by Jane Henry
And super fucking hot.
“Whoa!” Davo takes several steps back.
“Get the fuck away from her," the intruder growls.
“Chill, man, fuck!” Davo doesn't know how to handle what’s most likely a robbery. I do. You let them take what they want, then you claim insurance and your father ensures that they end up in pieces at the bottom of the harbor I can see gleaming through the floor to ceiling windows. Whoever this guy is, he just signed his own death warrant.
I stay sitting on the couch. I don't move for any man, not even one as massive as the one turning toward me and staring at me with eyes so dark they seem to go on forever. He has stubble in a goatee, just a slight beard, enough to look thoroughly lawless. His jaw is square and hard, just like the rest of him. He’s wearing jeans and a hoodie. Neither one looks right on him. He’s a man who would look better in a suit. White shirt, black slacks...
“What the fuck!?”
"Shut up, Mia.” He growls the words like he owns me.
“Uhm, excuse fucking you!?”
“Is this what you do? Drugs?” He grabs the drugs from Davo and shakes the bag at me in his big fist. The pretty little pills fly everywhere in a cloud of pink and yellow dust.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I do,” I give him the full benefit of my glare. There’s no way he knows this, but my father is the head of a crime family so vast and so dangerous there is nobody on this planet stupid enough to touch me. I'm not afraid of him.
He gives me a vicious look, those dark eyes searing right through me like he fucking owns me, then turns his attention to Davo.
“Get out of here, boy.”
Davo looks over at me and makes the very stupid decision to try to be brave.
“I… I think you should leave, bro," he stammers. “This is.. uh... this is….”
I watch as the brute grabs Davo by the back of his hemp sweater and literally throws him out the door, two handed, both Davo’s feet leaving the ground as he’s hurled across polished Spanish tile. There’s a solid thud as Davo hits the far wall of the foyer, then the intruder slams the door shut as best it can on broken hinges.
We stare at each other for a long moment. He seems pissed. Fuck knows why. He’s turning out to be a complete psycho, and I'm alone with him.
"What are you, like, obsessed with me or something? Desperate, much?”
“You’ll speak to me with respect, Mia," he growls, pushing the hood of his sweatshirt back and running his hand through dark hair speckled with silver at the sides. I let my gaze drift from his face down to the drugs which are now scattered across my New Zealand lambswool rug.
“Why are you here?” I pick up my glass of Prosecco and look at the intruder with a cool gaze.
“I’m the one asking the questions.”
“So far all you’ve done is break my door, scare my friend, and make obvious statements.” I give him the full benefit of the gaze I learned from my father. There’s a way to look at a man to get to the very core of him. But the longer I look at him, the less I see. It's like he’s empty on the inside. Hollowed out in some way which makes him more dangerous than most. I’m left with the superficial to judge him by.
He’s handsome. The kind of handsome that makes even a girl like me quiver inside. I know danger when I see it, and it is pulsing off him in waves.
“Your father didn't send you here to get high," he growls. "You're here to get an education.”
"What do you care?” I smirk, taking another long sip of my Prosecco.
“You’re not old enough to drink.”
“In Italy I am.”
“We're not in Italy,” he growls. “You’re going to stop sassing me and start listening, Mia.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’m going to tear that scrap of fabric you call a dress off you and spank your ass until you scream.”
“Who are you, exactly?” I change the subject as heat flares through my body. Nobody touches daddy’s princess. I’ve always gotten away with everything. But I think that might all be about to change.
“I’m watching you," he says. “That's all you need to know, Mia. That, and if you put so much as a toe out of line, you’re going to answer to me.”
“Your cover is blown, dude, just admit it. What are you? FBI? Mafia? CIA? What family are you working for? If I call my father, is he going to know exactly who you are?”
“If you call your father, he’ll have you taken back to Italy before you can say the word ecstasy,” he growls. “You know that as well as I do.”
“So he did send you. Let me guess. You’re like a bodyguard.”
