Tempted By The Mafia Boss

Nick

We get to my house an hour later.

The place has that unlivable feel about it, like when you go to view a new property. It’s hollow and there’s no sign of life.

If I’d just come to visit I would never have guessed that anyone actually lives here.

The house is beautiful and deserves to have people in it to admire the workmanship. I’m just hardly ever here.

It’s a waste, I know that. I know that most people would kill to live in the state of the art modern house I take for granted.

I actually had the place built from scratch. Bought the land when I made my first million and customized everything from the ground up with my next.

It’s worth millions now and all the money I put into it was legit, straight up dough I made from the club. It wasn’t from shifting numbers around or business deals but my earnings from a wild idea I shared with my brothers and cousins when we set up The Dark Odyssey.

As I walk into the hall with the doll and she looks completely taken with the place, I think back to what I thought when I built the house.

I was obsessed with having my own home comparable to the one my parents have. Pa didn’t build his house.

The power of that man is unreal. He fucking won it in a bet. The whole mansion with the grounds, he won it. But that was back in the day when he was still working his way up. If that were now the man would have bought it straight up with cash from the change in his back pocket.

I may have ignored his calls today and he’ll probably skin my ass when he sees me next, but I admire him and Pa is king in my eyes.

People say I’m like him because of my temper, Salvatore comes close. But both those guys have a handle on their emotions.

Not like me who’s been looking at the angel every chance I get.

I did it all the way here, looking at her knowing she’s naked under my jacket and the only thing she’s wearing that belongs to her are her shoes.

She walks further into the wide hallway that has a foyer-like feel for the width. I don’t like narrow anything so I wanted the hallway styled the way they are in Italy.

It’s clear she wants to venture in and explore the place but she looks back to me with worry in her eyes when her gaze takes in the blood all over my shirt. I knew I was messed up but I didn’t know it was this bad.

She comes up to me and presses her hands on my chest.

“Let me clean you up,” she offers.

“No I’m okay baby.”

“You don’t look okay to me.”

“I’m fine.” I don’t want her fussing over me.

I move to go but she catches my arm and tugs on it. “I’m going to clean you up.” She insists.

I decide to be a prick and spoil this thing we have that we shouldn’t have, as badly as I want her.

“Not in your contract to clean blood, Angel Doll.”

“Great to know except I’m not at work,” she fires back. She’s serious. “So, where’s your first aid box?”

I look at her for a few seconds and find myself wanting to savor this.

I’m a fucking fool.

What did I expect by inviting her here? I told her I want to forget life and I do.

What I won’t tell her is, she’s the first woman to come into this house. The first woman who isn’t Ma. I don’t ever let women know where I live. I keep them at the club or we hook up at a hotel.

This one sure did a number on me and she’s acting like she should take care of me.

“Upstairs,” I answer.

“Lead the way,” she wiggles her fingers toward the stairs. I take her hand and lead her up there to my bedroom.

The motion sensor lights snap on the minute we step inside and I actually feel that refuge of being home.

That she’s with me only highlights it. She looks around the master bedroom that I admit looks as breathtaking as the rest of the place with the four poster wrought iron bed.

I have a thing for anything that looks like it could be from the Renaissance or medieval period in any way. The whole room looks like it could be from that time, with the chandelier in the center and candles in pewter colored candlesticks all around.

I also have floorboards in here and the windows are designed in tandem with everything else.

I look to the angel and see she’s really taken with the place. She even pulls in a surprised gasp when her eyes land on the painting on my wall of The Lady of Shallot.

“You like it?” I say, more of an observation than a question.

She looks back to me and her eyes sparkle.

“I love it.”

I can’t help it, I reach out to her and run my finger over her cheek.

She gives me a little smile. It’s the second time I’ve really seen her smile and it reminds me of happiness. I realize in that moment that I haven’t been happy in years.

Although nothing specific happened prior to Tommy to distress me, nothing’s happened to me that I can say has made me happy. But the time that I think back to as I look at the angel isn’t anything special. It’s a memory.

