Mob Mistress Page 5

  “May I see the number you have for him?” Stacy asked when she had finished.

  “Sure,” she said, although the warning bells in her head told her it was a bad idea. Bobby had said not to talk about him with anyone. But how could she refuse when Stacy had just shared with her?

  She showed her the number and the other woman shook her head. “No, that’s the same one I had. It’s no good. Thanks, anyway,” she said, slipping off the barstool and taking her second drink with her.

  Gina leaned her forearms on the bar. “That was weird.”

  “I know. I kept waiting for her head to spin around and fire to come out of her mouth or something. You don’t really think she was being helpful, do you?”

  Gina shook her head. “No. She wants him back and is trying to keep her enemies close. I’d watch out for that one, if I were you.”

  “I will,” she said.

  She took the train home and sat on the sofa considering. Why hadn’t Bobby called? Was this a normal time span between dates for him? She wished she’d asked Stacy.

  If he did have a new phone, why hadn’t he given her the new number? Could he have lost her number?

  She considered calling his house. If his wife answered, she would just hang up. If he answered, she would apologize for the way their last date ended and let him know she missed him.

  She picked up the phone and dialed, her heart rate increasing as she waited for someone to pick up.

  * * * * *

  The house phone rang and he picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Um, hi!”

  He recognized Lexi’s voice.

  He blew out his breath. “Why are you calling me here?” he demanded. He didn’t even know how she got the number. “I’ll call you right back.” He hung up and called back with his cell phone.

  “What the hell, Lexi? Landlines are almost always tapped. Now the Feds have your number, you know. Did you want to be on their watch list?”

  “Oh God. I’m sorry,” she said, sounding nervous. “I just —”

  “Why didn’t you call my cell? I texted you the new number!”

  “No you didn’t!” she protested.

  “Where did you get my home number?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He needed to see her face to get to the root of this. “Are you at home?”

  “Um, yes, uh huh,” she said in an overly-agreeable voice.

  “I’ll be right over.”

  He drove to her place, trying to decipher her behavior. She said she hadn’t received his text with his new number. But how and why had she dug out his home number? And the fact that she’d gone to the trouble bothered him.

  He found her on the couch watching the television when he entered, but she immediately turned it off and stood up to walk toward him, tugging on her fingers.

  “You’re in trouble with me, Lexi,” he told her.

  Chapter Five

  “I know,” she said, trying to appear calm.

  She’d been pacing the apartment, attempting to not freak out. She’d checked her text messages when they hung up and found Bobby had been right — he had texted her a new number several days before. It hadn’t shown up as a new message for some reason, so she hadn’t noticed it.

  Even without it, she shouldn’t have called him, though. Now he was angry and she wasn’t even sure what that meant with a guy like him. Would he be violent? Would he break up with her? Kick her out of the apartment? He had threatened a spanking if she broke his rules, would that be the worst of it? Or had that just been kinky talk?

  She fought tears now as she realized she was in way over her head. Why she thought getting mixed up with a married man, much less a mobster was a good idea was beyond her.

  Bobby looked grim but not particularly violent. He took in her tears and sighed. “Come here,” he said with a tone of resignation.

  She drew in a breath and closed the distance between them. She flinched when he reached for her, but he only drew her into his arms in an embrace. Relieved, she allowed his strength to envelope her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said into his jacket.

  He pulled away and took her chin, bending his head to catch her eyes when she didn’t look up. “Lexi. We have rules. The rules are for your safety and mine. What were you thinking calling my house?”

  She swallowed, not sure how to answer.

  “And where did you get my home number, anyway?”

  She tried to pull her chin from his hand, but his look turned forbidding and she stilled, trapped in his gaze.

  He raised his eyebrows, waiting.

  The knot in her belly tightened.

  “Lexi?”

  “I saw your ex-girlfriend at Plush. She asked me for your new number.”

  His jaw clenched. “I see. Did you give it to her?”

  “Well, no! I didn’t have it. Well, at least I didn’t realize I had it. I’m sorry, I never saw your text.”

  “Would you have given it to her if you had it?”

  She flushed, remembering how she had shown Stacy the number she had. She lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t have needed to, because...” she trailed off, realizing her argument lacked logic.

  “Because?”

  She sighed and blinked back the water brimming in her eyes. “She told me you switched cell numbers a lot and I should just call your house. She gave me the number. Then I felt like I had to reciprocate and show her the number I had.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really fucked up.”

  His face softened. “You did, yes,” he said, but he didn’t sound angry, the way he had on the phone. “I’m going to punish you for it.”

  “Okay,” she said in a small voice. She could take a spanking if that’s what it took to make it up to him.

  “Go in the bedroom and take off your clothes.”

  He followed her and watched her undress. Her hands trembled as she unbuttoned her jeans and pulled off her blouse. There was nothing sexy about stripping for him this time, though her body did not get the message, her skin heating under his gaze.

  “All of them?” she croaked.

  He nodded.

  She unhooked her bra and tossed it on the floor, then stepped out of her panties.

