Arranged Mafia Marriage

Karma

I squeeze my eyes shut and prepare for impact. I crash into something hard. Solid. The shock smashes through my system. I groan. This is not going to be pretty. Am I going to look like one of those people who jump from a height and ends up splattered over the sidewalk? Not that I have seen any in real life, thank God… But I have seen enough movies to know it’s a gruesome sight.

The ground under me moves… Huh? I snap my eyes open, stare down into blazing blue eyes. Gone is the coldness, the remote look he had worn when I had last seen him. This man is angry…livid with the kind of rage that vibrates off of him and slams into my chest.

“You jumped.” he growls, “you fucking jumped.”

“It was only from the second story, besides I…I didn’t have a choice.”

Debris rains down on us and Michael steps aside, his movement so graceful I can only blink as he stares up. I don’t take my gaze off of his beautiful face as he growls, “Who the fuck is up there?”

“One of the men who kidnapped me.”

His features harden. All emotion drains from his face. His gaze narrows as he walks back a few paces.

“Wh…what are you doing?”

He merely heaves me over his shoulder like I am a sack of potatoes.

“What the fuck?” I yell as I stare at his perfectly hard backside. My hair streams down about my ears and down to cover his gorgeous rear. I sense him move, then hear a shot, and the ground seems to shudder. “Fuck.” I close my eyes as a trembling grips me, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Footsteps approach us, then Michael snaps, “Make sure you kill every last figlio di puttana inside the house.”

“Will do,” a voice replies.

Seb? Is it one of his other brothers. Michael’s body moves, then he lowers me down and back into his arms. I turn my face into his chest, breathe in his dark, edgy essence, fill my lungs with his scent, and burrow into him. His grip tightens around me.

His voice rumbles above me and the vibrations resonate up his chest, sink into my blood. His voice fades in and out as I begin to drift.

“Set fire…send a message…taking her home.”

He turns and walks away, as the sound of gunshots reaches me, then wanes as he moves further away. His grip tightens around me, then he brushes his lips over my hair. “I need to lower you to the ground so I can open the car door,” he murmurs.

“No,” I grip the front of his shirt, “no, no, no.”

“Shh!” He presses a kiss to my forehead, “You’re safe with me.”

Tears fill my eyes and run down my cheeks. How the hell am I ever going to feel safe after what happened? After I was kidnapped, twice, in quick succession, in such a short time? And to think, my once kidnapper is the only person in whose arms I now feel safe. I am such a bloody mess.

“Don’t cry,” his voice catches, “please don’t cry, Beauty.”

Of course, that only makes me sob harder.

He walks around the car, then bends and manages to open the door on the driver’s side. He slides inside, shuts the door behind him as I cling to him. Gah, shrinking violet, I am not. But right now, if I let go of him… What if someone else tries to take me away? What if he decides, again, that he doesn’t want me?

Fuck, I am conforming to every damn stereotype of a damsel in distress that I hate. My throat closes and another wave of trembling grips me. My teeth chatter and my bones feel too brittle for my body. I draw up my legs, try to conserve what warmth I have left in my body.

He wraps his arms around me, plasters me to his chest, then lowers his head to kiss the skin between my eyebrows, my eyelids, the tip of my nose, my mouth. I moan, part my lips, and he sweeps in. He dances his tongue across mine, closes his mouth over mine in a deep, draining kiss that seems to suck every last thought from my head. His chest heaves, his breath grows shallow, a hardness digs into my side, and when he finally breaks the kiss, I can’t think anymore. Maybe that was the point. When he lowers me onto the seat next to his, I don’t protest.

He yanks on the safety belt, snaps it into place. Snatches up a bottle of water from the holder between the seats and hands it over to me. I gulp down the water, then close the bottle and hand it over to him. He tosses it back in the holder then reaches over to grab my hand. He places it on his thigh. The strength in that thick, hard column sinks into my blood. A warmth steals up my arm, fills my chest. My head throbs and I lean back into the seat, as he sets the vehicle in motion.

