Owned by the Mob Boss Page 15
He sits up with a sigh, moving his finger around the edge of the glass like he always does. His shirt is untucked and unbuttoned to his chest, beads of sweat sliding down to his pectorals.
The emotion is so plain on his face. It’s strange to see. I almost want him to go back to being a cold robot. Terminator is at least preferable to this Eeyore shit. But then again, that isn’t exactly fair. Eeyore, as far as I can remember, never looked like he wanted to kill somebody.
“Have you eaten anything tonight?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Just this.” He raises the glass.
“How nourishing,” I joke. “Well, where’s Ashley? I’ll get her to whip us something up.”
“I gave her the day off. She has an appointment.”
The cogs in my head turn. Ashley gets away with far more than I’d expect a Bratva boss to allow. But I keep my suspicions hidden.
“I’ll make something, then,” I say. “But I’m not having you sink into this … into whatever this is. Hasn’t anybody ever told you that your moods are contagious? You don’t wanna push me back to my goth phase, believe me.”
That gets a slight smile, but it’s gone as quickly as it appears. “Perhaps I want to see you all in black,” he murmurs, still staring off at nothingness.
“Come on.” Maybe it is my nursing instinct, but I find myself next to him, my hand on his arm. “You can’t just wallow all night. It’s unattractive.”
“Really?” He turns to me. “Do you find me ugly now, Camille?”
I shift my hand so that I’m clutching onto his fingers. He tightens his fist powerfully, trapping me.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “You do know how creepy this is, right? It’s like walking onto the set of a horror movie, and not a good one, either. A fucking trashy horror movie.”
He smiles weirdly, and then sits up suddenly. “I have something to show you,” he says. “Follow me.” He strides from the room, leaving me little choice but to go after him.
“You don’t have to be so mysterious all the time, you know!” I call ahead as I hurry to catch up to him. I let out a shuddering breath when he wraps his arm around me, guiding me up the stairs.
It isn’t that I think he’s going to initiate sex. He’s holding me differently, almost caringly, and he doesn’t lead me toward his bedroom. Instead, he takes me to a suite of rooms at the rear of the mansion. I have never had reason to venture to this wing. This place really is super-villain-level huge.
He stops outside the door, waving a hand. “Take a look,” he says.
“Has anybody ever told you you’re a little bossy?”
His smile is wider this time. His eyes roam over me with something like affection. “You have, many times, and yet somehow I am not tired of hearing it. Go on, Camille.”
There is a weird sort of eagerness in his voice. For a brief moment, he’s like a little kid showing a parent a picture he drew in class. But then his Bratva mask slips back into place. I sigh and turn to look at what he’s showing me.
My breath catches when I enter the room.
A large desk sits in the corner with a brand-new computer and a stack of notebooks and fancy-looking pens. A corkboard rests against the opposite wall with anatomy drawings pinned to it, and right beside that sits a box overflowing with nursing textbooks.
It’s a study room, all for me.
“Erik …”
I turn to him, hands at my chest. My heart pounds and I feel silly tears fill my eyes. The tenderness is so unexpected.
Forget hot and cold; this is frigid versus the temperature of the sun.
His proud smile finishes the job. Warm tears slide down my cheeks.
“What is it?” he asks.
I throw my arms around his shoulders. “It’s just the nicest thing anybody has ever done for me,” I whisper honestly. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”
He lets out a relieved breath. “Good. I’m glad. But we are not done.”
I pause at the full-scale model of the human body. I know how much these things cost from nursing class. He really has spared no expense.
“No?”
We are holding hands as we walk down the hallway. Suddenly, I am giddy. I feel like a damn teenager on prom night. Erik pushes the door open and gestures at the wide, empty room.
This one stumps me. “I don’t get it,” I say after a moment.
“A nursery,” he whispers, avoiding my gaze. “I thought I would leave the decorating up to you, though. I would not even know where to start.”
My belly drops. It’s like we’re no longer the same people, the quid pro quo Erik and Camille who started on this insane journey.
“I have a few ideas,” I manage to say through the knot in my throat.
He nods briskly, as though wanting to leap off the emotional train before it starts chugging too fast. He spins on his heel and paces down the hallway.
“Good,” he says. “Now we will eat.”
“‘Now we will eat,’” I mimic, giggling as I wipe my cheeks. “Sometimes I feel like you’re rehearsing for Hamlet, the way you speak.”
He jabs me playfully in the side. “Let’s hope this does not end with a poisoned blade.”
“Ah, there’s the cheerful Erik I’ve come to …”
I pause.
I was about to say ‘come to love so much.’ What the hell? I need to get a grip or next I’ll be sending him a fucking singing telegram.
Shuddering, I push past him into the kitchen, not daring to meet his gaze. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him lift an eyebrow.
But he says nothing.
“Allow me to present my award-winning grilled cheese.”
I lay the plates down on the table and drop into my seat. The night is warm, so we are eating on the balcony. The sky is clear and the moon is full. It couldn’t be a more romantic scene if we’d rehearsed it.
“You might want to tell Ashley to look for a new job,” I brag sarcastically with a smile, pouring him a glass of wine.
