by M. Robinson
Because even villains deserved a happily ever after.
* * *
Thank you for reading IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR!
Want to read Arlo and Galina’s book?
I was a “fixer” for the Ruin—a syndicate for the Bratva, Cosa Nostra, Cartel, and any other organized crime faction that dealt in the darker, crueler aspects of humanity.
And then I saw her. She was a fragile little thing who tried to be strong. But I could tell she’d seen too much horror in the world, too much of the ugly within people. I should have stayed away. I’d only bring her farther down into the darkness.
One-click COLD HEATED BASTARD now >
Carol of the Bells
Maria Luis
Chapter One
Laela
Glittering chandeliers hang from the ceiling and flames flicker in the grand stone fireplace to my left, but not even the elaborate décor of the Morellis’ dining room can disguise the uncomfortable reality of tonight’s Christmas gala.
My name is a poison dripping from everyone’s tongue.
I set the champagne flute down on the bar a little too hard. “Another, please.”
The bartender drops his gaze to the empty glass—my third in forty minutes—and clears his throat. “Maybe some water, Miss Donna? You look a little . . . unsteady.”
I’m only unsteady because my Louboutins are currently murdering my feet.
Since I’d rather take a five-inch heel to the jugular than give New York’s finest another reason to whisper my name, I force a saccharine smile that hopefully conceals my tendency to bite first and ask questions later. “Water is perfect, thanks.”
Appeased, the bartender pushes a glass across the bar. “Have a good night.”
That’s unlikely.
With a nodded thank-you, I turn and scan the crowd over the crystal rim. Those with the backbone to acknowledge my presence only do so long enough to make sure that I feel the sting when they purposely look away. The rest are spineless bastards who would have eagerly crawled at my feet only three months ago, before—
Well, before.
I drain the glass like it’s a hell of a lot stronger than water and abandon it on the bar. Twenty more minutes and I’ll have fulfilled my promise to Lucian to stay for a full hour.
You can’t hide forever, he’d scrawled on my invitation.
I’m not hiding—a Donna never hides—but as I face off against a sea of men in tuxedo suits and women in expensive gowns, none of whom bother to draw me into conversation, all I feel is the overwhelming urge to ditch my death-trap heels and make a run for it. On reflex, I sink my fingers into the fabric of my floor-length gown, hiking up the heavy velvet just far enough that I can edge toward the door without tripping over my feet.
I’m not a coward.
I am not my father.
But this . . . God, I can’t do this. I need to go, right now, before any of them see that stone-cold Laela Donna isn’t so very stone-cold after all.
Black velvet spills over my fingers as I duck my head and hasten toward the Morellis’ ballroom. Warmth from the lit candelabras slicks down my nape. More than once, I’m forced to smile prettily at people who were once regular guests at our BellaDonna hotels. They don’t smile back. Instead, their eyes narrow like I’m something worse than the dirt beneath their shoes, and I’m not even surprised when they all turn around to present me with their backs.
Hurt pricks my heart.
Gritting my teeth against the vulnerability, I spy the double doors that lead out of the mansion. Escape is in sight. Finally. Skirting between partygoers, I offer curt apologies that go completely unacknowledged. But just before I can make it to freedom, I stutter to a pitched halt like a pair of invisible hands have sunk their claws in my spine.
Tentatively, I step forward.
The fabric around my midsection pulls tight.
Gathering more material, I jerk hard on the train.
The strapless top slips down, and—
“Oh, God,” I gasp, frantically grabbing at the lowered neckline with white-knuckled fingers. I turn to identify the culprit, expecting to see a stray piece of furniture holding me back or maybe even Lucian himself refusing to let me leave until I’ve stayed the full hour as promised.
A butter-soft, black leather shoe pins me in place.
Indignation eviscerates all lingering hurt. I lower my free hand to my thighs and give a sharp tug on the velvet. That leather shoe only grinds down harder, crushing the expensive velvet and leaving no room for misinterpretation.
I’ve been trapped on purpose.
