Beautiful Carnage: A Dark Mafia Bully Romance (The Boys of Sinners Bay Book 1)

by Caroline Peckham

  I started removing his clothes, pulling off his sodden socks and shoes then reaching over him to unbuckle his jeans. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I shimmied them off of him, leaving his black boxers in place. No way in hell was I taking them off.

  When I was done, I knelt beside him, studying his still face. I never got to look at him too closely when he was awake. But like this, I could inspect every inch of him without him knowing I was staring. My gaze travelled down to his chest and I fought the urge to sketch the hard plains of his muscles with my fingers, the inky coils of his tattoos and the raised scars that begged for my touch.

  I stood and grabbed a large blanket from the back of the couch before wrapping it around him. Then I curled up in an armchair close by, tucking my knees to my chest as I watched him, wondering how the hell he was going to react when he woke up.

  Maybe I’d leave before dawn; as soon as I knew he was going to be alright. But even as I thought it, an ache grew in my chest. Nearly losing him tonight had rocked me to my core. And the way Rocco had fearlessly fought off those wolves for me made me see him in a new light. It made me wonder if it wasn’t just me feeling these insane emotions. If maybe he was starting to care for me too.

  After a long while, my eyes fluttered closed and my heart slowed to a calmer rhythm.

  Staying here is crazy. But right now, leaving feels impossible.

  ***

  I woke shivering and hurried out of my seat to stoke the fire, throwing another log on it to feed the dying flames. Rocco was still on the floor, the grey light of dawn beyond the snow clouds seeping through the window and making him look cold and lifeless.

  I dropped down beside him as my heart rate spiked with panic, resting my hand to his neck. His skin was warm and his pulse thrummed keenly beneath my fingers. I relaxed full bodily, resting my head to his chest and listening to the solid beat of his heart beneath my ear.

  “Mm…lower,” he murmured and I lifted my head, snorting a laugh. Typical asshole.

  I sat back on my heels as he shifted in his sleep, rolling towards the fire and falling still once more.

  I headed out of the room and into the kitchen, whipping up some pancake mix for breakfast. I didn’t really give a damn if Rocco didn’t like sweet food. I sure as hell liked it and it looked like he probably wasn’t going to wake up before midday anyway.

  Once I’d gorged myself on several blueberry pancakes with syrup, I dumped the washing up in the sink without a care.

  An idea struck me as I stood there and I quickly took several sharp knives from the cutlery drawer. I found some duct tape under the sink then taped one beneath the kitchen island where I usually sat and another beneath the dining room table. Next, I headed down to the basement, stashing two beneath the wine racks before leaving another beneath the mattress where I’d slept beside Rocco in his room. I didn’t want to go back to being a prisoner, but with the snow falling thick again outside and the wolves having thoroughly put me off of walking my way out of here on foot, I wasn’t left with many options.

  I returned to sit in the armchair beside Rocco, finding him with his hand stuffed into his boxers. I pressed my lips together at the stupid look on his face and an idea struck me that made me grin.

  Mr Beautiful Madman loves that face of his…

  I located a black sharpie in a drawer in the coffee table, moving to kneel over him – extracting his hand from his boxers first.

  I smiled down at the canvas of his face, leaning in to start painting whiskers on his cheeks. “Let’s see how scary you look as a kitty cat, Rocco Romero…”

  I groaned as I came to, my head thick with a fog and a pounding headache.

  “Are you finally waking up then?” Sloan’s teasing voice came for me in the darkness and I peeled my eyes open to look up at her where she was perched in an armchair beside the fire.

  “You stayed,” I stated, my headache shifting in favour of the small miracle which sat before me. She was wearing one of my designer shirts which fell down to her bare thighs and made me wonder just what she might have on beneath it.

  “I got snowed in,” she replied lightly.

  I frowned as I turned to look out the floor-length window at the snow which had piled up over a meter deep against the glass. She had a point, but not a good enough one. The sky was dim and I guessed it was late morning which meant I must have been out for hours.

