There was an open window in the library.
I lie in the massive, very comfortable bed and think about my life turned inside out and upside down, and the potential of that open window.
My father is dead. That means he won’t come looking for me. I’m safe from his influence and if I get away, I’d have a real chance of escape. I have with me almost all the things I’d have run away with—except more sensible clothes.
Part of me wants to wait until the morning. Marco saved me, and where my father has fear and brutality, he has loyalty. It’s obvious his people respect him in a way no one at the Kensington mafia ever did my father. Maybe whatever he has planned wouldn’t be so bad?
We’ll talk about tomorrow in the morning.
I’ve been fobbed off.
Do you think this was what it was like for my mother at first? Maybe my father was charming and kind before he got bored of her. Perhaps he even promised marriage, and my mother thought he would eventually make an honest woman of her. He probably didn’t start off with, You’ll be nothing to me and your daughter will be my servant.
Marco isn’t like that. He wants to take care of you, a voice whispers in my head.
Sure, his attention gave me the confidence to finally decide to enact my escape plan, but that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. He is still a deadly mafia kingpin.
And there’s that other voice.
You don’t deserve a man like him. You won’t be able to keep the interest of a gorgeous, powerful, wealthy kingpin for long. He’ll get bored of you.
I want to believe the affection in Marco’s eyes, the feeling of rightness when I was held in his arms. The inclination of my heart to trust him, fall asleep, and enjoy his attention for as long as I have it. But I don’t want my heart broken when he inevitably decides I’m not enough, as everyone else thinks.
Perhaps he doesn’t want you at all. Maybe you’re a mafia bargaining chip.
There’s no way I’m staying as his little hostage.
I crawl out of bed before I can change my mind. I’ll get out, run to a road. It didn’t work when I tried it from my father’s house, but he’s gone.
I silently try the door handle. Unlocked.
The night air is cool, and there’s moonlight spilling silver onto the long passageway. I noted the route down to the library. All I have to do is not get caught.
I take a shaky breath and one step forward. I can do this.
No klaxon sounds. No trap goes off. Another, and another, on silent feet.
At the end of the corridor, I hear his deep voice. “Felicity.”
Oh god. The kingpin.
I turn, my body already trembling. He stands outside a now-open door opposite the one I came from, partially hidden by shadows. He’s shirtless. I can make out only the outline of his physique from this distance and in the white moonlight, since he’s half hidden by the shadows. But I can see muscles and a crisscross of scars.
“I told you, we’ll discuss this in the morning. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Provide whatever you want. Be it cakes or books or freedom.”
He seems sincere, and yet I take a tentative step backwards. The kingpin is huge. Muscled. Strong, yes, but I bet he’s not fast. And I have a massive advantage. He’ll assume I’m going for the front door and there’s easily enough space for me to turn back to the library on noiseless bare feet.
I’m good at being quiet and quick. Lots of practice.
“Go back to bed, cara.” The command reverberates through me.
I nearly do it. There’s a battle of wills going on up and down forty feet of corridor shrouded in darkness.
That rough tone. The stark beauty of his unclothed but scarred body. I’m a bit scared, yes, but there’s also another emotion bubbling up.
I’m excited. I shake my head.
“That’s the game you want to play, is it?” he purrs.
I take another step away. I think I can make it to the window. I must. Because while adrenaline is pulsing in my blood, right from my heart to every extremity, and throbbing at my core, I can’t lose.
“Try then. But if I catch you, you’ll be mine.”
His.
I run.
I’ve taken off before I can think through the consequences. His heavy thudding strides follow. Exhilaration races through me. Running, my legs and arms moving, alive after so many years of stasis.
He was offering something normal, to talk about the future in the morning. But I couldn’t settle and now all his attention is on me as I try to escape. I screech around the corner of the corridor and throw myself into the open hallway, the smooth white walls and occasional minimalist painting reflecting moonlight.
My muscles burn with the effort of running.
And oh does it feel good. I check over my shoulder and his eyes are trained on me, intent as a predator. He’s focused. I whip my head back around. He’s chasing after me like he wants me, like that kiss meant something and he won’t let me go.
I should be tired after waking in the middle of the night, but I’m more energised than I’ve been in my life as I sprint down across and take the stairs two at a time. I can hear him behind me, but not close enough to see, I’m pretty sure.
That’s not disappointment. It’s not.