“I’m not like a bodyguard. I am one. He wanted you to have a normal life, Mia. So I was sent to look out for you at a distance.”
"Well, you've done an awesome fucking job carrying out his wishes, haven't you, asshole," I snap. I am pissed. I like to forget about the mafia side of my life as much as possible, but this douchebag just broke my door down, and now he’s messing with my mind.
“I wasn’t in any danger. You didn’t need to come charging in here like a bull. You came and fucked up my place because I was licking some guy’s… tip?”
His eyes flare at me. There’s jealousy there. I wasn’t wrong. This guy wants what every guy wants: my body. Apparently, being employed by my father has given him some sense of entitlement. He’s hot, but being hot isn't enough for me to let him walk into my life and fuck it all up.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I order. “And don't come back.”
“Don’t come back?” He lifts a dark brow at me. “You think you can speak to me that way?”
“I do. Because you’re a pawn in my father’s game. I’m the queen.”
He laughs at me. Not an amused laugh, a mocking laugh. The kind of laugh that grown men give little girls who think they’re too big for their britches. He’s not taking me seriously. He thinks he’s in control because he has my father’s authority behind him. So do I.
“You need a lesson in respect, Mia.”
The way he says my name is intimate, like he knows me. I wonder how long he has been watching me. How much he has seen. There’s equipment which allows people to see through walls. And his cameras are probably all over my apartment.
I feel a strange sense of violation, arousal, and annoyance. Oh, and attraction. So much fucking attraction. I’ve never hated anybody this much. I’ve also never… no, I can’t even think that word.
“You’re the one who needs a lesson in respect,” I say, but my voice is not strong. It wavers with what I hope isn’t fear. Am I afraid of him? I probably should be. My father’s men are killers. “You’re here to protect me, not threaten me.”
“The way you act, little girl, you need protection from yourself more than anybody else.”
I love the way he speaks. His accent flows in fits and starts. Sometimes Bostonian, sometimes Italian. The combination is aurally startling. As is he.
He crosses the distance between us with the lithe movement of a big cat, and reaches for me, his big hand wrapping around my upper arm. His touch sends liquid fire flashing through my body, right to the core of me. I have to crane my head to look up at him, and when I do, I am caught in his intensity. This is a broken man. I can feel it in his gaze. This is no honorable soldier. He’s too powerful to be on guard duty. My father wouldn’t waste a man like him as a babysitter. He has high rank written all over him. If he’s here, it’s because he’s been a bad boy.
“What did you do wrong?”
The question makes him jerk his head back, then he swoops down and captures my lips in a kiss. His hands cup my face. His lips move against mine with a dominant insistence until my own lips part and our kiss deepens. I have kissed and been kissed before, but not like this. Not by a man with this much contained rage. Not against me. Against the world. Against himself, maybe. He holds me like I am precious, but he kisses me like I am made for his use.
“I’ve been waiting to do that for a long time,” h
e purrs when he releases me, head dizzy, knees weak.
How long has this sexy monster watched me and waited for an opportunity to come to me? His lips hover near mine, threatening to kiss me again and drive me even more mad with sudden lust.
Whatever is happening between us shouldn’t be happening. I know that. I don’t even know him. Moments ago I didn’t have the slightest idea he even existed and now I feel almost as though I wouldn’t know what life was like without him. This is passion as I have never known it before. It is intense. It is immediate. It is instant love. Dammit. I promised myself I wouldn’t think that.
“About that lesson,” he says, his hand traveling from my cheek, to the nape of my neck, down my spine and then to cup my ass. His hand flexes and kneads me in that most sensitive place, his fingers edging toward the crevice between my cheeks.
I breathe in.
His palm leaves my body but returns a moment later in a hard swat. Heat flares across my skin and sinks deep inside me, finding a secret part I didn’t know I had, something that sits low in my body and glows with the energy his hand imparts.
“Christ,” I swear.
