The Promise: Mafia Vows Two Read online

  I might be a total mess. He might not be able to share his feelings or even recognize them, meaning he’s as much of a mess as me when it comes down to it, but this we’re good at. We always work this way. In bed.

  I go to him, and the minute I touch him, bare skin to cotton, he puts his arms around me and takes me in a heated kiss that steals my breath and makes my heart thunder.

  It’s only moments though before he stiffens and pulls away. “We can’t,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “What happened to you. You’re traumatized; you were assaulted, went through hell…”

  I stand back from him, hands on my hips, not caring I’m buck naked. “You know what I think?”

  He shakes his head and tries to speak, but I carry on before he has the chance. “I think you’re the one who is traumatized. I think you’re freaked out by what you saw…by what I did, and now you don’t want me, so you’re hiding behind the excuse of worrying about me.”

  His face darkens. “You’re so far off it’s not even funny. What you did? It was…glorious.”

  I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face at the way he drags the word out, showing me he really sees it that way.

  “Powerful as fuck. You didn’t know we were coming, yet you were going to go down in a blaze of glory and take that raping piece of shit’s dick with you. I don’t not want you, Maya. I just don’t want to start something that puts you in a bad place if things suddenly go wrong for you … mentally or emotionally.”

  “I have my word, right? Red. I haven’t forgotten it. I can say red, and we stop.”

  “You can say stop, Maya, and it all stops.” He strokes my cheek.

  “Well, there you go, then. I have two words. I feel safe in this, with you. I want you. Want this. I want to have a few moments in my day where I don’t spend every damn second replaying my mother’s death. Can you give me that?”

  He nods and takes a step to me. “I can give you that. What do you need? How do you want this?”

  I love that he’s asking me. I also love the way I won’t feel judged when I tell him what I want.

  “I want it rough. Hard. I need it.”

  “Okay.” He comes another step closer. “Rough and hard it is then.”

  He sweeps his hand down my body, past the side of my breast, down the curve of my hip to mid-thigh, and it’s not hard or rough, but then on the sweep back up, he grabs a handful of flesh from my bottom and squeezes, ending it with a pinch. A hard slap makes me moan as he smiles darkly.

  “Don’t ever think I don’t want you. There’s nothing you could do, or that could happen to you that would make me stop wanting you,” he says gruffly.

  Then he’s on me, kissing me, hands in my hair using it to twist my head to the angle he wants. He bends his head and takes one of my breasts into his wet mouth, sucking hard, making me moan as his teeth scrape along the puckered flesh of my nipple. He bites at it, then sucks again, then more bites, nips, and hard pulls. It sets my core pulsing in time to each hard suck.

  After spending time on that breast, he moves to the other, and I watch as his dark head bends to me, and he repeats his actions. Fingers find my folds and part them, and without warning, he plunges two thick digits inside me, pressing on that spot internally that makes me lose it. His thumb provides a counterpoint to the internal pressure by rubbing at my clit.

  I’m lost in nothing but sensation, and he’s not stopping, or going slow, or giving me any chance to catch my breath and think. His mouth leaves my breast and goes to my neck, kissing me there before sucking my flesh hard enough I know it will leave a mark.

  “I want to cover your whole body in love bites, and keep adding to them so you’re always marked by me,” he murmurs into my ear.

  His words are more than a little unhinged, but they turn me on all the same.

  He withdraws his fingers from me much more carefully than he pushed them in, takes his shirt and sweatpants off, and grabs me with both hands behind my thighs.

  “Wrap your legs around me,” he orders.

  I do as he says, and he backs me up against the wall. My legs are wrapped around his waist, and he pushes me against the wall, my back hitting it hard enough to knock some of the breath out of me. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t ask if I’m okay; instead his broad head is already lined up with my aching pussy. Nudging it against me, he smiles, and it’s a promise and a threat of what’s to come.

  “Hold on, baby,” he says, and slams into me.