Slowly, as if I have all the time in the world, I lift my gaze past long, muscled legs encased in tailored black slacks. The gleam of a belt buckle is the first sign that this man—whoever the hell he is—didn’t adhere to the black-tie dress code. His jacket is casually unbuttoned, the matching black dress shirt beneath hugging a ridiculously broad chest. His jaw is square, firm. Chiseled with the sort of unmistakable artistry that promises a face worthy of the gods, and his doesn’t disappoint.
A full, sensual mouth made for sin. The straight bridge of a nose with nostrils that flare, ever so slightly, like he’s impatient for me to look him in the eye. Curious though I am about the color—blue, maybe, or as pitch black as the fabric molded to his solid frame—I avoid his gaze and take in the brown hair that’s been carelessly slicked back, as if he only just tamed the strands with his fingers. Flickering candlelight casts warmth and shadow across the bones of a face that could bring even the most stiff-backed woman down to her knees.
Beneath my velvet choker, my pulse skips a perilous beat.
Then I meet his gaze, and it’s not the tight press of bodies that suddenly makes it hard to breathe. His eyes are the deepest, richest cognac. So deep a hue that they appear almost brown. They pin me in place as effectively as his shoe on my velvet train, and the hair on my nape rises like I’ve been confronted with a predator. Candlelight illuminates the flecks of gold in his irises as his stare drops boldly to where I still grip my neckline.
One inch.
Just one more inch and he, along with every other guest, will see a lot more of me than anyone has in years. Temptation licks through my veins like the sweetest poison. When was the last time I allowed myself to experience even the slightest bit of attraction to a man? When was the last time I walked away from my computer long enough to feel anything at all? I hate that the answer is buried in my heart like a brand.
Eighteen months, one week, and three days.
Guglielmo Donna might be rotting away behind bars but I’m the one chained down and gasping for life.
Self-preservation demands that I retreat to the familiar, the way that I’ve done since Dad’s sentencing three months ago. But something about this man compels me to hold my ground . . . as if we’ve been here before. The challenge glittering in his rich gaze promises the sort of battle that ends with us both claiming victory, naked and sweaty and tangled in sheets that smell like sex.
I tilt my head. “Can’t bear the thought of me leaving?”
Those cognac eyes flicker down the length of me in a lightning-quick glance that alights goose bumps to my flesh. Though his mouth doesn’t so much as twitch with appreciation, the tic of a muscle in his jaw tells an entirely different story. Silently, I watch him brush his suit jacket aside and burrow his fingers in the front pocket of his slacks.
In a voice like gravel, he murmurs, “Come here, Miss Donna.”
For eighteen months, one week, and three days, I’ve spent more hours hunched over my laptop than I have at home in my bed. It became an obsession, the need to prove my father’s innocence. With my younger sister plastered to my side, our fingers tangled together in shared misery, we’d watched heartbreak crease his face just before Reid Paxton—FBI asshole and resident pit bull—settled a hand on Dad’s shoulder to shove him up the metal stairs to the plane that would return him to Louisiana for his arraignment. That sort of pain couldn’t be
fabricated.
It was real.
Until it became clear that it was all very much a lie.
I stopped breaking my spine for others the day I took my father’s place as President of BellaDonna Hotels & Resorts. And while this man might have a face that could make an angel weep, there’s not a chance in hell that I’ll start jumping to attention just because he gave an order. Been there, done that. I’ll forever bear the scars to prove that I learned my lesson the hard way.
“Don’t tell me,” I say with heavy sarcasm, “that this is where I’m meant to drop to my knees and do whatever you tell me.”
He never takes his eyes off mine. “You make that offer to every stranger you meet?”
“You’re my first. Chalk it up to me feeling the Christmas spirit.”
“I get the feeling, Miss Donna, that you’re a gift most would die to unwrap.”
My smile is slow, cunning. “Only if you’re eager to enjoy the taste of coal, Mr. . . .?”
“Subtle.”