“I will never complain when my woman cooks me a meal,” he says, cutting into it.
My woman. The phrase flutters hummingbird-like around my head. Is that what I am now? The feeling that the two of us have crossed some sort of threshold resurfaces.
“Thoughts?” I ask, when he has taken his first bite.
“The most delicious meal I have ever had the pleasure of eating,” he says with a sly smile.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, sir. Be careful.”
He chuckles and takes another huge bite.
Jesus Christ, this is getting downright surreal now. Is this really the same man who sat in the shadows as I pranced around in my underwear on stage? I try to imagine him covered in blood, Bratva-boss style, as though that will fight off these warring emotions. But it has little effect.
Maybe I’m not the little wallflower all my childhood teachers assumed I was, after all.
“How are your nursing classes?” he asks. “Your duties here are not interfering with your studies too much, I hope?”
I shoot him a look. “Would you let me cut down my hours if I said they were, sir?”
He laughs. “You know the answer to that. Really, I am interested.”
He leans forward. He’s not lying. Since when does he care?
I give him a few details about what I’ve been learning in class, as well as Bethany’s sudden change of heart. “You’d like her,” I joke. “You’re both impossible to read.”
“I never claimed to be an open book,” he says good-naturedly. “I am glad your studies are going well. I mean that. You are going to be an excellent nurse.”
“Oh, Erik. You’ll give me a big head.”
“Perhaps you deserve one.”
I roll my eyes. “I feel like you want something,” I venture.
He reaches across the table and traces my palm with his finger, his eyes full of meaning.
“I always w
ant something from you. It never stops. I dream of you every night, you know.”
I almost gasp. And I almost laugh. What comes out is a mangled hybrid. What has gotten into him tonight?
Suddenly, a future with this criminal doesn’t seem so bleak. Images of us doing normal couple-type stuff—going to the movies, walking down a pier, picking out drapes, for God’s sake—jockey for attention in my mind.
Then my cell phone buzzes on the table. I glance at it: Rob.
Erik withdraws his hand. “Asking for money, I assume?”
“That’s not fair,” I mutter, the moment of tenderness passing.
“Is it not?” he grumbles. “He has been taking advantage of you his whole life. What makes you think he’ll stop now?”
Bingo. Here’s the Erik I remember.
“Think of the pressure on you right now, Camille. Nursing school, your poor sick mother, your … other responsibilities. And all he cares about is himself.”
“You’re jumping the gun!” I snap. “We don’t even know what he wants.”
He waves a hand. “Prove me wrong.”
I unlock my phone and read the text. I drop it a second later, anger flaring through me.
“Well?” he prompts.
I shake my head.
“Nice fucking job, Erik. You ruined a beautiful evening. I’ve gotta tell you, I’m surprised you even care. What I do with my money is my problem, not yours.”
“But I do care,” he says with deep emotion, stunning me. My anger drains away, leaving something soft and vulnerable in its place. “More than you know.”
“Erik …” I bite down.
“What?” he urges.
“I just … What is this? What are we?”
I sound like one of those clingy women in a reality show, trying to fill airtime with melodrama. Yet the question is genuine, Real Housewives-esque or not.
He looks at me for a long time, his hands gripping the table. I get the sense there’s a lot he wants to say, but he’s pushing it all down.
Then he moves across the table and pulls me close to him. I grab his shirt and let out a squeal, clutching tightly as his lips press firmly against mine.
It’s clear what he’s doing: using sex to change the subject. Maybe I could defend myself against that if his touch wasn’t so damn electric.
He slides his hands down my body as our tongues come together, tingles dancing all around my mouth. He grabs onto my ass and squeezes hard, lifting me off my feet and dropping me onto the table. Gasping, moaning, I wrap my legs around him and push deeper into the kiss.
“Erik,” I moan when it breaks off, not sure if I’m trying to make him stop or begging him not to.
“You are so beautiful, Camille,” he whispers, his breath moving over my cheeks.
I try to return to the subject.
We can’t go down this path, I’ll tell him. It’s too dangerous for me to crack open my chest and let him have his way with my heart. We need to be careful. We need to remember that I’m just his employee, nothing else. But his lips are too tempting, his body a familiar fire pushed against mine.
This time, I’m the one who initiates the kiss, dragging him down on top of me as the plates shatter on the floor.
I know I’m breaking my no-contact rule as we sink deeper into the kiss, but I just don’t give a shit. I’m burning up with white-hot passion. The rules can suck it.
I lie back on the table and wrap my legs around his waist, tugging him closer.
He moves solidly against me, his manhood pushing rock-hard through his pants and grazing against my thigh, my belly.
“Erik …” I whisper.
He tears my shirt over my head and unclips my bra in one fluid motion. Then he grabs my pants and yanks them so hard I almost go flying, but he holds me in place, his hand gripping my abdomen almost softly.
The cool night air pricks my naked skin, teasing my nipples hard, making my pussy seem all the hotter for the aching contrast.
“No romance, remember?” he says, grinning mischievously.
Is he trying to drive me crazy?
“Shut up,” I snap, leaning up and giving him a nice whack on the chest. “Now get those clothes off!”