He spanks me again, catching the other cheek, evening the heat and increasing the sting. Every slap jolts me against his body. He is hard, like a sexy living statue made of muscle.
“He won’t help you,” he purrs down at me. “You’re going to be a good girl for me, aren’t you, Mia. You’re going to make it easy to keep you safe.”
I am not going to make it easy on him. I’m going to make it harder. It hard.
If he thinks he can seduce me and turn me into a good girl, he’s wrong. If he thinks he can seduce me, he’s right. I came to America to be my own woman, and that includes taking hot guys to bed if I want. And I do want. I want badly.
He takes me by the hand and draws me toward the bedroom. I guess he knows where it is. I follow, willingly.
I’m going to fuck a total stranger. I’m going to give my body to my bodyguard. There’s a swing in my hips which is enhanced by the heat in my ass. I follow him, lured by the draw of his animal magnetism.
I don’t even know his name. It doesn’t matter.
He tugs on my hand and sends me tumbling face down onto the bed. I turn back over to look at him. He’s standing over me, his hands on his belt. I watch, biting my lower lip as he undresses, sliding the belt out of the loops.
“Turn over.”
“What?”
He makes a circling motion with his finger. “Turn over.”
“Uhm, why?”
“Over,” he repeats, as if that single word should be enough to command my obedience.
I find myself doing as he wishes. He is a force of nature, an authority which will not be denied, and for some no doubt perverse reason, I don’t want to deny it. If he wants me from behind, I’ll let him have me from behind. I’ll let him take me upside down if it means that belt comes off and I get to feel that thick cock inside me.
I am starving for sex. I planned to come here and run wild, but the truth is I haven’t found anyone I’ve wanted to be wild with — until now.
On my stomach, I lift my ass for him, inviting him inside. My bikini bottoms won’t make much of a barrier for him, just a thin scrap of silky fabric between him and my pussy.
Whack!
His belt has left his waist, but progress, it has found my ass. I scream out in surprise, and pain, and outrage.
“What the fuck are you doing!” My hand goes back to cover my ass as I turn around to glare at him.
“Teaching you manners,” he says. “I did promise to do that, didn’t I?”
“I thought you were going to fuck me!”
“You thought a complete stranger was going to have sex with you, and your response to that was to offer yourself like a treat?” There’s a stern incredulity in his tone which acts as a warning, but one which comes far too late for me to do anything about it.
The belt lashes back and forth across my ass once, twice, three times in quick, hard succession. I scream, and he lectures.
“There’s a word for girls who behave like that, Mia, and I don’t think you want it applied to you.”
The pain in my ass is nothing compared to the humiliation coursing through me. This lawless bastard thinks I am a slut, and he doesn’t want to have sex with me. He just wants to punish me.
And punish me he does. I lose count of how many times that thick leather brands my skin. Every time it lands there’s a fresh bolt of heat and pain, and every time it leaves there is anticipation of the next time it will land.
My tormentor takes his time. He knows he will not be interrupted. There’s nobody coming to save me from him. He is the one who is supposed to save me from others.
In his hands, the belt is a devastatingly elegant method of discipline. The lashes land next to one another with painful precision, and then lay over one another in a concerto of holy-fucking-hell that hurts. I try to squirm, to turn, to hide, but there is no escaping this man’s disciplinary wrath.
“Hands away,” he says sternly when I try to cover my blazing ass in yet another attempt to avoid my fate. I can’t believe he expects me to simply obey and let him do this, but should I really be surprised? This is how things are in my world. Women are possessions. We’re supposed to do as we’re told. There’s no real freedom, only distractions from the captivity we are born into. Every stroke of the belt is reminding me that what I thought was my emancipation from the world I came from was only a temporary reprieve. Sooner or later, I will be claimed by one of the men in my father’s world, and they will want me to be pure. That is what this monster is doing. He’s not teaching me a lesson. He’s protecting my future husband’s investment.