It was my twenty fifth birthday and Pa gave me my grandfather’s watch. He gives heirlooms and things like that for special birthdays. All the other guys got stuff like rings and pens. Pa wore that watch every day. He gave it to me and told me to remember the people who’d worn it and what they would do if they ever had a problem.

I was so hyped up on the fact that he gave me the fucking watch, that he was the boss of everything handing me something valuable to him, that I didn’t really heed what he was saying.

I’m actually looking at the watch now around my wrist as I touch the angel and both feel true to me.

She steps out of my grasp and the seriousness returns to her face.

“First aid box Nick,” she nods.

I move to my desk area, open the cupboard above and pull out the first aid box. She comes over and starts taking control. Mia then makes her way to the ensuite bathroom like she’s been here before and comes back with one of the little bowls I keep shit in and a rag. The bowl’s filled with water. While she’s fussing around sorting stuff out, I go to the wardrobe and dig around for something better for her to wear.

I find one of my old college jumpers and a pair of yoga pants Ma must have left behind. My mother is almost as slender as Mia so I reckon they’ll fit.

When I get back to her she tries to bite back a smile when she sees the yoga pants.

“I didn’t figure you for having women’s clothes at the ready.” Her eyes glitter with sassy humor.

“I’m not.”

“Girlfriends clothes?” she teases.

“You tell me?” I throw back and she blushes, catching my meaning straight away.

“This doesn’t look like mine.”

“Must be my mom’s then,” I raise my brows.

“Oh… must be. Silly me, I must have gotten confused again.”

I smile. “Yes, silly you, you must have gotten confused,” I play along and it feels damn good. I like the way she’s looking at me. I hand her the pants and she takes them.

I give her the sweatshirt next and she raises her brows when she sees the big old logo on the front.

“Yale?” She quirks her perfectly arched brows.

“Yeah. It’s a thing. All the men in my family have to go to Yale. You?” I ask her like I don’t know some background on her. I may know but she hasn’t told me. It’s different when you’re told.

“Harvard. I won a scholarship.”

I didn’t know that part, and now I’m more impressed. Definitely more impressed.

“Shit.”

“Well, it feels like another life.”

“Me too.” College feels like I was someone else back then. Honestly I just studied what I was told and did well because I was expected to. Who knows what I would have done if I’d actually studied something I really wanted to do.

She backs off my jacket, revealing her naked body and unlike when I look at Jenna, it takes less than a nanosecond for my cock to twitch, aroused.

I reach for her but she backs away, playfully, and I like the way her breasts bobble.

“No, later. I need to look at your chest first,” she insists. “I’m serious.”

She’s serious as fuck because she pulls on the sweatshirt and shuffles into the yoga pants.

“Okay Boss,” I smile at her.

“Take your shirt off.” She smiles.

My how the tables have turned, with her telling me to take off my clothes.

I undo my buttons and back off my shirt. The sense of playfulness goes from her face in an instant when we see the wound.

Shit.

It’s a slice alright. Not deep, but it’s a fucking slice. I didn’t know it was so bad.

“Jesus Christ Nick, we should go to the hospital.” Her eyes dart from mine to

the wound and worry washes over her pretty face.

“No, fuck. No hospitals, Angel. I don’t do hospitals.”

“That looks like a knife mark.”

Yeah, she’s not wrong and I don’t discourage the assessment.

“Nick, what happened?”

“Got into a fight.”

“You’re hurt really bad. You have to go see someone.”

I shake my head. “I’m okay. This is bad, but you should see the other guy,” I chuckle.

She frowns, grabs the rag and presses it to the wound.

Fuck, it hurts like a bitch. I wince and curse under my breath. She dabs around the area and cleans it all up.

“It could get infected. What if it does?”

I frown and nod my head. “Okay Boss, I’ll go to the hospital in the morning. How about we just patch me up for the night?”

She seems satisfied with that.

“Okay, we’re going to the hospital tomorrow.”

“We?”

“We.”

She doesn’t look back at me fully. It’s more of a glance then she does a good job patching me up with the bandages.

