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  Married to the Mobster

  Leighton Greene

  This is a work of fiction.

  Product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks referred to herein are the property of their respective trademark holders. All trademarks remain the property of their respective holders.

  Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  © 2020 Leighton Greene. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author.

  Cover Design: Cosmic Letterz

  This book would not have been possible without the generous support, genius suggestions, and calming influences of

  Scarlett P. & Alexa S.

  Thank you!

  Married to the Mobster

  The mob sent him to kill me, but he owed me a debt…

  Years ago I saved his life, and we spent one hot night together before he disappeared. Now this bad boy's all grown up, and living a dangerous life. But when his Family decides to send a message to my father, it’s my life on the line.

  Only he can’t bring himself to do it when he realizes who I am.

  He bargains for my life.

  He argues to keep me as a hostage instead of killing me.

  He even agrees to marry me, but not for love.

  Marrying me is the only way he can repay the debt he owes me.

  He tells me he'll keep me alive only as long as his Boss allows it.

  What he doesn't know is that I've loved him since the first moment I laid eyes on him. I'll take him any way I can get him. Sleeping with the enemy never felt so good...

  But is there someone else who wants me dead?

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Dear truly treasured reader…

  Also by the Author

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  FINCH

  Sometimes I feel like the luckiest little bitch in New York City.

  Times like tonight, when I’m waved past the waiting crowd into the club. No one knows my name, but they know my face. And more importantly, I’m young, I’m hot, and the bouncers know that letting me into the club just makes all the losers standing outside want in even more. They’d never dare to card me, because they need me.

  But even if they did, I’ve got that covered, too. A respectably legal twenty-two according to my fake ID, but I’ve never had to use it.

  My blood starts heating up as I go down the stairs, my heart picking up the thumping rhythm of the music. I like this place because it’s a mixed crowed despite the Manhattan setting, but every song is six months past being cool, and the kids in here are trying so hard.

  Howard Fincher Donovan the Third never has to try hard. Not at anything in my whole life. I’ve been blessed with beauty as well as brains, with a mouth made for sucking dick as much as talking smack. That mouth has got me into trouble before, and it will again, no doubt.

  Probably right about now, because there’s a big gay bear hulking towards me. “Hey, pretty boy,” he says, leaning over me. I can smell his sweaty underarm.

  “Gross,” I say, bored instantly. The molly I dropped has finally kicked in and I’m starting to roll, and I could not give one single sweet shit about this fat fuck.

  “I love your look,” the bear bellows.

  “How in the hell do you think you have a shot here?”

  “What?” the guy shouts back.

  “Fuck off,” I holler. “You’ve got no chance.”

  The guy grins and nods. “Me too!” he shouts.

  I wait until the lights start strobing and when Bear Man glances the other way, I slip off and make my way around the rails that surround the sunken dance floor. I look over the crowd, wondering which lucky guy I’ll allow to have me tonight. When I see him, I’ll know him. I do this every Saturday night: go out and find the one guy glowing among the crowd. That’s the sign that he’s the one for me, for that night anyway.

  Only tonight there’s this guy who’s not glowing. He’s on fucking fire.

  It’s like he has a spotlight on him. Even when the lights go dark for the drop, or strobe to make the crowd bounce, I can see him lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. I’ve been staring at him as I wander up and down the outside of the dance floor, but I can’t see his face clearly with all the lights and the crowd throwing their fucking hands in the air or waving glow sticks around.

  What does he look like up close?

  Out of the corner of my eye I see the hairy, hopeful bear approaching me again, and I slip down the nearest stairs into the throng of people, moving with them, the rhythm carrying me along on the current that leads towards my fiery devil. He’s somewhere in the middle of the crowd, but I have to go in a spiral to get there, circling around and through so many hot, sweaty men. It’s like Dante’s Inferno, and if I fight my way to the seventh circle of this hell, I’ll find him.

  Nothing in life is ever easy, is it?

  I’m laughing already, the euphoria coming on in a wave, when the crowd parts and I see him, or rather, the back of his head, his black hair shaggy and hanging over his black turtleneck collar, like he’s a refugee from the seventies, or that shitty early-naughts revival of seventies’ fashion.

  He’s sexy enough to pull it off, though. The way his hips move in those black skinny jeans, the way he winds his body as he dances alone, eyes half-closed but with all eyes on him, the way he blocks out the world: it all suggests he’s confident, cocky, too sure of himself.

  God, I love that type.