  “You could have left me for the wolves,” I said, pushing myself up onto my elbows so that the blanket slid to pool around my waist.

  “After you saved me from them? We aren’t all as heartless as the Romeros,” she replied easily. Too easily. Like she’d rehearsed that.

  I pushed myself upright, the blanket sliding off of me so that I was left standing in my black boxers as I stalked towards her. Sloan eyed me nervously as I closed in on her and I titled my head to the side as I surveyed her.

  “Truth or dare?” I purred.

  “What?” she asked, blinking up at me like she was still expecting me to rip into her for running. But I didn’t care about her running anymore. She was here and all I wanted to know was why.

  “It’s a pretty standard game. I’m sure even the pampered Calabresi Principessa has a grasp on the rules,” I said, moving closer so that I could look right in to those big brown eyes. “So what’s it to be?”

  Her lips parted on a protest or some kind of refusal and I growled at her in warning.

  “Did you just growl at me?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

  “Truth, or dare,” I insisted.

  She raised her chin, her eyes glittering. “Truth.”

  “Go on,” I said in a low voice, wanting to hear whatever she had to confess.

  She hesitated like she couldn’t decide what to say and the hint of a smile tugged at her lips. “I think your name kinda sounds like… cocko,” she whispered, reaching up to press a finger to my forehead.

  “What?” I frowned at her and she bit her bottom lip to stop herself from smirking.

  I caught her chin in my grip and tugged her lip free with my thumb as I pinned her in my gaze. “The next time you bite your lip like that in my presence, I’ll bite it too,” I promised her.

  She inhaled sharply, looking up at me for a long moment as I dared her with my eyes to do it again. That was all it would take for me to pounce and I was pretty sure she knew it too.

  Sloan batted my hand aside and stood suddenly, invading my personal space before brushing past me.

  She moved to stand by the fire and I glanced out of the window at the heavy snow which still fell. If she hadn’t run yet, I was sure she wasn’t going to in the next fifteen minutes.

  “I’m going to have a shower,” I told her as I headed for the stairs at the back of the room. “If you wanna see how good it would feel for me to bite that lip of yours then why don’t you come up and join me?”

  I glanced back over my shoulder at her with a teasing smirk but instead of the temptation I expected to see in her eyes, I found amusement. In fact, it seemed like she was actually trying not to laugh.

  I frowned as I jogged up the rest of the stairs and decided not to waste my time trying to figure out the mind of that woman.

  I pushed my boxers off and untied the towel which Sloan must have used to bandage my wolf bite. I took a piss and my gaze caught on the row of puncture wounds as I tried to figure out how much they might scar. Or if it even really looked like a wolf bite at all. If my body was going to be scarred then at least it would have a good story to it. How many men had punched a wolf in the face and survived?

  A few of the teeth marks looked swollen and redder than I’d like and I made a mental note to take some of the antibiotics we kept here in case of wounds that went septic.

  I stepped straight into the shower and set the hot water running over my head, wondering if Sloan might take me up on my offer. I didn’t think I’d ever fantasised about a girl the way I did over her. But then I’d never taken one hostage before either. Ma
ybe I was on some kind of delusional power trip in believing that I could really make her fall for me. Or maybe I was buying into my own bullshit too much and falling for her too.

  I barked a laugh at the ridiculousness of that idea and shut the water off. Sloan Calabresi was an itch I intended to scratch. Once I’d taken her body in every way I could imagine and I’d listened to her beg me for more until her voice broke, I’d soon lose interest. I always did. But until she bowed to the desire I was lighting in her, I was stuck in this torment of imagining the way her body would feel as it submitted to mine. How her lips would taste when she offered them hungrily and how my name would sound spilling from her lips as I brought her to ruin.

  I dried myself off roughly, tousling the towel through my wet curls as I walked back into my room.