  He unbuckled his belt and slid it out of the loops.

  She took a step backward. She had never been whipped in her life, and fear turned her hands icy.

  He grabbed both the pillows from the bed and stacked them on top of one another at the side. “Lay over these.”

  Her heart hammered in her chest, panic welling. Her feet did not move. He frowned at her, but then his expression softened, as if he registered her fear.

  “It’s okay, Lex. It’s just a spanking.”

  His reassurance eased her anxiety and she stumbled forward, climbing over the pillows to lie down as he instructed. Her face flamed as she settled into the humiliating position, her bare ass high in the air, perfectly situated for his punishment.

  He wound the buckle end of his belt around his fist, and she tried to contain her anxiety by biting the bedspread. She heard the sound a split second before she felt the first lick of leather across her ass, the line of fire surprising her with its sting, but not nearly as terrible as she had feared. She jumped as he laid down the next stripe and the following. Again and again he brought the belt down, burning her bare flesh with each stroke. She wriggled and rolled under the continuous onslaught and found herself counting strokes as a way of managing the intensity. After the first twenty, it got easier, the shock wearing away as her entire bottom now flamed. After twenty-five, though, panic returned.

  “Please! I’m sorry!” she gasped.

  Bobby did not answer, just continued snapping the leather across her tender cheeks.

  “Bobby! Please! Please?” She reached her hand back and tried to cover her vulnerable backside, but he caught her wrist and bent it behind her back, restraining her.

  “The spanki
ng is over when I decide, Lexi.”

  Something about his words and the way he pinned her down and continued spanking flipped a switch in her, desire flaring alongside the pain. She wanted him to go on, wanted more of his cruel leather, the bite of his belt morphing into something almost pleasurable. Almost, but not quite.

  She struggled against his hold, her hips undulating more wantonly now. “Please,” she begged, though she hardly knew what she wanted. “Please.”

  He continued whipping her and she began to cry, the eruption of tears an unexpected release. He slowed his pace. “Do you call me at home, Lex?”

  “Never,” she sobbed.

  “Do you talk about me with other people? Give out my number?”

  “No, sir!” She didn’t know where the sir had come from — she had never lived in the south or with military types, but it rolled out with the respect he had just earned.

  “Good girl,” he said, releasing the wrist he’d pinned and stroking his hand down the length of her back to rest on her twitching buttocks.

  She moaned at his touch, lost in the sensations of pain and need. She found him beside her on the bed, pulling her into his arms. She snuggled in tightly, breathing the scent of him, dampening his expensive shirt with her tears. She felt his lips on her hair, and he continued to run his hands up and down her back and over her heated bottom.

  “I’m sorry,” she croaked.

  “It’s forgiven,” he murmured.

  Nestled against him with the soothing motion of his hands over her bare skin, she drifted to sleep. She didn’t know how long she slept — probably only a few minutes, because she woke in the same position, Bobby still cradling her.

  “I’m really sorry, Bobby,” she repeated.

  “Enough,” he said, grasping her jaw and pulling her face to meet his. For a moment she thought the aggression was anger, but then she caught the dark in his eyes and realized it stemmed from passion.

  * * * * *

  “It’s over,” he told her. “No more apologizing. Come here.” She looked so beautiful, naked, her ass reddened by his belt, her hair falling in her face. She could not quite meet his eye and the vulnerability he saw in her tugged at his heart. He pulled her mouth to his, kissing her plump lips with a bruising ferocity.

  She responded in kind, instantly winding her arms around his neck, kissing back as if eager for the connection. She straddled him, reaching for the button on his pants. He tweaked her nipple, twisting to make her gasp. She pulled his pants off and crouched over his cock, taking him into her mouth.

  He was already rock hard for her, and the sensation of her hot, wet mouth closing around his length nearly drove him mad. She brought him up to a fever pitch, but he stopped her before he came. Grabbing a condom from the bedside table, he ripped it open and slid it on.

  “Climb on me,” he ordered, his voice rough.

  She smiled and crawled up to straddle his cock, rubbing its head over her juicy slit a few times before impaling herself on it.

  “Oh God, Lexi,” he groaned. She rode him, resting her hands on his shoulders, undulating her back and hips to create a rhythm. Her face flushed, her dilated eyes turned glassy. She began to move faster, fingers digging into his skin.

  Picking up the belt that still lay on the bed, he wrapped it around her bottom, using it to leverage her hips to meet his, slamming her against him with a slapping force.

  She made a keening cry and arched, throwing her head back and stilling as she shuddered in orgasm. He cupped her breasts, pinching both nipples as he watched her ecstatic peak.

  After a moment, she opened her eyes and looked apologetic. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go so fast,” she said.

  He pushed her off him. “Climb back over those pillows.”

  She looked alarmed, but obeyed without question.

  He let her worry as he climbed onto his knees behind her and pushed in. “I’m not going to whip you again,” he said, amused. “That is, unless you need me to.”

  “No, sir,” she said in a small voice.

