Seized Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle

Mia

Johnny doesn’t look at me. In fact, he barely glanced at me after Lorenzo let him in and then he settled down in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and his laptop. He’s been typing away most of the night, but now that it’s dark outside, I’m exhausted and don’t want to keep an eye on him.

But I’m also not sure where I’m supposed to sleep.

There’s no way in hell that I want to go back into Lorenzo’s room and pass out on his bed. What would he even say when he came home and saw me passed out there? It’s embarrassing and too much for me to think about.

At the same time, I don’t want to go into the bedroom where he had me locked up at first. What if Johnny or Lorenzo shut the door and locked me in there again? I don’t think that I could handle being trapped in there and knowing that there wasn’t any way for me to get out.

No, I need to be out here in the living room. There isn’t a chance in hell that I’m going to be able to sneak out, not with Johnny so alert. Every time I move around the room or sigh he pauses his work, listening like he’s making sure that I’m not going to do something stupid.

Which, I guess, is his job.

Sitting up, I pull the blanket from the other side of the sofa and give it a yank so that it covers me up. It’s a huge sofa and I can stretch all the way out on it without cramping up, but I curl up on my side, facing the kitchen. I want to make sure that nobody can sneak up on me in here.

Not like I could do anything to stop them.

There’s the sound of a chair scraping on the floor and Johnny appears in the kitchen door, looking at me curiously. “You hungry?” He asks. “Lorenzo said that he’d be home in a bit and I’m going to order us some pizza.”

I snacked this afternoon but even though I’m hungry I can’t imagine willingly sitting down with these men to eat a meal with them. It’s insane that I’m even considering it, and I shake my head. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, which always seems to happen when I’m scared.

“I’ll order extra just in case.” He turns back into the kitchen and a moment later I hear him typing away again at the computer.

So Lorenzo is almost home. My core squeezes tight when I think about what that means for me. I know that I should hate him for keeping me here, but I don’t. It’s a terrible feeling to realize that I don’t hate him, not at all.

In fact, the only thing that I do hate is the throbbing between my legs. I want him like I’ve never wanted anyone in my life. He’s dark and dangerous, but there’s something about him that actually makes me feel safe. It’s insane, and I groan a little, pulling the blanket up over my head.

Even though I’m exhausted, my mind is still going a mile a minute and I feel like I’m about to come out of my skin. When the door finally opens and I hear people walking through it, I freeze.

I’m under the blanket, breathing hot, recycled air, but the last thing that I want to do right now is pop my head out and say hello to Lorenzo.

I hear low voices then the edge of the sofa depresses and he pulls the blanket off of me anyway.

“Mia. How are you?” Reaching out, he lightly touches my cheek. My skin burns at the contact and I should move away from him, but I can’t. I can’t seem to do anything smart that would protect me from this man.

“Fine. Tired.”

He cocks his head a little as he looks at me. “Why didn’t you go to bed?”

I don’t want to tell him my reasoning, so I just shake my head.

“Well, we have pizza. Do you want to join us?”

When I don’t respond, he moves to stand up, but I reach for him, grabbing his arm. “Where were you? What happened?”

He sits back down. “I was out meeting with Damon Travini and his group that finds kidnapped and missing women. Looks like they’re a bit more involved in the taking and selling of women then they want to let on.”

“Do they know about me?” I can’t help the question. He has no reason to answer it honestly, but it springs from my lips before I can stop it.

“Oh, they know. Damon is looking for you, Mia, but not because he wants to save you. He wants you for himself.”

“You can’t be serious. Why the hell would he want me?” Struggling against the blanket, I sit up, then plant my feet on the floor, trying to ground myself. “And what do you mean that he wants me for himself?”

Lorenzo stares at me like he can’t believe that I’m not getting it. “He wants to keep you for his own.”

“Like you’re doing?”

“Hardly. I saved you, or did you conveniently forget that? If it hadn’t been for me, where would you be?”

“Kidnapped by some other asshole, apparently.” I know that talking to him like this is probably dangerous but I can’t help the way that words fly from my lips. I want to hurt him, or at least make him think more about what he’s doing to me. “I don’t see how my situation would be different from how it is right now.”

“You don’t?” His eyes are dark and I’m pretty sure that how he looks right now is the last thing that many people see before he kills them. “You don’t see at all how it’s different that I took you instead of letting some other asshole take you?”

I’m being ridiculous and I’m sure that I’m going to get in trouble, but I shake my head, my heart pounding in my chest. “You’re all the same. All of you. You see what you want and you take it without any thought or care about how the other person would feel. All you worry about is you.”

He’s silent and scrubs his hand across his face before giving me a nod and standing up. Immediately I regret the loss of his warmth. He hadn’t even been touching me but we’d been close enough that I could feel it radiating off of him, and now it’s gone.

“Lorenzo,” I begin, but he cuts me off. It’s good, probably, that he did. I have no idea what I was going to say to him and I’m sure that it wasn’t going to be helpful. Or good.

He terrifies me.

“We can discuss this later, Mia, but there’s really nothing to talk about. I saved you. From the moment I saw you, I knew that you belonged to me.” Suddenly, he turns, bending down and grabbing me by the chin so that I’m forced to look at him. Sucking in a gasp, I try to wrench away from him, but his fingers are too tight on my skin.

“Tell me that you didn’t feel it. Tell me that you didn’t immediately know that you were to be mine.”

I can’t. My mouth is too dry. Any words that I might have used to try to free myself from his grip right now are frozen in me, locked away and I don’t think that there’s any way that I can get them out. I can’t even move enough to shake my head, to try to make him let go of me.

“You knew it from the first time you saw me, too. You knew that you belonged to me, that I was the only person in your life who would take care of you. Admit it.”

I don’t want to. Tears spring to my eyes but if he sees them or cares, he doesn’t respond. He still doesn’t let go of me and his face is still right in mine like he’s trying to read my mind.

“You’ll be a hell of a lot happier when you finally admit to yourself that you knew that you belong to me,” he says, roughly letting go of my chin.

I sit back on the sofa, automatically reaching up to touch my skin where his fingers had just been. It feels like I’ve been marked there, which I know is ridiculous. You can’t mark someone just by touching them, but in my mind, he has.

Every single time he touches me, no matter how little contact we have, I become more his and less my own. The thought terrifies me. I’ve never belonged to anyone—or belonged anywhere—and there’s no way in hell that belonging to him is the right move.

The smart move.

The safe move.

Lorenzo strides away from me to the kitchen and I sit like a rock just staring after him. I want to call to him and ask him where I can sleep. Hell, there’s a part of me that wants him to come tuck me in even though I know that that’s fucking stupid. He’s not the type of man who will tuck you in to bed.

He’s the type of man who’s willing to kill people for you. Who takes what he wants and lets everyone else go to hell. But he won’t tuck me into bed and he won’t let me go.

The tears fall down my cheeks.