“You are precious,” he says, inadvertently confirming my thoughts. I am precious, but not for myself. For them. I am young and beautiful, and the part of my body which is still somehow wet in spite of this shocking punishment, is what I will be traded on.
“Fuck you,” I curse, my fingers curling in the sheets. I can’t escape the heat, but I can resist the pain. I can steel myself against it. I can… “Owww!” I whine as he somehow finds a part of my cheeks as yet untouched by his leather.
“You’re going to stop hanging around with drug dealers, stop going out to clubs and parties. You’re going to go to school and you’re going to do your homework, and you’re going to graduate,” he lectures. “If I have to come here and do this every day for the next four years, I will.”
Holy fuck. I can’t imagine this happening even one more time, let alone every day I’m in college. My ass couldn’t take it, and my pride definitely couldn’t either. I am humbled beyond imagination, lying on the bed where I thought I would be deflowered, and instead punished to the point of tears and beyond. I can’t speak. All I can do is sob, and hope he is done with me soon.
The belt lashes against my ass with what turns out to be one last time, catching me low across the curves of my cheeks. The tip of the thing wraps around, leaving a last kiss of heat on the most tender part of my thigh.
“Don’t make me come back here, Mia,” he says, bending down over me. I feel his hand run briefly through my hair, and then I feel the last thing I expected to feel, a tender kiss pressed to my temple, a moment of gentle intimacy completely at odds with the rest of my experience of him. “Be a good girl now.”
Chapter 3
Enzo
This is the first time I’ve been this close to her, so close I could touch the little dimple in her cheek if I wanted to. So close, I can see the fine line of dewy hair on her forehead, the delicate widow’s peak that needs to be kissed.
I don’t deny I’m all kinds of fucked up. The jobs I do, the code I live and die by. I’ve exacted punishment from those who’ve stolen from us, those who’ve betrayed the family. I’ve killed men who threatened the livelihood of the family.
And I wouldn’t be in this fucking mess if I hadn’t let my dick lead the way. So for God’s sake, I can’t do tha
t now.
But when she turns to me, her eyes half-glazed from whatever-the-fuck she’s on, her tanned body glistening with whatever she’s slathered on to work on her tan, and her ass criss-crossed deliciously with the stripes of my belt, every nerve in my body’s on fire.
I shouldn’t have punished her. I shouldn’t have touched her. I know the signs of arousal, and I’ve just lit a fucking match. Her eyes are half-lidded, her lips parted. She braces herself on the bed, but her knees are trembling and it looks as if she’s struggling to catch her breath.
I shouldn’t walk away. I should run.
But like a damn idiot, I need to know. I want to find out. Is she aroused by punishment? I lace my belt through my loops and don’t break eye contact. If she doesn’t get the message, coming over here was a waste of time.
“Get out,” she repeats.
“Watch your mouth,” I say, taking a step closer to her. To her credit, she looks a little abashed. Good. Seems a few hard smacks of the belt have done their job.
She brings her pretty, delicate fingernails, painted bright cardinal red, to her throat, and swallows hard.
Bingo.
Christ.
Not my imagination then.
She’s never been disciplined. She’s never been spanked with a heavy palm until she came. I could fix that.
In the distance, someone shoots off fireworks over the water. The sudden boom makes Mia jump. I blink, as if coming out of a trance.
What the fuck am I doing?
I was sent here as punishment, to make amends. If Piero Russo finds out I touched her, he will fly over here from Italy and murder me with his own bare hands.
“Leave,” she says, but her icy tone’s thicker, and her cheeks are flushed pink.
I have to get myself out of her fucking apartment and get back home. The asshole isn’t a threat to her anymore. Not now.
“Behave yourself.”
I turn and leave before she can respond. I walk through her apartment, but take note of everything. A half-empty bottle of Prosecco on the counter beside a Juul and a cell phone. Notebooks, pens, and her schedule. Of course she’s gotta be playing with fire under my watch. Excellent.