When she finishes, she takes my hand, leads me over to the bed and sits me down. I watch her take charge. She undoes my belt buckle and my fly and it reminds me of the first time she sucked my cock.

She’s not doing that now, but it’s just as sexy.

She takes off my pants and presses her hand into my chest to push me back against the stack of pillows when I try to get up.

I’m lying there watching her and I swear I believe we exist in this little bubble within an alternate universe.

She walks over to the light switch and turns it off, then comes back to the bed to lie next to me on my good side. I pull her into my arms and she rests her head against my chest.

I hold her and I’m not sure when, but sleep takes me. It takes me and I realize that these moments when I’m with her, I really do forget.

It’s the sun that wakes me up.

The bright beams seems to have gotten brighter and shine down on me.

I wake up and I’m alone. She’s not here and I’m pissed.

I know the unspoken understanding so far has been that she leaves before I wake. Still this was supposed to be different.

Her leaving isn’t something I factored in.

I get up and make my way downstairs. Then the aroma of delicious food hits me just before I get to the last step on the stairs.

Eggs, bacon, and something else. I get to the kitchen and see her in there, smiling as she flips a pancake.

When she sees me the smile widens.

She didn’t leave. She’s in here cooking for me.

“Morning,” she coos. “I hope you like pancakes. I made a blueberry mix and I have fruit and syrup.”

I just look at her because this all feels weird. She giggles and it’s the nicest sound I’ve heard in a long time.

She settles the frying pan down, cuts a slice of pancake and walks over to me with it pierced onto a fork.

She wants me to take it and eat it, when mostly I want to eat her. Instead of my sweatshirt, she’s wearing one of my dress shirts and I can see her breasts pushing against the cotton.

She gets to me and I oblige by lowering my head and taking the little piece of pancake she has ready for me.

It’s sweet but just the right amount of sweet. A little like her.

“Hmmm.” I nod.

“Really? You like it?” She seems excited at the thought.

“I love it, know what I’d love more.” I grab her and bunch up the shirt but she swats my hands away.

“No, you need to eat.”

“Didn’t you say I could have you later?” I complain.

“Yes, later is still yet to come.” She runs her fingers over my bandage and concern wrinkles her pretty face. “How does your wound feel? Are you in pain?”

“I’m okay. Used to it.”

“Still going to the hospital though,” she nods.

“Am I?”

“Don’t play with me Nick,” she shakes her head at me and saunters back around to the stove and mixes some scrambled eggs.

I watch her and again this feels weird, like I woke up in a dream within a dream where she’s my girl. She’s my girl taking care of me.

That’s what this feels like, exactly like that, like I know it’s not real but part of me hopes it is and another part knows I can’t keep running from reality.

“You gonna just play house with me or do I get to help?”

She lifts her head and looks at me. “Maybe I’m playing house with you.”

Maybe I’ll let her.

I’m the one who wants to forget.

I sit and watch her busy herself around the stove then she serves the food and brings me a plate.

She moves to go back but I catch her and pull her down into my lap.

“Nick, I’m serious, later,” she complains .

She’s about to say something else when I grab the knife and fork and cut off a piece of the pancake to feed her. She looks momentarily stunned but like a little bird she opens her mouth and takes the food. I watch, watch her eat and swallow. She then smiles and grabs the other fork she set for herself and gathers up some of the scrambled eggs to give me.

I take it and that’s what we do, we feed each other until the food is gone and then I grab the rest and we finish that too.

I’m aware of the time and that she probably needs to get back to her family but I don’t want her to go.

Not just yet.

I can’t believe it. A badass mobster like me is busying himself playing house with this angel.

She runs her fingers over my chest when we finish and I catch her hand. I decide what we’ll do for a few more minutes then I’ll take her home. For the first time since I’ve known her my decision doesn’t involve her being naked.

I want the inside. I want what’s inside her.

“Tell me about Harvard, scholarship girl.”

She smiles at that.

