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Punching Bag
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Taken by the Mafia King Can't Put the Lid Back On
PaigeThe scalding hot shower spray pounded down on my shoulders, and I sank my teeth into my lower lip until I tasted blood to keep from crying. Dark memories, dark rooms full of angry men with all the power over me they could want, fought for my attention. Dozens of them, hundreds, maybe more. In the end, I didn’t even know how many bastards there were.I forced myself to grab and open the bottle of rosemary, mint, and lavender-scented body wash I’d ordered a few weeks ago. It was so sharp and herbal that it was the only thing I’d found that could keep my mind off my body while I showered. I poured a dollop onto a loofah and began scrubbing myself.Tom hadn’t done anything I didn’t want him to do. I initiated the kiss. He barely touched my fucking side, and God help me, it felt good until he hit one of my scars. I had just remembered the bastard who gave it to me, the shine of the knife as he did, and I couldn’t see Tom anymore. When I thought about that moment in the gym, I couldn’
Taken by the Mafia King A Break in the Case
TommasoOne of these days, I’d stop expecting everything to change at the drop of a hat. Nearly a week had passed since the training incident, and Paige wasn’t avoiding me by any means, but she hadn’t sought me out again. Since I had my own place now, I tried to work out once a day in my home gym, even if only for a little while, and I always made sure to tell Miranda I was going. No sign of Paige. We ate dinner together every night, and breakfast most mornings, and she’d been perfectly pleasant, but she didn’t even tiptoe up to that line again. She just worked and went to therapy, and I kept finding her journaling in the evenings, a new habit she’d picked up. I wasn’t disappointed, exactly, just a little confused. But I’d give her whatever space she needed.Plus, it wasn’t like I wasn’t busy. I ran my hand though my curls and knocked back the remainder of a glass of scotch I’d been refilling since dinner. Lyle had gotten me some information, and so had Stan and Carp. I flicked on the
Taken by the Mafia King The Call
PaigeI clicked from my email to my drawing program and back again. The client had ridiculously specific requests for the logo for their new side business, a candles and wax melts shop they were adding to their stationery empire, but that wasn’t really why I was clicking back and forth. I just couldn’t focus. It had been three days since I got the idea for a strawberry-peanut butter swirl ice cream and accidentally discovered Tom’s contact found McKenna, and I hadn’t heard a goddamn thing. Every night, I went to sleep terrified that she’d been killed, and no one wanted to tell me. Every morning, I woke up sure today would be the day we heard. But lunch had already passed with nothing.My phone rang, and I picked it up. Non-American number. I swallowed down a sigh. As I got more comfortable in Tom’s house, I’d been working on calling Mom once a week, but she’d taken that as an invitation to call me whenever she wanted.No, wait. I peered at the number. That wasn’t a French country code
Taken by the Mafia King Airborne
TommasoI paced back and forth in my office. McKenna had given the go-ahead to come to London whenever we wanted the day after she got home, and Paige said she wanted to go right away. I wanted to do that for her. But taking her on a commercial jet seemed fucking awful every time I thought about it. Over the last month, I’d learned she’d only been on one flight before her kidnapping, so her main experience with commercial planes would be the flight back from Egypt where I kept her handcuffed to me, and she expected me to sell her at any moment. It would only make sense to take a private plane. But I didn’t have one, which would mean borrowing Killian’s. Even though he’d sold the bird that had taken a nosedive and had landed me in jail for a day, he got a new one, but I was still nervous.Fuck. Okay. I just needed to get over that. I might never like flying enough to make it worth having a private plane of my own, but I could take one flight to England and back. For Paige. Everything h
Taken by the Mafia King Jetsetter
PaigeEmotions warred for attention in my mind as I pulled the little wheeled suitcase I’d ordered for pickup after Tom told me about the plane across the tarmac. Excitement put a bounce in my step as I thought about seeing McKenna again. Stress weighed me down when I remembered how bad my first few days had been, and how she hadn’t even been home for a week yet. Anticipation fizzed through my veins as I tried to guess what a private plane might be like in the main cabin, not shoved in the bathroom.Next to me, Tom looked like he was doing his best to stay calm. He’d been quiet all morning, and as we rounded the final corner in the small airport outside the city to see a small, private plane and Killian standing next to it, he turned white. I wanted to reach out to him, but not where Killian could potentially take it home for Sera to gossip about. Or where she could see, if she’d just walked away.He closed the distance between us with a wide smile. “I’ll help with suitcases, but the
Taken by the Mafia King Walking On Glass
TommasoI glanced at Paige out of the corner of my eye as we stepped into the elevator. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hand in mine was tense. She kept glancing around the matte black walls like something was going to jump out, but she wouldn’t look at me. Something had happened when we walked into the hotel, and I had no idea what.“Are you okay?” I asked.She nodded absently.I tapped my foot and wished I could pace. But I’d have to let go of her hand for that and there wasn’t much room. Did she want me to let go of her hand? She hadn’t released mine, but more often than not when she got tense like this, she wanted me to disappear.The elevator dinged, and a few other guests stepped on. Paige froze up. They hit a button for a few floors above and chatted amongst themselves until they departed. I expected her to melt once we were alone again, but nothing changed.“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.She nodded again, still not looking at me. My heart sank. When we finally reache
Taken by the Mafia King Bunkmates
PaigeI blinked awake in the dark. My body ached from sleeping in an awkward position, and my hair was matted against my cheek. I sucked in a breath and didn’t recognize a single smell. I flipped onto my back, and there was no sign of the mural I’d grown used to on the ceiling. My chest squeezed. I’d let my guard down, and someone had taken me again. I should’ve known I’d never really escape.My breath began to race as my eyes adjusted, and I spotted a suitcase on the floor. My suitcase. The events of the last day, the trip to London and closing my eyes for a minute when we arrived, filtered back in. I swiped my hand over the silky soft comforter and tried to steady my breathing like Lauren had taught me. Not kidnapped. Just traveling.Once I could believe that, I sat up. Out my window, the lights of the city glowed, but not a shred of sunrise threatened the horizon. My stomach growled. I’d fallen asleep without dinner. Or lunch? This time change was really going to fuck me up.I chan
Taken by the Mafia King Warmth
TommasoI woke to my phone softly blaring a bombastic classical piece I used as an alarm most mornings. I groaned in the back of my throat and started to reach to shut it off, but a weight on my chest stopped me in my tracks. I opened my eyes, and my breath caught.In the night, Paige had draped herself across me. Her fiery hair spilled across the plain white of my pajama shirt, and the early morning sunlight illuminated the angles of her face. Though she’d started filling out, regaining some roundness in her cheeks and lips, her cheekbones still cut a sharp angle, and her Roman nose cast a shadow on the lower half of her face. In this light, I could even see a few faint freckles dusted across the middle of her face. My heart pounded unevenly, and I shut my alarm off as subtly as I could. She looked peaceful, an expression I saw so rarely, but it suited her just as well as her furrowed-brow determination. I ached to brush the hair out of her face, to press a kiss to her forehead, to f
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