  I cry out at the sensation, the mix of pain and pleasure his brutal taking of me causes. Again, he doesn’t stop or pause, simply pulls out almost all the way and slams back in, hard.

  “Fuck,” I gasp.

  “Yes, we are.” He laughs against my neck.

  I watch him for a moment, the flex of his arms as he pushes in and out of me. The strength of him as he works against me, taking us both to a pinnacle we crave and need, me only able to hold on for the ride.

  Letting my eyes drift closed, I drown in the sensations of his hard chest against my breasts, his big cock filling me, hitting all the places I need. His scent is gorgeous, masculine, and a bit exotic, courtesy of the aftershave he’s wearing today, something fresh, but more oceanic than lemony.

  His breathing is ragged, and he’s tense. I think he’s close to coming. I open my eyes to find him staring at me with such intensity it knocks me sideways.

  The way he’s looking at me, his big body working, and his groan of arousal all conspire to push me over an edge I didn’t realize was near. My fingers curl around his shoulders, nails digging in as I cry out, almost screaming with the intensity of it.

  My back is knocking against the wall, and between that, my cries, and his grunts, no way people can’t hear. Not caring, I ride out the most intense orgasm of my life as the wall scrapes the skin on my back raw.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Damen

  When we both come down, we seem further apart than ever. I want to fix this distance and don’t know how. Well, I do know how, but if I say those words and they aren’t real, what does that make me?

  A liar.

  Worse, if they are real, what does that mean for me? For her? That poison my father had in him, the cruelness seemingly activated by his love for my mother would be there, lurking.

  This way we can have it all. I will protect her, care for her, but I won’t fuck it up, hurt her. Love, romantic love at least, makes people selfish and cruel.

  I pull my clothes from the floor and start getting dressed, Maya goes into her own room through the adjoining door, and comes back a few minutes later dressed too, in turned up jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved t-shirt. It’s sunny, but not particularly warm.

  “You said we ought to go for a walk,” she says.

  “Yep, let’s get out of here a bit. It’s making me stir crazy being cooped up in this place.” I don’t add it’s not the best thing for my mental health being in the space where I found out about my mother’s death. The space where my father used to beat her black and blue, and she never stopped him.

  “Your scary friend, Andrius, wants to come.” Maya shoots me a shrewd glance. “He’s not right in the head, you know?”

  “No, he’s not. Few of us in this house are,” I say, and her face hardens.

  “Do you mean me?”

  “You’re clearly not right in the head if you want to go after Costas, but I kind of like that about you, because your madness matches my madness.”

  “Come on,” she huffs with a roll of her eyes, but I see the twitch of her lips before she turns away.

  We walk out of the room together and down the stairs. “Going for that walk if any of you want to come,” I shout out.

  “Count me in.” Andrius steps into the hallway.

  He’s wearing a sweater and dark jeans. He still has a slight limp if you look closely, from when the poor bugger got kneecapped. Luckily for him, the people doing the kneecapping didn’t know how to perform it correctl
y, and he got away with less damage than he would have otherwise.

  “Me too,” Liam says as he joins us.

  “I’ll be writing down some decorating tips for you, while you guys get some fresh air.” Reece winks at me, and I bite down the urge to slap him.

  I am grateful to these men for helping me out when I needed it, and grateful to Andrius for bringing them in as back up, but I want my house back now.

  The thought pulls me up short. My house? Since when did I start to think of this place that way? I can’t stand being here, so why would I think of it as mine? Maybe though, with some of the decorating Reece jokes about, I could reclaim this space? Whitewash the memories as well as the walls?

  The fact is, I don’t intend on letting Maya go. She isn’t safe, and the apartment in the city center isn’t going to cut it. We need somewhere to live, and this place is perfect. It does need a total rehaul, though. I can’t sit on half the furniture for fear it will break.