His faintly amused tone at my obvious fishing makes my cheeks burn. Palm to my neckline, I search the crowd for Lucian and spot him on the far side of the room with his arm slung protectively around Elaine Constantine. The Donnas aren’t old New York—not in the way of the Rockefellers or Astors—but power is a curse that we’ve been plagued with since my grandfather immigrated to the States in the late seventies.
Once upon a time, I would have known every person attending this party.
And once upon a time, it only would have taken a snap of my fingers to know everything there is to know about this man, from his shoe size to his first job to which way his dick hangs.
These days, I’m forced to settle for bluntness and hope it’s returned in kind. “I don’t know you.”
Though he doesn’t lift his foot off my gown, he shifts his big frame in a way that makes him appear that much larger, that much more . . . intimidating. Something niggles at the back of my head, a memory that’s there and gone again before I can clasp it with both hands and pull at the individual threads.
“Without a little mystery,” he drawls, the challenge in his gaze sparking fire, “you might walk away and never look back.”
“That’s not possible.”
“You sound pretty confident about that.”
Pointedly, I glance down at his foot. “You’ve captured me.”
“Temporary imprisonment,” is his silky rejoinder.
My traitorous breath hitches, and I feel myself sway forward as if he’s physically wrapped a hand around my throat and pulled me close. Nothing about him screams New York—not the suit that fits him to perfection but has clearly been worn through, time and again, and definitely not the slight accent that softens his consonants and elongates his vowels. A displaced Southerner, maybe. The fact that he approached me when every other guest has avoided me like the plague makes him either the dumbest man alive or the smartest.
If Guglielmo Donna taught me anything, it’s to not trust silver-tongued devils.
Still, I find myself more than willing to play the game. “And if I do as you say?”
His gaze darkens, the flecks of gold nearly consumed by shadow. His right hand leaves his pocket and I watch, heart pounding wildly, as he drags the pad of his thumb across his full bottom lip. It’s not meant to be seductive, I don’t think. More like a restless tic that he can’t quite suppress. When he lowers his arm, it’s to hold out his hand for me to take.
“Be brave,” he husks, “and find out.”
If Stassi could see me now, my sister would tell me to run.
Nothing in our lives has gone according to plan in the last year and a half. We’ve clung like beggars to dwindling hope, desperate to keep BellaDonna afloat after years of mismanagement. The money is all but gone, our reputation shredded to ribbons. Each hotel feels like another anchor, the combined weight enough to drag us so far beneath the ocean’s surface that we have no choice but to drown. Dad’s guilty verdict only sealed our fate.
After all this time hustling in the shadows, I’ve forgotten how it feels to have a man caress my skin and sigh my name.
I’ve forgotten how to live because I’m too busy just trying to survive.
“Give me a name.” Touching my fingers to the velvet necklace cinched around my throat, I don’t miss the way his steel gaze tracks the movement. “Make it up, if you want. I don’t care.”
The chime of crystal glassware and soft chatter fills the space between us. Then, gruffly, “You should.”
“Care?” I echo, stepping forward.
If I thought he was a gentleman, the next words out of his mouth are anything but: “Any name that I give you will be a lie. I’ll bend you over my knee and make you scream when you come, and I still won’t be the man you’re crying out for—because he doesn’t exist.”
“You’re assuming that I’ll let you fuck me.”
He doesn’t pull back his hand. His fingers are long and brutally elegant, his palm big enough to cup my breast. He catches the direction of my gaze, and draws my attention back to his face with a rasp of my name—Laela.
Off his lips, in that soft Southern drawl, the sound of it sends a shiver of desire running down my spine.
“You wouldn’t still be here if you weren’t tempted,” he says quietly.
Damn him for being right.
I clutch velvet in both fists and take another step toward him. This close, it’s impossible not to notice his towering height. For once, I’m not forced to look down. The top of my head nearly reaches his chin and I allow myself the luxury of tipping my head back so that I can peer up into his eyes, which sweep over my throat like he’s already imagining claiming my pulse with his lips.