“I did law. I devoted my life to studying law. I must have been twelve when I decided that was what I was going to be. A lawyer. An intellectual property attorney. I even knew that too. I heard it in this movie and it was a female attorney and she was so badass with her knowledge, and a little like me. When people first meet me they assume I’m soft and weak…”

I’m enjoying listening to this. “Until you open your mouth.” I fill in and she chuckles.

“Yeah, probably. I’m really good. I loved being at Harvard. It was amazing. I felt like I was in my element and the resources they had there blew my mind. Then there were all the people I met. I started my internship in L. A, got a little over half way through and then I had to stop.”

Had to…

That’s what I’m stuck on, what I focus on. That internship would have been recent and I’m guessing that was at Silvermans.

“You had to stop?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to apply for jobs for the last eight months but it’s been tough. There was this one I really thought I had. I hoped I had it. It was at Barkers.”

I smile. I know the firm she means. They’re one of the family lawyers

“It turns out there was somebody better than me for the job, as is always the case but I still have my fingers crossed.”

She stops and I know it’s because she’s reached the point in her explanation that’s more recent.

“Then what happened baby? What brought you to The Dark Odyssey?”

She shakes her head and drops her gaze to my chest. “It’s okay. It’s best I don’t talk about it.”

I guide her face back up to meet my gaze. “Tell me, tell me something. I don’t have the passion for my career the way you do.”

It’s clear that she truly, truly wanted to be a lawyer.

“My family got into debt,” she begins. “My father… almost died. He’s very sick. He was very sick. Not out of the woods yet but I nearly lost him, really he’s all I have. My mother died before I was old enough to remember her and my brother is… absent. He’s not really around much. He has a daughter and we take care of her. They’re my everything,” she raises her shoulders into a little shrug.

“Mia. Let me give you the money. How much do you ne–” she cuts me off by placing her finger to my lips and shaking her head.

“No. You’ve done enough and you fixed a lot. More than you needed to. Doesn’t matter what it cost me, I would have lost a lot more,” she nods.

“The other night… what happened with Antonella won’t happen again,” I still feel disgusted with myself.

The shine in her eyes falters. “Why did you send me to the Playboy lounge, Nick?”

It’s a valid question. One she deserves an answer to. Answering, however, feels like asking me to open up about all the shit that’s happening. It’s actually all part and parcel of the same thing.

“My life right now is very hectic. There’s a lot of shit happening.” That’s the shortest answer I can give. “I don’t want to drag you in too deep.”

“Is that where you want me now? Not with you?” I don’t miss the quiver in her voice.

“No it’s not. I want you with me, if you still want to be with me.” I must have really lost my damn mind. It’s the question my heart wants and it’s taking over.

She holds my gaze and I find myself getting lost in the depths of those eyes of hers.

“I do…” she whispers, and fuck, it feels like a balm on my tortured soul to hear it. Her fingers glide up my jaw, caressing my cheek. “What was the fight about Nick? What makes you want to forget life?”

Here it is.

The moment of opening up and sharing. It’s difficult to talk about, but somehow she makes me feel like I can do it.

“My best friend … Tommy was gunned down in his home a month ago. His wife and baby were in the house at the time. Someone hired a hit on him. He’s in a coma now.” A pang of sadness creeps in as I speak. It spirals through my nerves like cold, icy tendrils of fear that knot my insides.

Her lips part. “What? Oh my God, Nick. That’s awful.”

“Yeah. I’m looking for who did it. Yesterday was about that.”

“Nick please don’t do something dangerous,” she pleads.

This is the part where we differ immensely and it brings reality back to the table.

“Baby danger is my world.” I run my finger over her cheek. “This is nice. Us… I’m a hotheaded accountant who loses his head on occasion. You calm me down, make me forget.”

“Accountant?” She looks fascinated.

“Yeah. What do you know? The lawyer and the accountant.”

She smiles at that and reaches up to touch my face. We fall into a kiss. A kiss that calls for more. I’m not one to turn away the chance for more so I pick her up, carry her back upstairs and devour her in my bed.