UNTAMED: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance

by Zoey Parker

  “Because he’s screwing you!” Sadie threw her hands up in the air. “He’s stealing from you, Micah! He’s trashing your business.”

  “Manny would never do something like that,” I told her. “Your brother on the other hand...that I could see. Maybe he got you involved because he knew I couldn’t keep my fucking hands off of you.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. But whatever you and he were thinking, you’d better think again.”

  “Chris didn’t even want me involved,” Sadie said, trying that let’s-be-reasonable shit. “He just wanted a place to crash. And I definitely didn’t get involved in this thinking I was going to work hand-in-hand with a mob boss. I just wanted to keep my goddamn brother alive: that’s all.”

  “And then you got to liking it,” I told her. “You got to liking how it felt to be in the org, and because you think Manny is probably going to come up with something you might not want him to, you want him out.”

  “I’m telling you the truth!” Sadie stared at me. “When—in the entire time I’ve known you so far—have I ever lied about anything?”

  “The entire time you’ve known me?” I laughed. “A fucking month? I’ve known Manny for years. I know who he is. I know what he’s done for me.” I couldn’t believe this bitch: trying to weasel in a spot so that she could take Manny’s place, maybe become some kind of mini-boss herself. “Get the fuck out before I tell Brody to drag you down the stairs and throw you out.”

  For a second, Sadie just stared at me, and I thought—just for a second—that she was in too much shock to even know what to do. But then she stood up, wobbly but determined, turned around, and stepped to the door of my office. “You’re making a mistake, Micah Rintley,” she said, but she was through the door before I could say anything else to her.

  # # #

  Sadie

  I barely made it down the stairs and out of the club before I felt my knees starting to give out underneath me. I’d known Micah would take it hard; but I’d thought Rob had been right. I’d thought that Micah would believe it, coming from me. I sat in my car for a while, still feeling the soreness and the slickness between my legs, wanting to cry without really, truly knowing exactly why I wanted to cry.

  “Fucking idiot,” I murmured to myself, forcing my hand to get the key into the ignition. “That fucking idiot.” I turned the key and got the car started and took another slow breath. I pulled out of my parking spot and left the lot behind Vagabond, trying to figure out what I was going to do. Micah didn’t actually know any of the people I worked with, and I doubted that they would work directly with him—they didn’t even know, specifically, that my connection to the girls was through Micah, or they might have been more wary of getting involved in the business. So if Micah wanted to keep putting his girls in high-end hotel rooms with rich business clients, he was going to have trouble if he kept me out of the loop. But somehow I didn’t think that part would phase him as much as I hoped.

  After all, Micah had figured out everything he could about me. I didn’t think it was beyond the realm of possibility that he’d find some other way to get to the people I worked with, to make his own deals with them. They wouldn’t have to pay me cuts from their bonuses if they went directly with Micah, which would mean that they would be that much more inclined to do it that way. My mind was spinning; I didn’t even know at that point if I wanted to actually help Micah anymore. “Fucking asshole,” I muttered to myself as I came to a stop at a red light. I had thought that Micah was a pragmatist, that he’d follow his interest. I’d counted on him being surprised at what I had to disclose—but I had figured that he’d blow up a bit, maybe insist that I had to be wrong, and then call Manny in to get the details to prove me wrong right in front of me. Or maybe he’d call Rob and ask about it; except, I reminded myself, that Micah wouldn’t trust Rob—mean as he was, and as much as he clearly didn’t like Manny—any more than he would trust me, apart from knowing Rob longer.

  I barely even realized it when I got back to my apartment; I was in my parking space there, the car idling, just staring out through my windshield. I didn’t know what to do with myself, I didn’t know how to feel. Part of me wanted to feel betrayed—but I knew I really didn’t have a right to it. I felt an ache somewhere between my stomach and my ribs, like I’d been kicked, but I knew that was ridiculous. For one of the few times in my life—maybe the first time since I’d started working at the bank—I had no idea what to do with myself. I took my hands off of the steering wheel, turned off the car’s engine, and got out.

  I could feel the slipperiness between my labia as I walked toward the building, along with the soreness in my hips, the cool caress of the night air between my legs reminding me that I’d gone to Micah’s office with nothing on under my skirt except for a pair of thigh-highs. I could still feel his hands all over me, still taste him on my lips; our conversation after the sex had taken less than twenty minutes, and the drive home had taken about the same. In less than an hour I’d gone from being so full of pleasure that I almost couldn’t imagine feeling afraid or hurt to this stupid, shell-shocked person walking up the stairs to my apartment.

  “Okay, Sadie,” I said to myself once I was safely in my apartment, the door closed and locked behind me. “You’re going to take a shower, and you’re going to eat something, and then you’re going to go to bed. And when you wake up tomorrow you’ll start actually thinking about this. Not before then.” I put my purse down and kicked off the four-inch heels I’d put on less than three hours before, and walked toward my bedroom like a zombie, not even really wanting to think about what had happened. I stripped off my clothes without even paying attention to where they fell, and turned on the water in my shower as soon as I was in the bathroom without even looking at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t going to think about anything, I promised myself. I was going to let myself be in shock, I was going to do what I knew would make me function again, and I would re-evaluate everything once I could get my brain working.