  Andrius heads to the door and holds it open. Maya grabs a thick cardigan from the coat stand by the entrance and pulls it on. I shrug on a leather jacket, and Liam puts on his padded bomber, and we all head out.

  “Don’t you want a coat?” Maya asks Andrius.

  She barely talks to him, scared of him I think, but now she addresses him directly, and her tone is more friendly than usual.

  He smirks. “I come from Russia. Trust me, this is warm.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Russia,” she says.

  “Really?” He turns his cool gaze her way, and a spark of jealousy ignites in my gut.

  I tell myself not to be stupid. She’s only making conversation; this is a good thing. After all, didn’t I only tell her today to give these men a break? Andrius is madly in love with Violet. Obsessed is more like it, to be honest, so he isn’t looking for any side loving. I’m paranoid.

  “Yeah, I’ve been fascinated with it for a long time. I read about the Tsars and the revolution. Then what your people did in the Second World War. Everyone talks about how America and Britain won that war, but Russia was instrumental in the victory.” She gets this look on her face, and I know she’s going to regurgitate one of her facts. Again, this pulls me up short. I’m starting to know her, and it’s slightly terrifying.

  “Do you know,” she says, and I smile. Yep. Fact time. “That toward the end of the war, the Red Army were killing on average of eight hundred Nazis a day, the allies about eighty. Yet the British talk as if it was their war, and they alone, with the help of America, won it.”

  “I did not know this,” Andrius says, serious. “But I did know of the great sacrifice my nation made. I’m not actually Russian, I’m Ukrainian, but I also lived in Russia for many years, and have dual citizenship. Whilst I joke about not being Russian, in reality, I am proud of both my homelands. We are tough people.”

  “Yes, it would seem so, from what I’ve read. Anyway, that’s why I’d like to go one day. See Moscow and St. Petersburg.”

  “The British did their fair share,” Liam grumbles.

  I sigh. This doesn’t need to degenerate into a fight over who did what in the war, not when we’re all military men, and this sort of discussion can get heated.

  “Is Allyov still going to go ahead with the deal, despite this bullshit from Costas?” I ask Andrius.

  I don’t care that Maya is here; she’s going to be part of my life, and she’s part of the family. Stamatis’ flesh and blood, so she deserves to know what’s going on. No more of her being kept in the dark by the men around her.

  She shoots me a surprised glance, as does Andrius, who seems more uncomfortable with Liam’s presence, if his annoyed glare the Brit’s way is anything to go by.

  “Don’t mind me,” Liam drawls. “I know you’re all on the wrong side of the law. Don’t say anything that could incriminate you, and we won’t have to fall out.”

  I get where he’s coming from. He’s not squeaky clean, and I know because I did my research. But he’s not a criminal, not even close, and he has a lot of contacts in law enforcement. I won’t discuss anything he would feel duty bound to pass on.

  “Yes,” Andrius says. “I don’t think any of this makes a difference to him. It’s not as if Costas was involved with this. Stamatis was right to keep him out of most of the business the way he did.”

  The jangle of a cell phone ringing interrupts us. Maya takes her phone out of her pocket, looks at the screen, frowns, and ends the call without answering. I saw the name on the screen. Spiros. The bastard. Still, at some point, she’s going to have to speak to him.

  “You will have to talk sometime, you know?” I lower my voice so the others don’t hear.

  “Oh, yeah? Look at this text he sent me.” She shoves the phone at me, pulling the text up before handing it to me.

  I read it, and at first, it seems innocuous enough, then I get to the bit about Crete and my blood boils. “Motherfucker,” I exclaim.

  The two men stop walking and turn to me. “Problem?”

  You could say that. “Family shit,” I say.

  I hang back so I can talk to Maya. “You are going to need to talk to him to sort out your mother’s funeral and go through her things. I’ll go with you,” I offer. “Plus, you need to go back home at some point to get all your stuff together.”

  “Why?” Her forehead dimples between her brows in that adorable way it does when she frowns.

