Brutal Prince: An Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance (Brutal Birthright Book 1) Read online

  “Now, Aida,” Callum says, holding up his hands in warning. “That’s water under the bridge.”

  “Is it?” I snarl. “Because Sebastian is still hobbling around. While this punch-drunk fuck boy is apparently still on your payroll.”

  Jack rolls his eyes, sauntering over to the fruit bowl on the counter and picking out a nice, juicy apple.

  “Put your bitch on a leash,” he says to Callum.

  To my surprise, Callum drops his hands and turns on Jack, his face still but his eyes blazing.

  “What did you say?” he demands.

  I see the dull gleam of metal inside Jack’s suit jacket. A Ruger LC9 in the inside pocket, hanging over the back of his chair, instead of securely attached to his body. What a fucking amateur.

  In two steps I’ve reached the jacket and pulled out the gun. I check that it’s loaded, then slip off the safety and chamber a round.

  Both Callum and Jack freeze like deer at the sound of the bullet sliding into the chamber.

  “Aida!” Callum says sharply. “Don’t you—”

  I’m already pointing the gun at Jack.

  “Leaving your weapon unattended.” I click my tongue, shaking my head in mock disapproval. “Very sloppy, Jackie boy. Where did you get your training, the Chicago Police Academy? Or was it clown college?”

  “Get fucked, you lippy cunt,” Jack snarls, his blocky face red with rage, and his teeth bared. “If you weren’t married to him—”

  “You’d what? Get your teeth kicked in like last time?” I snort.

  Jack is so mad that I know he’d already be charging at me, if I didn’t have the gun pointed right at his chest.

  Callum is in a more ambivalent position. On the one hand, I can tell he’s pissed that I pulled a gun in his kitchen and pointed it at his bodyguard. On the other hand, he doesn’t like the way Jack is talking to me. Not one bit.

  “Put the gun down, Aida,” he orders me.

  But it’s Jack he’s looking at with cold fury in his eyes.

  “I will,” I say, lowering the gun so the barrel is pointed directly at Jack’s knee. “After he pays for what he did to my brother.”

  I haven’t actually shot anybody before. I’ve been to the range plenty of times with my brothers. We’ve put up those paper cut-outs, sometimes a blank human silhouette, sometimes a zombie or a burglar. I know how to aim for center mass, how to group my shots. How to squeeze the trigger instead of jerking it, how to control the backfire.

  It’s strange aiming at an actual person. I can see the droplets of sweat along Jack’s hairline, the way his right eye twitches slightly as he glares at me. I can see his chest rising and falling. He’s an actual person, despite being a raging douche. Am I really going to put a bullet in him?

  Jack decides that the best way to get out of this is to try to intimidate me. Maybe he thinks it’s reverse psychology. Or maybe he’s just dumb.

  “You’re not gonna shoot me,” he sneers. “You’re just a spoiled little mafia brat, a wannabe tough girl like your pussy-ass brother.”

  Callum, more perceptive than Jack, sees my intention before I even move.

  He dives for the gun, knocking my hands upward right as I pull the trigger.

  The report is shockingly loud in the enclosure of the kitchen. It seems to echo around and around, deafening us.

  I miss Jack, thanks to Callum’s intervention. However, the bullet digs a groove along the outside of Callum’s left arm, before burying itself in the door of one of Imogen’s custom cedar cabinets.

  Like scarlet ink on white paper, blood soaks through Callum’s shirtsleeve. He glances down at it, stoically surveying the damage, before twisting my arm behind my back and pinning it tight.

  “I said don’t,” he growls in my ear, furiously.

  “She tried to shoot me!” Jack shouts in disbelief. “She pulled the trigger! You dirty little bitch! I’m gonna—”

  “Shut your fucking mouth and keep it shut,” Callum barks.

  Jack halts in place, frozen in the act of advancing upon me. His big, square face looks confused.

  “If you EVER talk to my wife like that again, I’ll empty that clip in your chest.”

  Jack opens his mouth like he’s going to protest, only to shut it again when he sees the look on Callum’s face.