  He turns just as I arrive in his space. “Nice threads,” I start to say, the candy high rushing through me and making me bitchy, but the words stick in my throat, because rising out of that stupid rolled turtleneck is the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen.

  He locks eyes with me.

  This guy’s face is the kind that hangs on the wall in the Uffizi: cream-colored skin pricked with the black smatterings of his five-o’clock shadow. His eyebrows are thick, straight, black as his hair, and his eyes are two burning blue stars staring out from between a fringe of thick lashes. They’re the same blue as the flame of a Bunsen burner, like fucking lasers or something.

  “I know you,” I say, and I’m starting to see things swirling a little around the edges of my vision.

  He smirks.

  “You’re Lucifer fuckin’ Morningstar, cast out of heaven and landed here in the grea
test city on earth.”

  He grabs me then and pulls me close, pressed up against his body. I can feel the heat coming off him from under his clothes, and I’m hard, instantly. “What the fuck did you just call me?” he asks, half-laughing. I repeat it, my tongue tripping over my words. The drugs are hitting hard tonight, or maybe it’s the sound of his voice that’s doing my head in.

  He sounds like rusty razorblades dripping with treacle.

  He laughs again. “Lucifer? Close enough.”

  “Hey,” says a voice next to us. Neither of us look away. “Hey,” the voice insists. But now I don’t want to look away. I know who the voice belongs to. It’s the Boring Bear, following me down here and trying to make himself look like a big man.

  My devil in black looks at him. Gives him a hard, eyebrow-gathered glare. The bear turns tail and runs while Lucifer turns back to me with a charming smile. His eyes are still dangerous, but I like dangerous. “Dance with me.”

  It’s not a request. I turn around, sling an arm around his neck, and give him my best booty-rub into his crotch. We fall back into the beat fast, and then I feel his hands on my body, up and down, exploring every inch of my tight silver pants and mesh shirt. He settles his fingers at my belly, tucking into the waistband of my pants, going no further.

  I put my hand on his, encouraging him to go lower, lower, faster, hurry up—I’m already aching for him to touch me, but he pulls his hand away sharply and turns me around to face him. I just about get freezer burn from his damn eyes. He leans in towards me, his lips brushing my ear as he murmurs, “Behave.”

  “I want your dick in my mouth,” I shout back over the music. His lips twitch, but he just pulls me close to dance again. “Why you playing so hard to get?” I ask in his ear, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  “Why are you giving it away so easy?”

  I might take offense at something like that, if I were the kind of guy to take offense. But I don’t mind being negged by someone as hot as this asshole. If he gets off on it, whatever. Guy likes to be teased?

  I can tease.

  I move with him, grinding against his thigh, leaning back so he has to grab me before I pull us both over—grab my ass, specifically, where I make sure it fits right into his palm. It’s working. I can feel it’s working where his crotch nestles into mine, feel him hard up against me. I’m about to turn around again and give him an upright-lap dance when he does this old-fashioned move, wraps one arm around my waist, and dips me.

  “Alright,” he says, his lips an inch away from mine, and his eyes just about burning mine out of their sockets. “I guess you can suck my dick.” He pulls me up again and I let out my laugh, the one everyone hates because it’s too loud, too much.

  But he just laughs with me, and the aura of light around him gets even brighter. Only then he looks over my shoulder, towards the entrance, and he freezes.

  “Damn. Rain check,” he says.

  “Fuck you,” I say back, and he finally looks into my eyes instead of past me.

  “Sorry,” he says, and has the grace to look it. “But I gotta go to work.”

  I put my hands on my hips and stop moving in the middle of the dance floor, ignoring the jostles of the crowd. “Listen,” I shout over the music, “if you don’t want your dick sucked, just fucking say that.”

  Before I know what’s happening, he pulls me in for a long, sweet kiss, and then presses his forehead into mine. “You’re amazing. But I gotta take care of business first. I’ll come find you later.”

  I want to say Fuck you again, and with any other guy, I would. “I might be sucking someone else’s dick by then,” I say as a compromise.

  “Then it’ll be my loss,” he says into my ear, and presses his lips to mine again in a farewell.

  And then he’s gone, the motherfucker, melting into the crowd while I can still taste him on my tongue.

  Chapter Two

  FINCH

  I head up to the bar and slam a shot, wondering what the hell to do now. Especially since that guy is not someone I’m gonna forget in a hurry. Maybe he will come back.

  Maybe he won’t.

