me.”

  Kane spun me around so roughly I was momentarily dizzy. He closed his fists around the front of the towel with a threatening slowness that made me swallow hard, his face a stony mask.

  “Let me make this clear, Anika. You aren’t a slave—” I opened my mouth and he yanked me close, knowing me well enough to know I was going to needle him. “You aren’t. But this is not a fairytale romance, and you aren’t my equal. On your own time, you do what you want—”

  “As long as it’s with your permission, right?”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched and he grabbed my chin, shoving my head back. His fingers bit into my jaw, trapping it, locking my eyes on his so that the cold command in them became the whole of my world. The possession in his grip made my body weak even while my heart thudded with the undeniable threat in his gaze.

  “When you’re with me, when I tell you to do something, you do it, or you pay the price. Do you understand?”

  Fuck, I wanted to drop to my knees, to feel his cock stretching my mouth, feel him forcing it down my throat. Fueling my hate for him.

  “Do you?” When I tried to nod, he turned and shoved me to the wall by the bed, pinning my head back. What would he do to me now? “Answer me.”

  “Yes. I understand, Sir.”

  “Obviously, you need to learn your place in this relationship, girl.” He released me only long enough to tear off the towel, then he spun me so I faced the wall. “Step away from the wall and bend over with your hands on it.”

  “Oh, God, Kane…” I bit my lip and did as he instructed. A pace out from the wall, I bent over, hands flat. Bare ass out for him. My skin tingled with the awareness of what he meant to do to me, while my pussy raged for attention. I hated him for making me want this, but that didn’t change the need racing through my blood.

  His hand seized my hair and he yanked it back. Stubble on his cheek grazed mine. “This isn’t a fucking game, Anika. This won’t be a pleasant experience.”

  “I can handle it.” I could. Right?

  Behind me, his belt whooshed as he yanked it from around his waist. Oh, shit. He’d given me punishment spankings before, enough that I knew the difference between ones meant for penance, and ones meant to get us both off, but he’d never used anything but his hand. I didn’t need to know the ins and outs of his kinks to know this was going to hurt like a mother.

  “Are you hard, Kane? Do you get off on whipping me?”

  He snorted. “You’re unbelievable. That sass is going to land you in some nasty shit one of these days.”

  I heard the sound of leather being stretched and pulled, and I looked to see he was wrapping the belt around one giant fist. Fuck, I loved his hands, but the look of his grip with the belt hanging out of it was as scary as it was exciting. Was I imagining the raging hard on in his slacks, or the hunger in his eyes?

  “Turn around and face the wall.”

  “Fuck, you are hard. Jesus, you sick bastard.”

  “And you’re soaking wet, and you know it.” His voice was suddenly dark, and he grabbed my hair again, yanking my head back. “Face the fucking wall.”

  I was wet, too, damn him. The man was poison, turning me into something as twisted and warped as the monster he was. His fingers in my hair pulled until the sting was almost too much, a skilled grip. Wetness coated my thighs without underwear to contain it and my entire sex grew almost sore for the need to have him thrusting inside me.

  He released me and the carpet scuffed as he backed up. “Now. I’m going to whip you six times, and the only time your going to open that mouth of yours is to count. If you miss a count, or you mouth off to me, you get another one. When we’re finished, you’ll get
on your knees. You will thank me for teaching you your lesson, and suck me off until I come like a good girl. You understand?”

  Oh, holy fuck. He’d never made sucking his cock sound so hot. Except I could feel there was something more at play here, and humiliation rolled through me, understanding what he wanted. He wanted the victory of my accepting his punishment, the total submission of acknowledging my role.

  “I understand, Sir.” I hated how eager I was. I shouldn’t be eager. I should have been scared. But then, I had a feeling that was coming.

  “Good. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. This will hurt.”

  I obeyed. The reassurance in his voice was odd, and I couldn’t read him well enough to know if he was being sincere or not. A man like him didn’t care about me enough to do that. Eyes closed, I drew a long breath and held it.

  Leather made a loud whipping noise that cut the air, the only warning I got. When the belt strap cracked across my ass, I almost screamed.

  Oh, God, the pain was incredible. It took me a moment to realize why. He hadn’t warmed my cheeks the way he usually did, prepping me for his brutality. He probably hadn’t hit that hard, but it stung like a white hot flame.

  I nearly forgot to count until I heard him back away a pace. “One…”

  Another strike, right across my left cheek. I whimpered, eyes watering.

  “Two….”

  “Why are you being punished, Anika?” Cold, detached. This was definitely not a game. I was his, signed over lock, stock and barrel, and he was teaching me exactly what that meant.

  “Because I don’t do what you say.” My voice came out tiny and shaky, and I ground my teeth at how weak it was.

  Another crack of the strap, searing across my right cheek. The pain blazed and I let out a sob. “Three…” God, I hated him.

  “You like that, Anika? You still think this is fun?”

  “No, Sir.” Tears heated my cheeks and his smugness twisted my insides.

  “Are you alright?” His hand laid on my back and I jolted at the tenderness.

  I wanted to snap at him, sure he was just playing hero, but I didn’t dare risk another swat. I nodded. “I can handle it….ah!” I cried out at the fourth burning strike that cut across my ass cheeks like fire. “Four. Fuck.”