  I can’t really see it myself, since Callum still has my arm twisted up behind my back, rather painfully. But I can feel the heat radiating out of his body. I can hear the deadly seriousness of his threat. He means it. Every word of it.

  “You’re . . . you’re bleeding on the floor, boss,” Jack says humbly.

  Sure enough, a little puddle is forming on Callum’s left side. Seeping into the spotless grout between Imogen’s tiles. Another thing that’s really going to piss her off.

  “Clean that up, please,” Callum says in the direction of the doorway.

  I realize that at least three of the house staff are peeking in, trying to figure out what the hell is going on without getting themselves in trouble. One of the housemaids, Linda, seems particularly alarmed by the fact that Callum has me in an armbar. Martino the landscaper, who’s peering in the window, looks queasy at the sight of the blood on the floor.

  “Go home,” Callum orders Jack. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  Jack nods, chastened. He doesn’t make eye contact with me as he hurries by.

  I expect Callum to let go of me once Jack is gone. I assumed he was holding me like that to make sure I wasn’t going to attack his bodyguard again.

  Instead, he starts frog-marching me out of the kitchen, down the hallway.

  “Where are we going?” I demand, trying to twist my wrist out of his grip.

  Callum only holds me tighter. Pain is shooting up my right arm into my shoulder, and my hand has gone numb. His left arm is wrapped around my body, his hand clenching a fistful of the front of my shirt. My back is pressed up against his chest. I can feel his heart pounding, rapid and furious as a war drum.

  “You can let go, I’m not—OUCH!”

  He’s shoving me up the staircase, pushing me so hard and fast that my feet are barely touching the ground. He keeps rocketing me along until we’re all the way down the hallway and through the doorway to our room. Only then does he release me, slamming the door behind him.

  He turns around to face me, his pupils contracted to pinpricks, so his eyes look bluer and colder than ever. No longer vampirically pale, his skin is flushed with color, his jaw practically vibrating from how hard he’s clenching it.

  “Look,” I say. “I know that got a little—”

  He crosses the space between us in one stride, seizing a handful of my hair. He jerks my head back and kisses me ferociously.

  It’s the last thing I was expecting. All the defiance goes out of my body and I sink against him, limp with relief. I think that he’s forgiven me, or that he at least understands why I did it.

  But I immediately realize that I was very wrong in that assumption. As soon as our chests touch, I can feel that his body is still burning and shaking, every muscle throbbing with the effort of containing the emotion inside of him.

  His tongue fills my mouth and his lips grind against mine, so hard that l can feel my own lips starting to swell. He’s crushing me against him, still determined to subdue me, even though I already submitted. It’s only when my knees are literally buckling beneath me that he picks me up and carries me to the bed.

  He pulls my shirt up over my head. Like a child, I cooperatively lift my arms, but once the shirt is over my head, he pulls my wrists back down behind me, the cotton t-shirt still wrapped around one arm. Swiftly, Callum crosses my wrists, using the twisted-up shirt as a rope to knot them together.

  Then he unbuttons my shorts, and with one hard jerk, he pulls both my shorts and panties down around my knees.

  I feel very stupid standing there, arms bound behind my back and ankles effectively tied as well, unless I want to try to step out of my shorts without falling on
my face.

  “Callum,” I say hesitantly. “Can you—”

  Callum is in the process of unknotting his tie. He pulls it off from around his neck and approaches me with the material held taut between his two hands, like a garrote. I’m mildly concerned that he’s about to strangle me. Instead, he gags me with the tie, cutting me off mid-sentence and knotting the tie tightly behind my head.

  I can taste the raw silk against my tongue. Must be expensive.

  I have a vague idea that Callum plans to tie me up and leave me here, as punishment for shooting at his employee. But I soon realize Callum has no intention of leaving. He sits down on the edge of the bed and roughly pulls me down onto his lap. He throws me over his thighs, so my face is down by his shins and my bare ass is up in the air.

  In a flash, I realize what he’s planning, and I start to wriggle and squirm wildly, trying to kick my feet free of my shorts, and shouting through the gag, “Don’t you dare—” though it comes out more like, “Der do dah—”

  Callum lifts one large, strong hand and brings it whistling down on my bottom. There’s a sharp, cracking sound, almost as loud as the kitchen gunshot, and then an instant later the stinging hot pain hits me.