  He thrust in and out, the heat from her punished ass magnifying the sense of power he’d experienced spanking her. Though it hadn’t been for pleasure, it affected him just the same.

  He pulled her arm behind her back, pinning her wrist the way he had when he’d whipped her and she bucked in a second orgasm. Satisfaction at having read her correctly, the confirmation that his restraint had changed the tone of the spanking for her, added to the euphoria of domination. He slammed into her until he reached an ecstatic crest, which ripped through his body like a tsunami.

  Completely spent, he collapsed over her and they panted together, their two breaths becoming one. He wrapped her in his arms and rolled to his side, his cock still inside her. Spanking always formed a bond, but he had never experienced the depth of tenderness he felt for Lexi in that moment.

  When his cock slipped out, she gave a little sigh of disappointment and he rolled her over to face him, stroking her hair out of her eyes. “Good girl,” he murmured.

  She snuggled closer. “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you need money, Lex?” he asked, sorry when the open, trusting look on her face shuttered. “Is that why you called me? Or did you want that plane ticket to see your sister?”

  Her eyes glittered with tears, which she blinked back. “I need money,” she whispered, gulping. “That makes me sound like the worst kind of woman, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” he reassured her. “You belong to me. That means I take care of you. You can call me when you need help. Just not at home.”

  Lexi began to tremble in his arms, holding back tears.

  “Don’t cry, baby. How much do you need?”

  She ducked her chin, pressing her forehead against his chest as the tears emerged. “I owe rent at the salon. I’m not an employee there, I just rent the chair. I’m over two months behind on rent and the owner told me if I didn’t pay by tomorrow, I’m out. I guess this isn’t my week.”

  He caressed her back, the natural curve sensuous under his palm. “How much?”

  “About thirty-five hundred total. But fifteen hundred would probably get her off my back.”

  He kissed the place her ear met her face, then her temple. “I’ll take care of it,” he murmured.

  * * * * *

  Tears of relief squeezed out of the corners of her eyes. “Thank you.”

  He winked. “You’ll owe me.”

  She narrowed her eyes with mock suspicion. “What exactly will I owe you?”

  Bobby’s face split into a crocodile grin. “What do you have to offer?”

  She giggled. “Not much. A lifetime’s worth of free haircuts?”

  “Hmm.”

  “How about anal?”

  He laughed, cupping her sore bottom and squeezing it. He drew his finger up her crack, making her squirm as he neared her back hole. “You’ll take it in the ass any time I decide you deserve it, little girl,” he growled in her ear. “That’s not yours to give.”

  She rubbed her clit over his leg, his words making her ache.

  “No, I think owning you is sufficient for now. Although I might collect on a haircut or two.”

  She snuggled against him, wondering if she were crazy for feeling so warm toward a man who had just taken his belt to her ass.

  “I’m not judging you, but how did you get so far behind financially?”

  She sagged. “A car T-boned mine last fall. I ended up in the hospital with a concussion. I couldn’t work for three weeks, and I didn’t have health insurance, so the hospital bills cost me thirty grand.”

  “That’s why you got so nervous in the car?”

  She exhaled. “Yeah. I couldn’t afford to buy a new car, and so I guess I didn’t get back on the horse soon enough because now I can’t stand to be in one.”

  “Sounds like a little post traumatic stress disorder. I know someone who can help you release that, if you want.”

  She looked up at him, tryi
ng to gauge whether he was serious.

  “It’s called EMDR, have you heard of it?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t really know how it works, but basically you move your eyes left and right while you tell the story of what happened and it erases all the automatic physical responses that can get triggered by the trauma.”

  “Have you done it?” she asked, surprised to find this apparently open-minded side to him. He certainly didn’t appear to be the soy protein shake and wheat grass kind of guy.

  He grinned. “Yeah. Does that surprise you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “My father was gunned down in front of me when I was sixteen. He died bleeding in my arms. Afterward I was twitchy — if a door banged open, I’d draw my gun, that kind of thing. I dated this therapist who released it, just like that. One session. Do you want to see her?”

  “Another ex-girlfriend of yours?” she asked skeptically.

  He smiled, “It was years ago. And I’m sorry about Stacy. She’s having a hard time letting go.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  He smiled. “I’m glad you don’t seem threatened.”

  She swallowed. She didn’t feel threatened by Stacy, but the discussion of all his ex-girlfriends served as a reminder that Bobby Manghini was not a man she could get attached to, despite the way he seemed to be worming his way into her heart.

  “So I asked you a question,” he said, with a light slap on her raw cheek.

  She wriggled closer to get away from his hand. “How much does it cost?”

  This time his hand came down harder. “I will take care of it. You think I would suggest it and not pay for it?”

  She squeezed her butt together and giggled. “Okay, yes. I would like to try it. But if she asks me for your phone number I’m going to tell her to take a hike.”

  He laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Good girl.”

  She didn’t know why those words turned her to mush. Or why being “owned” by Bobby Manghini held so much appeal, especially considering what he’d just done to her. But in that moment it didn’t matter. She felt safe and warm in his strong arms, her problems all handled by him with ease.