A kiss that I’ll feel all the way down to my toes.
“Tell me something, sir.”
Beneath the clinking glassware and eager chatter, I hear the rumble of a masculine growl at the pointed moniker. The tension on my gown loosens as he meets me halfway, taking his foot off my train to enter my space and fill my lungs with the scent of male arrogance and fresh pine. His fingers curl beneath my chin, his thumb hovering just over my lips. “Say it.”
I wrap my fingers around his wrist. “Were you invited tonight?”
A slight pause, and then, “No.”
“Did you come here for me?”
The question is soft but laced with steel. He gives no outward reaction of having heard me, but then his thumb grazes my lip, back and forth, like he’s trying to commit the brief touch to memory.
It feels like a confession.
“Yes.”
Bitten out from behind clenched teeth, the gritty admission has me swallowing hard.
He could easily be a stalker. Maybe even a member of the press hoping to catch me in a compromising position before airing out all my dirty laundry in tomorrow’s newspaper. I’m not one to make rash decisions. Every action has a direct consequence. And, unlike my father, who gave up the names of his friends and longtime associates to escape a fate behind bars, I don’t believe that I’m above the law.
For once in my life, I want to be reckless.
My thumb skates over the stranger’s wrist, sweeping over hair-dusted skin until I stall over his thundering pulse. There’s no way that I wouldn’t remember a face like his, and yet . . . “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
The air crackles with anticipation as he seems to carefully consider my question. Clearly, I’m not the only one who isn’t naturally rash or impulsive. Wanting to push him, I utter a single word that I suspect will crawl under his skin: “Sir?”
Tension radiates off him in waves, and the thumb on my lower lip tugs down like he can envision me beneath him, gasping and clawing at his back, even while we stand in the middle of a ballroom with the upper crust of New York society all around us.
I feel his want.
I feel his need.
“Once,” he growls, his gaze hot on mine. “We’ve met once.”
“Did I like y
ou?”
His laugh is low and dark. “You hated me on sight.”
I drag in a sharp breath at his honesty. “Is this revenge, then?”
“No,” comes his gravel-pitch answer. His touch leaves my chin to trace the slope of my neck before cupping the base of my head, his fingers sinking into the heavy weight of my updo. “It’s me making the biggest mistake of my fucking life, but I’ll be damned if I walk away from you now.”
Then he pulls me close and his lips crash down over mine.
Chapter Two
Reid
Laela Donna will be the fucking death of me.
Eighteen months ago, I stared into her whiskey-dark eyes and felt something foreign hammer to life in my chest. Possession. Recognition. Followed swiftly by the sting of regret. She’d taken one glance at my badge and recoiled, the soft expression on her beautiful face shattering as her spine stretched with iron and her mouth flattened in displeasure. And my heart—the damned thing that I could have sworn had died years ago—ached with bitter disappointment.
I put Guglielmo Donna in handcuffs five minutes later.
Forced him onto a plane at JFK an hour after that.
I’d felt her furious gaze like a rusty knife in the back as I climbed the rickety metal rungs behind her father, and there’d been no denying my swift rise of curiosity when her name appeared in my inbox a week later. The accusations laid out in her email were sharp enough to draw blood. I shouldn’t have responded. Not then, not ever. Eighteen months, and not a single day has passed that I’ve forgotten how the daughter of a notorious crime boss makes me wants to break all the rules.
And now I have.
My fingers crush her firelit hair as I drag my lips over hers. She gasps into my mouth and, like a ruthless bastard, I take advantage of her surprise and devour her whole. I sweep my tongue into her mouth and claim her passion for my own, give a deliberate nip of my teeth to chase away all shadow of doubt. Cupping the base of her skull in my palms, I take her mouth with a fury that sends sensation rippling dangerously over my skin. How many times have I envisioned her in my arms? How many goddamn times have I wrapped a hand around my hard-on, darkness as my only witness, and cursed myself for fantasizing about a woman who blames me for tearing apart her family?