  “You need your stuff. You’re not going back there, I assume.”

  “No, but I was going to leave my things there, until I get somewhere to stay sorted out.”

  I stop walking all together. “You have somewhere to stay.”

  “Yeah, I mean permanently.”

  “You have somewhere to stay—permanently. With me.”

  “Erm, no. This fake marriage can be ended soon. I don’t think there’s a risk from Yannis anymore. he doesn’t want me, so I can find somewhere to live and be out of your hair.”

  “Oh, and you don’t think Costas might be gunning for you? Seeing as you didn’t die as planned, he didn’t get to blame the MC guys he was working with, or at least not enough to cover up his part in it, and now his father has disowned him?”

  I can see from her expression that she’s thought of this, all too often. “Maya, what gives? You aren’t safe. You’re staying with me.”

  “We’re going to get Costas though, right? Once he’s … taken care of, then I will be free to leave. I’ll be safe.”

  I feel sick. I stare at her. “Do you want to leave?”

  She looks down at the ground, kicks a few leaves, and sighs. “I don’t want to leave, no. But I won’t stay in some weird limbo with you. I’ll give you space, I already told you that. But if you don’t love me, I won’t be staying forever.” She lifts her gaze to me, and her eyes are so green in the late afternoon light. “I want it all, Damen. The dream. I want to love and be loved. I want kids one day possibly. A puppy for sure. I want to make plans and be with the man I love until I grow old.”

  She watches my face for a long moment and obviously doesn’t like what she sees, because she sighs and kicks the leaves again before walking off at a brisk pace to catch up with the others.

  I’m about to go after her when something stops me. A black car is idling at the crossroads to our right. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t looked around me in exasperation, but now I see it, and it strikes me as odd. It’s a big off-roader with tinted windows. And it isn’t going anywhere. Not wanting to make a big show of having noticed it, I walk to join the others, not running as I want to.

  I reach them and nudge Andrius. “Don’t look, but I think we’ve got company.”

  Andrius keeps his gaze firmly ahead, but I can see him scanning the landscape. In front of us, about a minute away, is an area with outside benches, some trees, and beyond that a play area for children that is currently deserted.

  “Head to the kids play area, okay?” he says. “We can take cover if we need to.”

 
“Concur,” Liam adds.

  We veer off in that direction, keeping our pace casual and our eyes ahead.

  “Are we going to be okay?” The fear in Maya’s voice kills me.

  “Yeah, baby, we’ll be okay. There are three of us, all armed, and all Special Forces; you’re going to be safe.”

  “You better be safe too, Damen.” Her voice is quiet but determined.

  I can’t promise her, so I don’t say anything. If it comes to a toss-up between her life and mine, I’ll lay mine on the line every damn time.

  We reach the benches and the trees, both of which provide good cover, and I relax a little. I turn to the side, and without making it too obvious, look back the way we came. The car is driving slowly down the road now, but as it nears us, it speeds up. The doors open, and I pull Maya behind the largest tree as at the same time I grab my gun from my concealed holster.

  Something is pushed out of the car as it slows for a moment before roaring off down the road and around the corner in a squeal of tires.

  There’s a woman in the road. Bound, gagged, bruised.

  “Oh my God!” Maya cries out.

  Oh crap, it’s Stella.

  Maya is moving before I can stop her. My gun is still trained on the vehicle as it disappears out of sight.

  Maya is on her knees, bent over Stella when I glance back her way.

  Her friend is breathing, thank God. Liam reaches them and gently moves Maya to one side. “Let me take a look at her,” he says.

  Maya lets him, and I notice she’s not the shaking mess I thought she’d be. It seems she’s hardening to things, to this life, which is the last thing I wanted for her. Still, it will make what’s to come easier to bear, because no way is this finished yet. Stella, lying shaking and bloody in the road, is proof enough.

  Liam gently pulls the tape from Stella’s mouth, and she takes in two big breaths before letting out wracking sobs.