I’m getting out of here.
I round the corner at the bottom of the stairs and slow, trying to control my breathing, which is fast and from the whole of my lungs, my chest heaving, throat on fire. But I make my bouncing steps light on the cold marble flooring.
The sound of him coming after me doesn’t pause. I grin. I’ve outfoxed him. I glance back, confident that—
He’s there. Right behind me. I shriek with fright and accelerate. I’m really sprinting now.
Half of my heart wants to escape. It’s beating oxygenated blood around my limbs and urging me faster and onwards. It’s reminding me why I was trying to leave the mafia life in the first place. That part of me is trying to get away and has real panic at the thought of being caught.
But the other half… Oh, the other half wants to run too. But that section of my heart is gleeful. Looking for places to slow or trip. Urging me to look behind again and check he’s following, and see the intent look on his face. This part of my heart delights that he wants me so much. Enough that he’ll chase me through his house in the dead of night.
This part of my heart wants to be caught.
His promise. I’ll be his. That ought to be terrifying, by all rights, but it’s not. I need to own and be owned. I crave the intensity and the struggle, the proof that he’ll overcome my every objection, even as my feet slap painfully on the floor.
To be owned by him wouldn’t be slavery as it was with my father. No, his mafia loves him as their leader, that is clear. If I were owned by him, I’d be an indulged pet, given every best titbit and snuggled. Protected.
It couldn’t last. I know that, and I want freedom more, even if I’ll be alone again. Scotland is the only option.
I can hear him and my fogged brain thinks I can smell his sweat and feel his heat. He’s a force of nature.
My lungs are close to bursting with the unfamiliar effort of running and I’m heaving in air, panting with my whole chest. My knees hurt with the force juddering up through them with every stride, cracking up my bones. Every muscle in my body is engaged.
There. I recognise the entrance to the library at the end of the corridor and my mind, seeing freedom is possible, pushes my legs faster. I half expect him to pounce as I throw the door open in front of me like the melodramatic arrival of a queen, but no. He’s at my heels though, his hard breathing close.
This is one of those moments in a film where the plucky heroine gets out, despite insurmountable odds. There’s an epic soundtrack that’s swelling to a crescendo. I’m going to dive through that window like Indiana Jones rolling out of a doomed temple.
The wooden floor is shiny and as I round the corner to my reading nook, I almost lose my footing, sliding to the side. Only Marco’s arm as he reaches out saves me from crashing into the bookshelf, but I manage to evade being grasped, and then—
The window is closed.
The two halves of my heart squeeze together.
I lunge for it anyway, across the big window seat, expecting to feel Marco’s big body smash into me as I yank the handle and fall onto the cushions. It doesn’t budge. Locked.
Of course it is.
Marco doesn’t land on top of me as I expect, and my heart stutters. He doesn’t need to.
I’m caught.
I turn slowly, creeping onto my knees and stare at his bare chest. He’s standing at the edge of the window seat. Suddenly I could throw up, I’m so sick with regret. I’ll deserve this punishment. I’ll take it bravely, I promise myself.
I shouldn’t have run. Stupid.
“Look at me.” His voice is implacable. This isn’t a request.
Miserably, I raise my eyes at a snail’s pace. What revenge will he take? I can’t cope with any more pain. I curl into myself even as I’m compelled to look at his face. An angry mob boss is a terrifying creature.
I hesitate at his neck. I don’t want to find anger where there used to be affection.
But when I meet his gaze, in his face isn’t fury or disappointment. Just understanding and patience. Possessiveness and… love?
All my fears melt away like ice in a hot drink.
“Say no, cara,” he states. “Say no, clear and loud, if you don’t want to be mine.”
I open my mouth but sound doesn’t come out. I even form the word, but my tongue sticks to the top of my mouth.
He won, fair and square. He promised not to harm me. He gave reasonable demands—for a mafioso.
I accepted the risk when I ran, so although he’s telling me I could refuse, I don’t. I swallow, and his gaze flicks down to my neck.
He nods, taking my silence for acceptance, which it honestly is, and sinks down onto the cushions of the window seat.
“So beautiful. I’m going to spoil you,” he murmurs as he pulls me into his lap and leans back into the cushions. Too confused to struggle, I let myself rest on him and he hums with contentment. While I’m still breathing heavily, my chest tight, he’s utterly calm.