  “Erggg!” I shriek through the gag.

  SMACK!

  I didn’t even know he’s lifted his hand again and already he’s spanked me again in the same spot, even harder this time.

  SMACK!

  SMACK!

  SMACK!

  His precision is vicious. Each hit is landing in precisely the same spot on my right buttock, making it feel like it’s been dipped in gasoline and set aflame.

  I’m kicking and trying to roll off his lap, shouting all kinds of curses. Callum has me pinned tight, his left hand bearing down between my shoulder blades while his right hand administers the punishment.

  I give one particularly vigorous struggle and Callum barks, “Hold still! Or you’ll get twice as many!”

  That only makes me kick all the harder. How fucking dare he try to spank me! How dare he threaten me! When I get free, I’m going to punch him right where I shot him, and then I’m going to kick him someplace worse.

  SMACK!

  Callum has brought his palm smashing down on the left side now. FUCK! Why does it hurt even more? How is he slapping me so hard? He’s like a jockey whipping a horse!

  SMACK!

  SMACK!

  SMACK!

  I’ve never actually been spanked before. I can’t believe how it’s making my ass burn and throb.

  Callum told me to hold still, but I can’t. I can’t help flinching away from the next blow, squeezing my legs together and squirming on the hard surface of his trousered-thighs.

  This is having its own embarrassing effect.

  I am naked, after all. The squeezing and squirming of my bare flesh against the fine wool of Callum’s trousers are creating a whole lot of friction in very inconvenient places . . .

  My nipples are rock-hard inside my bra. I can feel warmth and wetness between my thighs. I can’t see it, but I suspect that my cheeks are burning as red as my ass.

  I stop struggling, mostly because I don’t want to make myself any more inadvertently excited than I already am. I also don’t want Callum to notice. It’s fucking humiliating. If he realizes the effect this is having on me, I’ll never be able to look him in the face again.

  But he already knows. He’s so goddamned perceptive. The moment I stop fighting him, the moment my breath changes, and I tense up, he stops the spanking. He pauses for a moment, his heavy palm resting on my throbbing buttocks.

  Then he starts kneading my ass, gently.

  The rubbing feels unutterably good. It’s like the time I stole one of Dante’s special brownies and ate the whole thing before getting a massage. Each squeeze of Callum’s hand sends pulses of pleasure running down my neurons, making them glow like a string of Christmas lights.

  Without meaning to, I moan and press my thighs against the outside of Callum’s leg.

  “You like that?” he growls, his voice lower and rougher than ever.

  His fingertips dance down the crevice of my ass, slipping between my thighs to find confirmation of what he already suspects. Sure enough, his fingers slide easily across the slick surface of my cunt.

  “I thought so,” he breathes.

  Without warning, he plunges two fingers inside of me. I let out a deep, desperate groan. The inside of my pussy is so swollen and warm that those fingers are the most pleasurable thing that’s ever been inside me. They feel tailor-made, super-powered, as custom-fit as one of Imogen’s fucking cabinets.

  Callum slides his fingers in and out, enjoying the anxious, pleading sounds I’m making around the gag.

  Oh my god I want to be fucked.

  I want it so bad I feel like I could be willing to die after, if I could only get what I need for five straight minutes.

  “Look what you did.”

  Callum touches the wound on his left arm. When he brings his fingertips down in front of my face, I can see that they’re shining with fresh blood.

  “I’ve had enough of you flying off the handle,” Callum says. “It ends tonight. From now on, you’re going to be the wife I was promised. Helpful. Useful. Obedient.”

  Hooking his arms under my body, Callum stands up, lifting me off his knees. He throws me face-down on the bed, wrists still bound behind my back and knees bent under me, so my ass is pointed up in the air.

  I hear a button popping and a zipper going down. Callum’s strong, warm hands grip my hips, the right one disappearing momentarily as Callum lines his cock up with my entrance, then returning again.

