Page 17 of Rent a Mob Boss

With the jacket still held in front of me, covering what needs to be covered, I walk Quinn through the boutique. I’ve done a lot of undignified things in my life. I’ve crawled through a warehouse on my stomach. I’ve hidden in a trunk. But walking through this boutique like a teenager trying to get past his mother’s living room is a new kind of low I feel through every inch of my body.

Quinn walks ahead of me toward the door, and I let her, partly because I’m a gentleman, and partly because if she turns around and looks down, this evening takes a turn neither of us is prepared for.

My driver, Sal, opens the back door for her and doesn’t blink, because Sal has been driving for my family since I was fourteen and has perfected the art of seeing nothing. Quinn slides in with the box in which Adriana packed the dress. She holds it carefully, like something precious.

I slide in after her with my jacket still strategically positioned. By the time I settle in next to her, the air is thick enough to cut.

“Take you home, miss?” Sal asks once he’s behind the wheel.

Her voice is steady when she murmurs, “Yes, thank you.” She stares down at the box, fingers clenched on top. The blush hasn’t left her face.

“Thank you,” she repeats, quieter this time. She’s speaking to me. “For the dress. You really didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to.”

“It’s too much.”

“It’s a dress.”

“It costs more than my car.”

“No offense, but your car is terrible.”

Her laughter comes out surprised and sudden. She covers her mouth, and for one second, the tension in the car cracks open and something warm rushes in. I want to live in that sound.

Then it’s gone, and she’s looking at her hands again. The silence comes back, but it’s different now. Softer. Less like a wall and more like a door that’s been left open a crack.

We don’t talk for the rest of the drive. I watch the city go past and do my damnedest to forget the sound she made behind the curtain, but that’s a waste of time. When I try to divert my thoughts, they only land on the way she looked in the green dress. Then I think about the blush that went all the way down her neck.

I can’t bring myself to think about baseball.

When we pull up to her building, Sal comes around. She opens the door before he gets there, though, because she’s never been the kind of person who waits for someone to open things for her. She stands on the curb, still holding the dress like a prize, and she finally looks at me. Really looks, for the first time since the fitting room.

“See you tomorrow,” she offers in a shaky voice paired with a shaky smile.

“I look forward to it.” And that is the entire truth, laid out plain and simple. I look forward to it, because I look forward to every moment she’s in my presence. I don’t know when it started. I only know that’s how it is.

“Oh. I forgot.” She spins on her heel before the door is closed. “My mom wants me there before five thirty. My dad wants to take family pictures. I hope that’s okay.”

“Absolutely fine. Thank you for letting me know.”

“I was afraid I would forget if I didn’t mention it right now.” She bites down on her lip—fuck me—before turning back toward her building. Do I watch her ass when she walks away? Of course I do.

When Sal’s behind the wheel, I murmur, “Wait until her lights come on.” He doesn’t ask which window, because he’s worked for me and my family long enough to know which questions need to be asked and which do not. We sit in silence, the car idling out front, and I watch the dark rectangle on the second floor until it goes bright. She’s inside, and she’s safe. I hope she’s happy. I truly do.

“Take me home,” I tell him. He pulls out, and I press the button to raise the privacy divider between us. It goes up with a low hum, black glass, soundproof. The kind of feature that comes standard in vehicles purchased by men who need to have conversations no one else can hear. I’ve used it for phone calls, and for meetings—the kind of talk that happens between men who share a certain line of work.

Tonight, I’m using it because I am not going to make it home without doing something about the hard-on I still can’t get rid of.

I close my eyes and lean back against the headrest, and I stop fighting it.

My hand goes to my belt, then lower. When I finally grip myself, the relief is sharp enough that I exhale through my teeth. I’m harder than I’ve been in years, painful with it. The images come without me calling them. The green dress, the collarbone. The way she turned, and the fabric moved. The blush on her neck.

And then the sound. That sound. Small and stifled, and unmistakable. The sound of a girl losing a fight with herself thirty feet from where I sat.

I can only imagine what she was doing behind that curtain. What she was thinking about. Whether it was me—and I know it was me, the way I know most things, not because I was told, but because the evidence doesn’t allow for another conclusion.

My fist tightens around my cock, and my breathing goes ragged. The city streams past on the other side of the tinted glass, and I think about Quinn’s mouth and Quinn’s hands, and how she said I’m coming and then corrected herself. My overheated imagination creates an image of me walking through that curtain and finding her with her hand between her legs, working her clit feverishly while she thought about me.