  All I know is, I need company tonight. I take another turn of the room, even accept a drink from one guy well below my usual standards, but I can’t bring myself to hook up with any of them, not after I had that glimpse of perfection. I can’t get his face out of my head.

  It’s probably the drugs, I decide. I should get some fresh air. I make my way through the club to the fire exit. People aren’t supposed to use this exit, but everyone does. Only once you’re out, you can’t get back in; it locks behind itself. No one cares, though, because the alley it opens into is the traditional place for hookups. Well, there and the toilets, but the alley is a little more sanitary.

  When I get out there the cool night air stings my face. The quiet after all that club noise makes my eardrums feel like they’re ballooning in my skull. The wafting of eau de trash from the nearby dumpster only adds to my melancholy.

  Nights like this, I tend to remember Mom. Not the good things, just the last things. The way she was smiling at me, but scared of something. I could see that, young as I was. Thirteen years old and trying to be brave for her like she asked me to be. We were going away on an adventure, and we were going to be happy together.

  We never got our adventure, though. She got a bullet, and I got ostracized from the family.

  A cough interrupts my building black mood, and I glance over to the dumpster. Behind the dumpster I see a leg sticking out. Some hobo, I think, before I realize the shoe is shining; shining enough to reflect the light from the street. The cough comes again, and the shoe jerks. Another shoe joins it, the legs sticking straight out now.

  I take another drag on my cigarette and I contemplate those shoes. “Sure is a fine night,” I say loudly. “Seems a shame to waste it sitting behind a dumpster.”

  I want the guy to know I knows he’s there. “You looking for a hookup?” I call, half hopeful. This is how fucking far the Prince of New York City has fallen.

  The shoes go very still. “Get fucked,” says a hoarse voice.

  “I intended to,” I tell him. “Guy I was hoping for left me high and dry, though. How about you, buddy? You worth my time? Or are you some down-and-out looking for a fix?” While I’m talking, I’m walking, too. I can hear my voice echoing very slightly in the still air of the alleyway as I walk towards those shiny fucking shoes sticking out from behind the dumpster.

  “Whatever you’re on must be pretty fucking intense for you to be still sitting there in trash. You tripping balls?”

  I round the side of the dumpster and stop short. “Fuck,” I say. “It’s you.” I give my hyena laugh, stopping abruptly when the guy’s head rolls back against the black trash bags and he glares at me.

  It’s my guy from inside.

  He coughs again. “Leave me alone,” he says, his voice drifting.

  “You said you were coming back.” I crouch down next to him. “What happened to business?” It’s only when I get closer I notice the guy’s hands aren’t pale like the rest of his skin.

  They’re red. Red and wet.

  “Business happened to me,” he says wryly.

  “You’re bleeding?” It comes out as a question. “Shit, man, I better call—”

  “No. No cops.”

  “Ambulance, my friend,” I say. “You need medical professionals.”

  “No ambulance either,” the guy says, and then groans. He looks at me critically. “What the hell are you on?”

  “You,” I say truthfully. The high he’s giving me have left the drugs in the dust. He’s even prettier out here under the dim New York moon. I reach out to touch his face and he grabs my wrist. With his other hand he pulls out a flick knife and holds it up to my throat. The soft click of it opening seems to reverberate through the alleyway.

  The knife is pointing right under my chin, at the soft part where my head turns into my neck. I guess we all gotta go some ti
me, I just didn’t picture it with so much trash around me when I kicked it.

  Ah, well. I grin at him. “Go on, then.”

  “Listen,” he barks, his voice mean and hard. “You’re gonna turn around and walk out of this alley and forget my fucking face. You hear me?”

  This close up, I can see the green tinge to the guy’s skin, the yellow bruises that are just starting to come up on his cheek bone, and the split lip.

  And he’s young. Not as young as me; I just hit nineteen last week, but mid-twenties, max. Young enough that I wonder how he got so hard at his age. Because he’s a shark, this dude, even lying here in the gutter and stinking trash. He’s an apex predator, and I wandered right up to him and laid myself out like a tasty treat.

  I lick my lips. I’ve got a devil in me that makes me say stupid shit, makes me take chances just to see what happens. A curious devil.

  “But it’s such a pretty face,” I tell him. “How’m I supposed to forget a face like that?”

  The club door swings open again. A greasy thumping bass oozes out of the club, and a couple of guys draped in neon necklaces and bracelets fall into the alley, their faces stuck at the mouths like they’ve been glued together. I can hear them sucking tongues when the door swings shut again.