That wasn’t even a competition. He could have snatched me up at any point, I realise, but he let me come down to see for myself that he’d already thought to bar my exit.
“Why did you run from me?” His hands are clamps on my side and back and when I peek up his stare is uncompromising but somehow kind.
Why did I run? Because of my whole life. This isn’t one or two sentences, but I suppose it boils down to this. “I was scared. Why did you chase me?”
“You’d have hurt your feet on the gravel. Why were you scared?”
Because I didn’t plan for this to happen, and I don’t know what to make of this connection between us. But I don’t think he’ll accept that, because that wasn’t the cause of the fear. Not really. And the relentlessness of his hold and the quiet patience as he waits informs me he’s not going to be satisfied until I’ve confessed all.
So I do. It pours out of me.
All that has happened. My mother. My father. The things I’ve seen. Why I want to go to Scotland. He listens and strokes my back, with a thunderous rumble when I tell him something particularly unpleasant. He demands that I show him each scar, and I try to remember which one is which. He strokes his palm over the old hurts. It shouldn’t do anything, but it does, wiping away the residual, lingering pain. Those stories are mostly associated with the escape plans that didn’t work, and his eyes are glacial. But when I tell him about the one that nearly did, oh, that’s different. There’s a gleam in his summer-sky eyes then, and when I press my cheek to his stubbled one, I can feel his smile.
He nods and chuckles and murmurs, “I knew it. So clever,” as I explain how I stole from my father and was going to get away. He wants to know every detail, and I swear it sounds like he’s proud of me. The low purr of approval from his chest relaxes me more than any tea, cake, or novel I’ve experienced.
I find myself soaking up his warm strength and breathing in his scent. Not the ocean, exactly. It’s been a long day. Night. Whatever.
He smells like sweat on a warm summer breeze, fresh air and musk and… something male. When I slump down, his chest is warm and solid, even as his chest hair tickles my nose and is the tiniest bit abrasive.
We lapse into silence and I start to look at my captor in the moonlight. Every part of him is gorgeous and different to what I feel on my own body. Where I’m slight and podgy, he’s firm and muscled. And those scars. His chest and arms are covered with marks that indicate the brutal life he’s led. And yet he’s holding me with so much tender care. He’s strong.
Need rises like a cake cooking low in my belly.
He chased me. Snippets come back. The pounding of my heart and our feet. The flare of excitement and the thrill. The inevitability of him catching me.
He still hasn’t taken anything and the fuzzy-edged images of what he might want from me pucker my nipples under my camisole even as they sharpen in my mind’s eye. The details get clearer. His hand in my hair, urging my mouth onto his cock as I watch his light blue eyes darken with lust. A flash of his dark stubble as I turn to see him as he takes me from behind on my hands and knees.
I want that.
“All your planning. It seems a pity to lose it entirely. Anticlimactic. You want to go to Scotland in the morning?” he asks eventually.
I hesitate. Surely I do. I don’t want to be his, like he said. I don’t want to be owned and petted and coddled. I’ll be okay up in cold Scotland, on my own. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
Nodding is harder than it should be. It feels like this is the end of our conversation, but I can’t let it finish.
“I thought…” Did he not mean it? About me being his?
“What is it?” He presses a kiss on the top of my head.
I roll words around my brain like marbles.
“I thought you’d…” I thought he’d hold me down and take my virginity, that’s what I thought. “Do whatever you wanted to me. Because you said I’m yours.” Just that idea makes heat bloom again between my legs and I wriggle in his lap, pressing my thighs together.
This doesn’t mean I trust him. How can I? I know how these mafia bosses work. It’s not real without a marriage. He’ll tire of me. I’m very tiresome.
But in the meantime, maybe I can allow myself to give in, and he’ll make me feel good.
“Exactly,” he says, low and rough. “I cherish what’s mine. I wouldn’t hurt you or force you. When I slip into your tight pussy you’ll be soaking wet and begging me.”
Oh…
Oh my. Yes, I’m really not far from begging.
“You want that possession. To be owned.” It’s not a question. He’s seen inside me and knows.
A delicious shiver goes down my back. I hide my face in his chest as I nod. Yes. I want the comfort of decisions made for me, to be looked after and cosseted. It’s been so long that I’ve been alone with every burden.
“Have I disappointed you?”
My throat seizes up. “Maybe.”
“Well,” he murmurs. “We can’t have that now, can we?”