  The hot water pounded down on my head, soaking my hair and making the parts of my scalp where Micah had pulled the hardest ache; I cringed, feeling the water like tears slide down my body, between my legs, washing away the remnants of our sex together. I wanted to cry but I wasn’t sure even why that was; I focused down on getting clean again. I washed my hair, scrubbed by body ruthlessly, refusing to remember the feeling of Micah’s hands on me, of him fingering me and bending me over the chair and taking me like the dirtiest slut in the city. I cleaned myself up as thoroughly as I could ever imagine, and got out of the shower and into a clean bathrobe—not the one I’d been wearing when Micah had surprised me in my living room, a different one—before I went into the kitchen to find something to eat.

  “In a day or two you’ll figure it out, and you’ll feel better,” I told my empty kitchen, eating reheated leftovers to try and get rid of the weird ache in the pit of my stomach. I washed the dishes and made myself go to bed, forced myself to not even think about thinking about Micah Rintley.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sadie

  I didn’t feel any better when I woke up the next morning; in spite of sleeping for nine hours more or less straight through—I’d taken a Unisom—by the time I forced myself out of bed, I had that head-heavy, dry-eyed feeling I’d only ever experienced before when I’d had too much to drink the night before. Then too, I had the lingering soreness between my legs, the ache in my hips, that reminded me of everything that had happened the night before. I went into my kitchen, and started the coffee brewing, but the silence in my apartment made me want to scream.

  Some part of me—a stupid, naive part—had thought that I’d step out of my room and maybe see Micah sitting on my couch again, waiting for me. Maybe he’d tell me that he’d been stupid the night before, that he shouldn’t have dismissed what I had to say out of hand. But of course, that hadn’t happened. While I added milk and sugar to my coffee I thought to myself how stupid it was that I’d even entertained the little daydre
am, no matter how briefly.

  If I’d had any doubts that I was out of the loop for good, as far as Micah was concerned, checking my phone told me that he’d decided to stand by his decision. I had one text message, from an “unknown number”: Don’t come back to Vagabond. I didn’t know for sure if it was from Micah himself, but the threat was definitely clear enough.

  It was the weekend, so I didn’t really have anywhere to go; I’d already made the arrangements with Micah for the next week’s sessions for his girls, so I didn’t even have that excuse, that reason to go to him—even if I could justify the obvious risk. How could he be so stupid? It was so frustrating that I wanted to scream in Micah’s face, to shake him. Micah loved Manny like a brother, like a trusted friend—but he had to see that even his trusted friends could screw him, didn’t he?

  I tried to eat breakfast, but my stomach twisted itself in knots. I wasn’t sure if I was more upset over the fact that I was out of the business for good, or the fact that Micah was being so stupid about Manny, or the fact that I would probably never see him—sexually—again. I’d really thought, naive as I was, that we had something going; that it wasn’t just hot sex and business but something a little more. You’ve watched too many Lifetime movies, I told myself, picking at my bowl of oatmeal with my spoon, trying to force myself to eat another bite. It was even my favorite kind: maple and brown sugar. But it was impossible.

  Maybe I could just wait a couple of days, give Micah time to cool down, and then I could talk to him again. I could text the number I had for him, see if he’d be willing to meet with me, just to arrange more clients for his girls. And if I could make that happen, maybe I could get him to listen to me.

  But even before I got too invested in the idea, I knew it would never—ever—work. I couldn’t even really try to get in contact with Micah unless he decided he wanted to talk to me; not unless I had something better to offer, something he didn’t already have in his hands. He wasn’t about to just abandon something he’d decided on because he’d enjoyed having sex with me, and especially if he’d come to the conclusion that—rather than Manny trying to screw him out of money—I was trying to drive a wedge, to make him distrust his own people to further my own status in the organization.

  If it weren’t for the fact that I was the one suffering, it could almost be funny; I’d been the one to keep my nose clean, to do things the right way, to obey the law. Chris, my brother, had always been the rascal, the good-for-nothing. He’d screwed up not just because of whatever it was that Manny had been doing—I was convinced of Rob’s story—but also because of his stupidity in even getting involved with Micah Rintley in the first place. And yet I’d been the one who’d gone out of my way to make things right and in the process I’d started up what amounted to my own illegal business with Micah. I’d been more successful at crime than my crime-loving brother for a month, until I’d screwed it up by trying to help Micah out with a problem in his organization.

  I wanted to do something, but I had no idea what I even could do. I couldn’t go to Micah again, at least not until I had something to keep him from wanting to kill me. Does he even want to kill you? You don’t know for sure. I knew I didn’t want to risk the possibility that he did.