How did I put myself in this position? Since when do I need a man to take care of me? I have navigated life on my own terms since a very young age, yet a few weeks with this guy, and I am dependent on him for my security. When he’s the one who kidnapped me in the first place. Since when has my kidnapper become my protector?

“How-” My voice cracks and I clear my throat. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Someone saw you being taken. He was bragging about it at Venom. When Seb heard it, he realized that he was talking about you.”

“How did you track me down?”

He turns down a road, and the muscles of his forearms flex as he steers the car. “The man who saw you noticed a symbol on the windshield. One that, as we found out, is associated with the Kane Company. From there, it was a matter of raiding each of their strongholds. If we had gotten to you even a few seconds later-” His jaw tics, “I’ll never forgive myself for letting you leave unprotected. If it were up to me, I’d tie you to me and never let you leave my side. If I could, I’d take back everything I said.”

“But you can’t.”

He grimaces, then turns onto another road. “I am going to try my very best to make it up to you.”

“I… I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he growlsNôvelDrama.Org owns all content.

“We are not good for each other, Michael.” I firm my lips, ” For heaven’s sake, I tried to kill you. Twice… And you forced me to marry you, then turned me out when you felt like you didn’t want me around anymore.”

“That’s not true,” he says through gritted teeth, “I turned you out, because…”

“Because?”

“Because I knew if I kept you around, I’d end up falling for you.”

“Huh?”

“Surprised?” He peers at me from the corner of his eye, “Didn’t think I could admit that to you, huh?”

I swallow, “It still doesn’t change the fact that every time we are together, we bring out the worst in each other.”

“That’s how the best relationships are.” He stares through the windshield. “We are not a normal, staid couple meant to have a normal, staid marriage, where the husband holds down a desk job and makes an appointment to have sex with his wife-”

“You’re right.”

“I am?”

I nod, “We’re the kind of couple who needs to steer clear of each other if we want to survive.”

“Survival is overrated.” His lips curl. “We bring out the darkness in each other. We speak to each other on a primal level. Even now, as we maintain the distance that society asks of us, our bodies hunger for each other, our flesh wants to reach out to the other, and our souls? Our souls recognize the twisted, fuckedupness that each of us has tried to hide from the world, but which we haven’t been able to hold back from each other.”

“My point, precisely.” I pull my hand back from his thigh, but he captures it and imprisons it between his big palm and the solidness of his thigh. My core flutters.

Shit, even as I am trying to put distance between us, I can’t stop being aware of him. Can’t stop myself from being turned on by his strength. Can’t stop myself from wanting to turn to him and crawl into his lap and feel his arms around me as he hides me from the world. Tears prick at the backs of my eyes. Goddammit, since when have I become so needy?

Is it his dominance, his need for control that brings out the feminine side in me? Is that why I veer toward him for safety? Is that why, despite everything in me knowing how wrong it is to want to be with him, I want to trust him?

“We need to have nothing to do with each other.”

His fingers tighten on the wheel.

“You did the right thing in turning me out earlier.” I set my jaw. “It was my bad luck that I ended up being kidnapped again. But I’m safe now, so there’s no reason for you to hold onto me.”

He doesn’t answer, simply keeps his gaze forward.

“If you return my phone back to me, I can call Summer and have her send someone to help me leave here.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“If you think I am letting you go that easily, you are mistaken.”

“I thought you said that you were falling for me.”

“All the more reason to not let you go.”

And there…he is. The big, bad, alphahole Capo. Guess it was too much to hope that he was actually revealing his more sensitive side. Not that I doubt he has it. Not that I want him to share it with me. Somehow, it’s easier if he continues to stay in his arrogant, over-the-top, alpha persona. It’s much easier to deal with him that way. It’s so much easier to hate him when he doesn’t reveal the man behind the ruthless Capo. Yeah, I’d much rather he be unreasonable, and inconsiderate, and conceited.

I whip my head toward him. “I thought you said you were going to try to make it up to me.”

“Doesn’t mean I am going to let you go free.”

“Then your idea of making it up to me and my idea of your making it up to me are, clearly, different.”

“We’ll see.”