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Iwake with a pounding headache. My mouth, furry, and my heart, thundering. But it’s worse, so much worse, when I try to turn over. Because instead of my body twisting like it normally would, my shoulders scream in agony.
My brain is sluggish, but that sharp stab of pain has my eyes whipping open and my head snapping backwards to glimpse my surroundings. Instead of finding my slate gray headboard, I find black leather. A dozen pillows, none of which rest beneath my head. Then I find my hands, trapped in restraints, and finally, my mind catches up to the fact I seem to be in danger.
“What the—” I try to retract my hand with a sharp pull, but my effort only has the steel cuff rattling against the rich wood bedpost while also digging into my skin.
“Help me!” I don’t know who I call out for; I don’t know who I expect to come to my aid. But I swallow the dread and cotton-ball dryness from my mouth and try again. “Help! Someone,help me!”
“It’s way too early for shouting, darling.”
Horrified, I cease my cries, but I wrench my head up and stare along my body—and find Felix fucking Malone standing twenty feet away, a small coffee cup in one hand, and its matching saucer in the other.
He wears black pants only, his chest and abdomen bare, like he doesn’t mind strangers seeing so much of his skin. His body is tatted. Scarred. Ridged, though not in the way men typically hope for. Because long, old, healed scars mar his flesh.
But when his eyes drop between my legs, reminding me I’m in a skirt, thoughts of his body flee my mind, to be replaced with the fact I’m bound and helpless inside a mafioso’s bedroom.
Which is absolutelynotwhere I recall being last.
“What the fuck?!”
Felix’s lips curl into a smile before he brings his coffee up and takes a sip. “Such a vulgar word,” he sniggers, setting his cup on the saucer, and the saucer on a small table. “From such pretty lips.”
“Untie me!”
“Stop shouting.” Slowly, casually, he meanders my way. His eyes, like those of a wolf stalking his prey, are trained on the apex of my thighs, and his tongue comes out to wet his lips. The action is animalistic. Beastly. “It’s barely six in the morning,” he drones. “Please don’t shout.”
“Are you insane?” I tug my cuffed hands again, this time ignoring the bite of steel on my wrists. “This is illegal!”
“Only if you live to write about it.” He slowly brings his eyes up, and grins when they lock on to mine. They’re green, like moss found growing only in the deepest, darkest corners of a forest. “Sleep well?”
“Youareinsane!” I wrestle with my bindings and desperately search for a chink in the chains he’s bound me with. A weakness he didn’t know they had. “The cops will know you took me.”
But as he sets his knee on the bed between my legs, compressing the mattress and sending my pulse into a tailspin, a whole new fear takes hold of me.
“Oh my god, did you…” Disgust and trauma roll through my blood as I search my body for proof. I squeeze my legs and flex my inner muscles in search of what he took. What boundaries he violated while I was out. “D-did you?—”
“Fuck you while you slept?” He crawls up onto the mattress, placing his second knee beside the first, and his hand right beside my hip. “No. Somnophilia’s not really my thing.” He places his second hand, fisted, on the bed beside my other hip. Then he flashes a smile that makes mystomach turn hollow. “I prefer my women lucid enough to tell me how good I am.”
“You narcissistic, egotistical sociopath! Get off me!” I flail on the bed and pray I can bring my knees up high enough to destroy his balls.
But he seems unconcerned, crawling close enough, his thigh touches my core, and his nose hovers near the middle of my chest.
“Cute pet name.” He inhales my scent until the unwanted intimacy has tears stinging the backs of my eyes. “But I prefer the more traditional type.” Then he pulls back just far enough to smile. “Darling. Are you hungry?” He slips his left hand into his pocket, surely strong enough to balance his weight solely on his right, though he presses a small amount to my chest anyway. “I can free you.” He withdraws his hand and presents a small silver key. “Will you join me on the back patio for coffee and pastries?”
“Are you seriously this delusional?” I squirm beneath his weight and try fruitlessly to break free. “You don’t kidnap someone and ask them to breakfast!”
“Why not?” He shifts position, so his legs are on either side of my hips, straddling me and stunning me into silent compliance. Then he leans forward and works on opening my cuffs. “We’re both the result of powerful, upper society reproduction. You, with the diamonds. Me, with things we don’t mention in polite company.”
“You’re a criminal! You’re the son of a crime boss.”
“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t taught how to use my manners when they were needed.” He releases my left arm and goes to work on my right, but when I swing out with my balled fist, intending to slam it against the side of his face, he whips his hand up and catches my strike, wrapping his meaty palm around my wrist so his fingers become my new cuff. “Don’t hit me, Darling Christabelle. We don’t hit our spouses. That’s abuse.”
“Spouse?!” I attempt to tear my arm from his grip. “You’ve genuinely lost the plot. Oh god,” I whimper. “Crazy is so much worse than criminal. Crazy is unchartered territory and can result in spontaneous homicide.”
Felix chokes out a laugh and releases my wrist when the fight leaves my body. “I’m not crazy. Merely… embracing the current New York gossip.” He goes back to unlocking my other cuff. “Cute story, right? We should frame it for our kids.”
“It’s gossipyoumade up!” I snarl, snapping my teeth like a mongrel dog. But I don’t try to hit him again. I’m not sure I’d be fast enough to get away with it. Besides, his request was so… gentle. Reasonable.We don’t hit. “You made a statement to that low-rent, two-bit, piece of shit publication and made up rumors that could destroy my career!”
“Mm.” He unfastens my cuff and sits up, though he still straddles my hips, looking down at me like we’re old friends who regularly chat in such intimate positions. “Like the drivel you printed, risking my brother’s career as a detective? Or that other shit, calling out a boy who only turned eighteenthis month?” He wrinkles his nose and asks, “Did you wait for his birthday to pass before you hit submit? Did your conscience make it impossible to hurt a child?”