  He rams inside of me with one thrust of his hips. He goes all the way in, bottoming out with the front of his thighs flush against the back of mine. He grips my hips tight, letting his cock stay fully sheathed, so deep that I feel the head throbbing against my cervix.

  Only then does he pull out again, almost all the way, before thrusting all the way back in.

  He does this several times, letting me appreciate the full length of his cock. Then he starts fucking me hard. Harder and faster, our bodies slamming together with a sound not as sharp as the spankings, but much more rapid and insistent.

  To be desperately aroused and then aggressively serviced like this is just so . . . satisfying. On the level of popsicles on a hot day, or a bratty kid falling on their face. I am at peak happiness. I don’t just want this. I fucking need it.

  But then Callum really starts to torture me.

  He reaches around my hip and finds my clit with his fingers. He lightly teases me with his fingertips, then gradually starts to increase the pressure.

  I’m panting and moaning into the gag, trying to buck my hips to get more pressure on just the right spot.

  Callum isn’t giving it to me. He knows what I want, but he’s denying it.

  His arm is wrapped tightly around me. He’s still thrusting into me, deeper and deeper. He leans over and growls in my ear, “Are you going to be a good girl, Aida? My good little wife?”

  I’m whimpering, almost begging. But I don’t want to say it. Goddamn him, I don’t want to say it!

  “Tell me,” Callum croons. “Tell me you’ll be a good girl.”

  No way.

  I’m not gonna do it.

  I’m totally going to do it.

  Squeezing my eyes tight shut, I nod my head.

  Callum presses hard against my clit. He rubs me in time with his thrusts, just in the right spot, just the right way to make me accelerate through the stratosphere.

  Blast off. We’ve left the planet, ladies and gentlemen, it’s pure flaming stars up here.

  I’m floating, flying, zooming at a million miles away, experiencing a kind of pleasure that I’ve never even imagined before. Hard, fast, endless.

  I lose all sense of what Callum is doing. I’m just gone.

  I don’t come back to earth until Callum pulls me into his arms, wrapping them tightly around my
body.

  He’s taken off the gag and the makeshift handcuffs.

  I’m laying naked on his chest, all his clothes stripped off, too.

  My body is rising and falling with the rhythm of his breaths. His chin nestles against my temple.

  His breathing is steady and peaceful. His arms are warm and gentle around me. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt his body this relaxed. I’ve seen him stiff and controlled, but never calm.

  “Did you get there, too?” I ask him, after a minute.

  He kisses the side of my head.

  “Of course.”

  “That was . . .”

  What, exactly? Insane? Shocking? Confusing? Breathtaking? Unforgettable?

  “I know,” Callum says.

  There’s a long pause, and then I can’t help asking, “Have you ever done that before?”

  Another long pause, in which I think he won’t answer.

  Then, finally, he says, “Not like that.”

  Dear lord.

  I’m a pretty opinionated girl. I thought I knew what I liked and what I didn’t like.

  But I might have just discovered a whole new category . . .

  18

  Callum

  Aida is lying in my arms. I can feel how flushed and warm she still is. And I saw how hard she came. But I would be worried how she was feeling in the aftermath, if I weren’t so distracted with my own absolute amazement.

  I’ve tied women up and fucked them roughly before. Some of them ask for it, and other times I was just experimenting. Some girls are so boring to fuck that you might as well tie them up, because they’re just going to lay there either way.

  In all those instances, I felt like I was going through the motions.

  With Aida, it was totally different.

  Sex with her always is.

  Fucking used to be about release for me. It was a manual act, that could be good, bad, or indifferent.

  I never imagined it could feel so good that it takes me over, body and brain. The sheer, physical pleasure is insanely intense. Bizarrely stronger than what I’m used to.

  And then there’re the psychological factors. Aida attracts me in a way I can’t understand. It’s as if every one of her features was formed with some kind of secret code designed to burrow into my brain. The long, almond shape of her smoky, gray eyes. The insane curves of her body. Her smooth, cedar-colored skin. The way her teeth flash at me when she grins. The way she bites the edge of her bottom lip when she’s aroused, or trying not to laugh.