Saved Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle

Clara

My first thought when my eyes flutter open is that my head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. It honestly hurts to move it and I blink, opening and closing my jaw like that’s going to make me feel more human.

It doesn’t. All it does is send a shock of pain through my body. Rolling over, I stretch, keeping my eyes slammed shut against the pain. The mattress I’m on is nice and firm and I curl back over, snuggling my knees as far up to my chest as I can, then relax into the mattress, ready to pass back out.

But as soon as I do that, there’s a little voice in the back of my head telling me that something is wrong. I feel it creep up my spine, like someone walking their fingers up each vertebrae, and my eyes fly open as I throw myself onto my back and struggle to sit up.

Damn the way my head pounds and how I suddenly feel like I’m going to throw up. Gripping the mattress, I scoot over, planting my feet on the floor and putting my head down between my knees to suck in huge breaths of air.

“You’ll be okay.” The voice is calm and soft, but it makes me gasp in surprise and I jerk my head up, getting so dizzy that I almost fall backwards onto the mattress. “You just need to move a little bit slower and drink some water. Here.”

I hear footsteps coming across the room to me but I don’t bother to open my eyes to see who it is.

I know who it is. I remember his voice, the way it felt like a warm summer breeze caressing my skin as it washed over me. Even without looking up at him, I can see the strong line of his jaw, his dark hair, and the huge scar that cuts across his face.

A mixture of terror and longing course through my body, a strange cocktail that I want to ignore but can’t seem to.

“Take the water, Clara. You have to have something to drink after what happened last night.”

Somehow, I find my voice. “You mean after what you did to me last night.” But even though I put as much anger into my voice as possible, I still reach out and take the glass from him. I swear, I can smell the water, which sounds ridiculous, but it tastes amazing and I drain the entire thing before handing it back to him and letting my head drop down into my hands.

He moves away and I hear the sound of the glass being put down, then I’m surprised when he’s at my side again. The mattress depresses and I lean away from him to keep from touching him for as long as possible. The last thing that I want is to feel warmth from him, because then I’ll be able to convince myself that he’s a human, and then I might tell myself that he’s not so bad.

He is bad, though. He’s terrible, unkind, and dangerous.

Yeah, tell that to the throbbing between my legs.

“How are you feeling?” He brushes my hair back from my face and I shiver as his skin touches mine. A moment later, he’s whipping a blanket up and around me like a cape, giving me the ends of it so that I can hold it in place and won’t accidentally drop it.

It’s soft and warm on my bare skin and I feel tears spring to the corners of my eyes.

“How can you be so nice after what you just did?” I ask him, doing my best to keep from looking at him. If I look at him then he’ll know that I want to cry. If I make eye contact with him then I might do something stupid like stop being angry at what’s going on in my life.

“What do you think that I just did?” He’s next to me again, this time looping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me to him so that I’m snuggled up next to him.

I know that I should fight him and try to sit up. I should try to put some space between the two of us, but I can’t seem to move. It feels really damn good to have someone taking care of me for once.

The fact that the person taking care of me kidnapped me and shot me full of something to keep me quiet in the car isn’t lost on me, but my mind doesn’t want to explore that right now. The only thing that I want to focus on is the fact that someone is here with me, taking care of me, making me feel safe.

“I think that you kidnapped me,” I finally say, putting words to the thoughts running through my head. “You gave me drugs to keep me quiet and brought me here.” I flap my hand around the room before grabbing the ends of the blanket again. “And I don’t have any idea where I am.”

That’s an understatement. I’ve been so busy trying my best to ignore the way that being this close to Gavin makes me feel that I haven’t paid any attention to where he has me. There aren’t any windows, which makes me think that we must be in some sort of a basement or a panic room.

When I notice the wood stairs off to the side leading up to a closed door, I mentally adjust. I’m in a basement, so I’m sure that nobody knows where I am. In addition to the bed that we’re sitting on, there’s a toilet and sink across the room. A rug on the concrete floor was probably put there to make it feel less terrifying in here, but I’m not sure that it works.

I’m scared shitless, to be honest.

“You’re at my house in Colorado,” Gavin says, and I suck in a breath.

It feels like someone has just punched me in the chest and I turn to look at him. I’m sure that I look terrified, but I don’t feel like I can control my face right now.

“Colorado? What the hell did you do? Don’t you know what you just did?!”

Without thinking about what I’m doing, I reach out and hit him on the arm. He doesn’t budge—he’s made of pure muscle—but it’s really satisfying and I do it again, anger washing through me as I do.

“You brought me to Colorado? You have to take me back! I have to pay him off!” Panic rises up in my chest and hovers there, squeezing my heart like a boa constrictor. I don’t think that I’m going to be able to keep breathing but I keep hitting him until he scoots back and grabs my wrists, pulling them down and pressing them into my thighs.

“What are you talking about?” His face is just inches from mine. All I can see are his gorgeous eyes and I feel myself relax as I look into them, but then I shake my head to clear the spell.

“You can’t keep me here,” I finally say, trying my best to stay calm. Maybe if he thinks that I’m calm and that I haven’t lost my mind then he’ll listen to me. Maybe he’ll let me go. Maybe he’ll understand that this is way more important than whatever it is that he wants to do with me.

He has to or I’m fucked.

“See, Clara, that’s the plan though. I saw you, I took you, and I don’t ever want to let you go.”

My skin chills and I pull back on my wrists like I honestly think that he’s going to let go of me. “Please,” I say, hating the sound of my voice. I hate that I’m begging this man. I hate that I don’t have any control over what’s going to happen to me. I hate feeling like I have to let someone else make decisions for me, because the last time that happened, everything hit the fan. “You have to let me go.”

Gavin grins, a slow smile that makes my stomach flip completely over when I see it spread across his face. “That’s where you’re wrong, Clara. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. I know that you’re in trouble, or why else would you have been stripping?”

I don’t answer him.

“You should have come to me, darling. Let me help you. If you had done that then maybe things would be different. Although, honestly...” His gaze drops from my face down my body and I shiver when I realize that I let go of the blanket a long time ago and I’m sitting on the bed with him in my stripper outfit.

“Honestly I don’t know that it would have made a difference in the end. You belong with me, Clara, and there isn’t a damn thing in the world that you can do about it.”

“Someone will come for me,” I tell him, but he scoffs and stands up, letting go of my wrists.

I should follow him and try to get him to understand that I’m serious, that someone will eventually come knocking on his door looking for me, but I’m so damn tired right now that I don’t think I can. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea what he’s done.

“I promise you, Clara, that whoever comes looking for you will be sent right way again or will have to try to come through me. You belong to me, darling, and now that I have you, I’m never giving you up. I dare someone to try to come and take you from me, because I will kill them.”

Part of me feels elated at what he just said, at the fact that he’s so willing to protect me, but there’s another part of me that knows that he’s wrong and I shake my head. “You may think that,” I say, my voice so quiet that I’m not sure if he’s going to be able to hear me or not, “but you’re wrong. Someone will come for me and they will burn everything down that stands in their way.”

This makes Gavin laugh, the sound so loud in the small basement that I shiver and pull the blanket back up and around my shoulders. “Trust me, Clara, I’ve dealt with plenty of people who want to burn me down. I’ve handled them all and walked through the flames without so much as a scorch mark. Whatever you’re afraid of, it’s nothing. I’ll handle it. You’ll see.”

He leaves me, walking up the stairs like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Like he didn’t just royally fuck up by bringing me here.

When he shuts the door I listen hard and I’m not surprised to hear it lock. He’s got me trapped in here now and I have no idea what he’s going to do to me.

All I know is that Gavin has no idea what he just did.