  I put the TV on and tried to think of what it was I could do to figure out the situation. Micah needed me for more arrangements for his girls, so I didn’t think that he could—necessarily—keep me cut out forever, not if he wanted to maintain the access to rich clients that would bring in the most money. But then again, he knew where I worked; I’d told him who I worked with. If he could get me to deliver clients for the girls, I was sure he had his girls working hard to keep the contacts up—to learn about more businessmen from the banking clients they saw. But he doesn’t know about legitimate business—not really, I thought as I pretended to watch an episode of Maury. Imagine him trying to get cards made for them, or something like that—or trying to put together his own website for them. The corporate offices for the bank did most of that for us, but I at least had a working knowledge of the kinds of touches that businessmen looked for.

  I had to laugh a bit at myself for even considering things in those terms. It was a totally different world, and while I was sure that Micah would have had a hard time trying to get the kind of clientele for his girls that I’d found for them, I didn’t think at all that he was the kind of guy to try and make it that legitimate, that first class. He hadn’t even really realized how inappropriate and unwelcome his girls’ normal looks would be until I’d told him. He could find someone else, though. Maybe not someone like me—whose brother was on the hook, under threat of death—but Micah was charming enough, rich enough, smart enough to find another woman, another professional who could advise him and maybe even find him similar-caliber clients. I had overestimated my value to Micah; that much was sure.

  At the same time, though, I couldn’t help thinking that it was more than just business that had brought Micah and I together. I had had sex with him more than a dozen times in the previous month, and while there was no way for me to know if he was having sex with anyone else, I didn’t think he was in a relationship with anyone. You need to get real with yourself, Sadie: he wasn’t in one with you, either. Except that it had felt like it could have been a relationship. It felt like there could have been more between us; certainly if the opportunity had presented itself, I would have gone home with him. He’d been in my apartment. He’d fucked me senseless in my own bed.

  I shivered, remembering it with a mixture of regret, need, and shame. The first time I’d had sex with Micah, I’d done it to try and get a thousand dollars knocked off of Chris’ debt to him. The second time had been something different—it had started with my idea that maybe I could convince the mafia boss to be kind again, but it had become, in a matter of seconds, a dance between us, with Micah dominating me until I gave into him completely. Every time we’d had sex after that, it was purely out of what I’d thought was mutual desire; at least, I was pretty sure that Micah wanted it as much as I did, maybe even more.

  I felt myself getting hot just thinking about those torrid trysts: about Micah threatening playfully to send me downstairs with my face or breasts covered in his semen, marking me as his own personal sex object, making me beg him to take me and dominating me so completely I would have let him do whatever he wanted to me. God—what was I even thinking? The person I’d been before Chris had shown up on my doorstep, trailing trouble behind him, would never in a million years have done any of the things I’d done. The Sadie that had been straight-laced, always obeyed the law, only owned a gun for the illusion of protection, would never have let a mob boss bend her over his desk and take her from behind. She never would have cried out loudly enough for her brother in the next room to hear that she belonged to someone so despicable as I knew Micah really was.

  But it was impossible not to feel the heat rush through me, remembering all the dirty, hot, delicious sex I’d had. I shivered, resisting the urge to slip my hand between my legs while I thought about Micah pinning me down on my own bed and taking me hard and fast, almost as if he didn’t care whether or not I wanted it. I bit my bottom lip and took slow, deep breaths, remembering the way he’d stripped off my dress, remembering the feeling of riding him, of his hands all over me as if he owned me completely, as if my body belonged to him. It wasn’t something I’d ever—ever—thought I’d want or enjoy, but Micah touching me, rubbing my clit and fingering me had made me so hot every time that I’d given into him not just willingly but hungrily.

  “Stop,” I told myself, standing up and walking into the kitchen to get something—a glass of water, a cup of coffee—anything to jolt me out of the rising desire I felt. “Stop thinking about Micah, right now.” I knew it wasn’t doing me any good at all to reminisce about how much I’d enjoyed being treated like Micah’s personal slut. It wouldn’t solve any of my problems, and it would just make me want to do something stupid and drastic—like try and find his house,
or try and talk to him. I needed to decide what it was that I needed to do.

  I drank a glass of cold water and went back to the living room. Did I even want to help Micah anymore? I was—ultimately—free of my life of crime. If the guys at the bank wanted to hook their clients up with more prostitutes, I could refer them to Rob, or maybe even to Micah, and never worry about it again. I could have a normal life, fully legal. I wouldn’t have to think about how to defend myself against drug dealers or addicts who owed Micah money, or with the weird politics of the criminal underground. I could just go back to being Sadie Bamber, administrative assistant. I’d get my cuts of the guys’ bonuses in a month or two, and it’d be a nice plus for holiday season, and maybe I could invest some of it after I bought some great Christmas presents for people.

  But even when I was actually attempting to convince myself that it was for the best that I was out of Micah’s life, I knew that I couldn’t just let it drop. Chris had been wrongly accused. Even if I’d gotten him out of trouble with the business of the prostitutes, he had had his reputation ruined, and on top of it I cared about the girls—at least a little—and about Micah. If Rob was wrong about the situation with Manny that would be one thing; but if Rob was right, and Manny was stealing from Micah steadily, then he’d go back to that once Micah put more effort behind the “upgrade” program. There’d be more guys who would become “examples” of what happened to people who didn’t pay Micah his cut, who would be guilty of nothing more than being stolen from.