  I crossed the soft carpet, heading for the closet and some clean clothes but I fell still as my gaze caught on the mirror.

  My lips parted as I stepped closer, taking in the pen marks on my face. I had whiskers, a little button nose and kitty cat ears with tufts of hair sprouting from them drawn onto my skin. And across my forehead, she’d scrawled the word Cocko.

  I stared at the artwork on my face for a long moment, surprise freezing me. I couldn’t quite believe she’d had the balls to do this, but my heart was beating harder at the suggestion of this new game.

  A dark smile curved my lips as I quickly grabbed a pair of sweatpants and pulled them on before fishing around in my bedside locker until I found a sharpie of my own.

  If you want to play with the big boys, you’d better be prepared to lose, principessa…

  I pushed the sharpie into my pocket and headed down the stairs to the living room at a slow pace.

  Sloan was standing by the fire, her expression caught between fear and what I could have sworn was excitement as I stopped at the foot of the stairs and stared at her. I didn’t let her see anything but a mask of cold rage as I glared at her.

  “Did you…have a good shower?” she asked hesitantly.

  I pushed my hand into my pocket and slowly drew out the sharpie, holding her eye as I held it like a blade poised to strike.

  Sloan’s full lips parted on a sharp inhale and I watched the way her chest rose and fell within my dress shirt. She had her own clothes. She hadn’t needed to go into my closet and take something of mine to wear. It was like she wanted the feeling of me all over her. And if she was going to make the mistake of dressing like that with her bronze legs bare and a button too many undone at her throat, then she was soon going to find out how I felt about it.

  I looked right into her dark eyes and flicked the cap off of the pen in my hand. “Miaow.”

  Sloan shrieked as I lunged for her, turning and fleeing across the room as she raced for the door.

  I ran behind her, laughing darkly as she wrenched the door open and spilled out into the hall.

  My heart was pounding as I chased her up onto the wide staircase and I was gifted a view up the back of my shirt to her black lace panties beneath it.

  I growled as I leapt forward, catching her around the waist and taking her down in the middle of the staircase.

  Sloan squealed as I flipped her over, yanking her ankles so that she fell down a step on her ass and her thighs were wrapped around my waist.

  She wriggled and hit me, shrieking again and almost laughing as she failed to put any real strength into fighting me off.

  I clamped the sharpie between my teeth and grinned at her around it as I caught her wrists in my grip. I quickly transferred the two of them to one hand and reached between us to catch hold of the front of my shirt.

  With one hard yank, I ripped it open and the buttons scattered around us, tumbling down the wooden stairs with a sound like falling rain.

  Sloan cried out again and wriggled harder, grinding up against me in her bid for freedom and making desire pound through my body as I took in the sight of the matching black underwear caressing her bronze flesh.

  My smile widened as I dragged the ruined shirt up and twisted it, locking her arms inside it as they were hoisted above her head. I wrapped the material around the bannister and tied it in a knot, immobilising her beneath me with her hands bound and her chest heaving with heavy breaths that didn’t seem to be entirely caused by panic.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped as I reared back and took the sharpie from my teeth.

  “Just getting a little revenge, bella,” I purred.

  I pressed the pen to the hollow at the base of her throat and drew a line straight down the centre of her chest. I skimmed over the middle of her bra and carried on across her stomach, right down to her navel.

  Sloan fought to free her arms from the shirt but she didn’t seem to be trying as hard as she should have been.

  I leaned closer to her as I drew a line over the curve of her full breast, watching her pant as I shifted my hand across her skin.

  I caught her knee in my grip, pushing her legs wider as I drew a line up the inside of her thigh, taking my time as her hips bucked with what I was certain was desire. I didn’t stop drawing until I made it to the edge of her panties and she gasped as the tip of the pen slid beneath the material for a moment.

  “I think you’ve forgotten something, principessa,” I growled as I trailed the pen back up the centre of her body, circling her other breast and sliding the sharpie beneath the lace which barely contained her hardened nipple.