He laughs throatily. I let out a strangled cry and go to war on his shirt, ripping so that buttons go flying. At this rate, he’ll have no shirts left by the time I actually have this baby.
But I don’t stop tugging and yanking until he’s naked, too.
He wraps his arms around me and shoves me up against the balcony railing. When I let out a worried cry, he looks into my eyes with an expression that tells me he’d never let me fall. It’s crazy how much I can read in him now, this phantom stranger, this criminal I’m supposed to hate. This walking frustration.
“I need you,” he whispers, voice shaking.
I believe him. He says it like he’ll die without me.
I frame his face with my hands, handsome and animalistic and somehow affectionate all at once.
“You have me,” I tell him.
Bracing my lower back with one hand, he uses the other to guide his cock to my pussy.
I open my legs wide and shift my hips toward him. The angle is awkward, but everything about us is awkward: the way we met, our budding relationship. Like everything else, we make it work.
I collapse forward and prop my hands on his shoulders as he drives up inside of me.
“Ah!” I cry.
He watches me the whole time. With each thrust, I could fall backwards down the two stories to the garden below, but he has a firm hold on me. A hurricane could smash through here and he’d never let me go.
His cock grinds right up inside me with sizzling intensity. I work my body in time with his thrusts, gouging my fingernails into his muscular skin. I bounce up and down as he pushes up harder, harder. If he let go, I’m not sure whether I’d fall to the ground below or just rocket up into the starry sky above.
I squeal when he lifts me off my feet and hooks his hands under my arms. He bounces me up and down on top of his cock, my legs flailing wildly with each thrust.
He kisses my neck, my cheek, finds my lips and then pulls back so that he can look at me again.
Putting on a show might have made me uncomfortable before, but I relish it now.
As the orgasm coils up my thighs, and moves like an earthquake through my pussy, I toss my head back and scream. I scream loudly so that the staff must hear it, so that people in the next state must hear it.
I don’t care. This is for us.
My entire body shakes. Through the haze of euphoria, I hear Erik’s moans: low, rough. He’s close to finishing.
I open my orgasm-blurred eyes and find his lips again, breaking my rule. But it feels so fucking good to break it.
“Baby,” I whisper between kisses. “Oh fuck, baby.”
“Fuck!” he roars, far louder than my scream. A warrior’s war cry. “Camille!”
“Erik!”
We yell each other’s names proudly into the watching night over and over and over.
When we have both spent ourselves, he holds me aloft for a long time, hugging me close. I lay my head on his chest and listen to his pounding heartbeat.
Emotion, real emotion, moves through me like a soothing balm. And to think I used to pretend we could really keep this all about the cash.
When I slide to the floor and reach for my clothes, I feel his eyes on me.
Is he thinking the same thing? Does he sense something developing, too?
Shit.
This just got far more complicated.
14
Camille
“You put me to shame tonight,” Bethany says with a sly grin.
I wave a hand as we walk out to the parking lot.
“I think that’s actually mathematically impossible.”
She giggles. “Bethany plus Camille equals …”
“One kick-ass team?” I offer.
Even after a few nights of this back and forth,
I find it difficult to convince myself this is the same ice-queen Bethany from before. But it’s so good to have a friend after so many years of living like I’m in a nunnery that I don’t question it too much. People change, I reason.
Hell, look at me and Erik. Oops, there he goes, jack-in-the-boxing into my consciousness again. No matter how hard I try to fight it, he keeps popping back up.
“Anyway,” Bethany says, giving me a quick hug. “Catch you tomorrow.”
I walk across the lot to where I left the sedan, but in its place is nothing. Empty parking spot. I pause for a moment, staring at it, and then mutter a curse and pull out my cell phone.
Shit.
This is just what I need: some asshole stealing Erik’s car. He wants me home right after class, but I’d planned on swinging by Mom’s place.
“Hey, yeah, I need a cab,” I say, flustered.
I give them the address and hang up. Shit.
As I’m pacing up and down—wondering how I’ll explain this to Erik—I spot a bunch of rough-looking men circling a teenage girl on the other side of the lot.
“Come on, baby,” one of them growls. “No one likes a cock tease.”
The girl turns in lost circles as the men pace around her like a fucked-up version of the Three Musketeers.
“Hey!” I call, walking over. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The tallest man, wearing a baggy, dirty hoodie with a teardrop tattoo under his eye, turns to me.
“Oh?” he grunts. “Look here, boys. We’ve got a Good Samaritan.”
“She can’t be older than fourteen, you sick fuck,” I hiss. I nod at her as the other two turn their attention to me. “Get out of here, sweetheart.”
She doesn’t need any more encouragement. She ducks her head and disappears into the night.
That’s when I realize what I’ve done.
I’m the target now.
They prowl toward me, hands hanging suggestively at their sides, twitching. “We wanted somethin’ a bit more broken-in, anyway,” the man leers.
I take out my cell phone and call Erik as we do a strange sort of dance toward the other end of the lot.
“Yes?” he says curtly.
Oh, fan-fucking-tastic. Now he decides to go back to Mr. Cold? Could the timing be any worse?