  “What?” she gasped as I slid the pen down across her flat stomach, past her navel and lower, marking her perfect flesh and claiming another moment of her attention for my own.

  I reached the top of her panties and drew along the line of them, a fire lighting in my skin as her back arched and a soft moan slipped past her lips.

  I held her eye as I slowly pushed the pen beneath her panties and she gasped as I drew a line lower, heading straight for the centre of her as her hips lifted into the movement in a silent plea.

  The urgent swell of my dick was pressed against her hard enough for her to be sure of just how much I was enjoying this too and I growled softly as I slid the pen lower until she moaned with need once more.

  I leaned down until my lips brushed her ear and slowly pulled the pen back out of her underwear. “You’re supposed to be fighting me off,” I breathed.

  She stilled beneath me and I turned to meet her eyes as I tossed the pen aside.

  Her lips parted on some kind of response, but I didn’t give her the chance to voice it as I shoved myself to my feet and strode up the stairs.

  “When you get yourself untied, you can have fun washing that off in the shower,” I said as I walked away. “And when your hands are rubbing it away all over your body and between your thighs, you can think about me.”

  She cursed me as she struggled against the rope I’d made out of my shirt and I laughed as I strode back to my room to wash my face more thoroughly and remove my kitty cat mask.

  It took me a little while to scrub the marker from my face and I headed back downstairs when I was done, smirking to myself as I heard the shower running in the main bathroom.

  I made my way to the kitchen and poured myself a coffee before heading to the refrigerator to find something to eat. My head was still fuzzy from Sloan’s drugging and as much as I was tempted to take some painkillers, I was willing to bet adding more drugs to my body wasn’t the best move.

  I pulled the refrigerator open and found a bowl of pancake batter sat in the heart of it.

  I took it out and set a pan on the stove as I prepared to make them.

  I dolloped a ladle of batter into the pan and leaned against the side as I waited for it to cook.

  Sloan reappeared in her own sweatpants and cami just as the smell of burning filled the kitchen from the batter that had sloshed over the side of the pan and I cursed as I tugged it off of the heat.

  I tossed it in the sink and set the water running on it with another curse as the fire alarm started blaring.

  I reached up to shut the alar
m off and swore again as I realised I couldn’t open a window to let the smoke escape thanks to my work nailing it shut.

  Sloan bit her lip on a laugh as I turned back to the room and my gaze fell to her mouth.

  “What did I say about that?” I warned and she instantly released her lip from her teeth.

  “Watching you try and cook is physically painful,” she teased.

  “Well now you can do it for me,” I said as I dropped down at the breakfast bar and she rolled her eyes as she turned to do as I’d asked.

  I watched her as she worked, my gaze trailing over the curve of her ass as she poured batter and built up a stack. She headed to the refrigerator and pulled out berries, syrup, cream and slowly stacked them up before me.

  “I thought I told you, I don’t like-”

  “Not everything is about you, Rocco,” she said as she started halving cherries and placing them in a bowl. “But I’m sure I could find something sweet that you would like if I tried.”

  My gaze slid over her. “Not likely,” I replied, though I was willing to let her try and change my mind.

  Sloan’s gaze lit up at the challenge and she took a hot pancake from the top of the stack, spooning some sour cream onto it and adding some of the cherries and a squeeze of lemon juice.

  She dug the fork into it, getting a heaped mixture of the combo onto it and reached out to feed it to me.

  I hesitated for a moment then lunged forward and chomped down on the whole thing so suddenly that she gasped.

  “Do you just do things like that to make me jump?” she accused as I pulled the food off of the fork with my teeth and sat back to chew it.

  “Do you have something against me making your heart pound, bella?” I teased.

  The food danced over my tastebuds and I had to admit that the combination of the sweet and sour balanced out to make something I could actually enjoy.

  I ate the rest of my breakfast as Sloan watched me, picking at her own food with a thoughtful expression on her face.