Luka: Perfectly Damaged – a Bad Boy Mafia Romance

by Alice May Ball

  No, strike that, too. The waiting had been horrible, but what came afterwards was the worst thing I had ever known.

  Tall, heavy, and brooding, my new ‘protector,’ as Tony called him, stood no more than ten feet away. I could practically feel his heat. My own heat was rising, and now I dreaded that I would be the one to give us away. Inside I still shook from the quake that went off deep within me when he’d entered the room. When my fiancé—how I hated to call him that—showed him into the apartment.

  For the first time now, I could really see him. His cheekbones were higher, sharper, his body even more stunning than I had fully appreciated in the low light of the bar.

  Here in broad daylight, in my lounge, under the menace of Tony’s eyes, I tried to keep my gaze off the powerful thighs and the arrogant tip of his hips, hugged firm and tight in his heavy, faded blue jeans. Especially I fought to keep my eyes from lighting on the huge, unmistakable bulge below the hefty buckle on his thick leather belt.

  My plump, too-dry lips parted and my tongue traced the tops of them before I even realized I was doing it.

  I couldn’t risk a look into his eyes. His lips looked ready to flex open. Red, full, in a cupid’s bow that reminded me of a classical painting, a cruel half-smile sat waiting to break into his sarcastic laugh or a lascivious grin.

  The Italian stud stood silent. He didn’t look in my direction or speak my name. Tony told him his duties and he sneered in my direction as he gave his orders. His eyes flicked up at me only for the briefest second, though it was like an electric shock that struck my core. My knees almost buckled.

  Wouldn’t it be funny if it was me who gave the secret away, instead of him? Not like there was that much of a secret to it, truth be told. But then, it wasn’t like Tony was that much of a listener, either. As soon as he got to the part where I was in a bar with another man, that would be more than enough for him. End of the story. Lights out.

  “You feel like a fuck now, or do you want a drink first?”

  That was what this man had said when our eyes locked across the bar. In the darkness I saw him like he was under a spotlight. He saw me and a grin spread across the whole of his face. His smile shone bright enough to melt clothing. For a moment, I’d froze.

  “No,” I’d told him, “I just want a drink.” My voice skipped, though, like it slipped. The words weren’t timed quite right.

  The reason was clear enough. The moment he said it, I felt so much like a fuck that I could have climbed his long, hard trunk right then and there, knocked him down, and had him on the bar room floor. A fuck that I wanted, a fuck that was my choice? Yes, I felt like one of those.

  And with him? With that smile? God, yes.

  He stepped nearer.

  “Alone,” I said. “I came to have a drink on my own.”

  “A lot of women say that at first. It’s cute.” His voice had a resonant purr and it sounded like he was hardly using it. Like it had power. If he would only turn it up.

  The sound curled around my insides like smoke at the same time as his eyes flickered over my curves. My body heated and quivered as he looked. He shook his head slowly as he said, “You’ll never know what you missed.” Hardly original, except when he said it, it sounded like he really meant it.

  And as he said it, my eyes traveled down the t-shirt, down to the big, heavy, knobbled buckle, and then further down to the bulge that shoved at the front of his jeans. It looked like he had stashed quite a cannon down there

  Quickly, I looked back up into his ice-blue eyes. They were sparkling with amusement. He’d watched me staring at his pants.

  I told him, “It’s what happens when you miss things. You don’t get to know them.” I was impatient for the bartender, who made his way slowly toward me with one eye on the big guy in the white tee and the leather jacket cut like a suit coat. Leather like that was expensive, too. He watched me with that faint grin. I had a powerful urge to slap it right off him.

  Impatient, I called to the bartender. “Woodford. Make it a large one.”

  “Nice choice for a bourbon,” the big man said. “Let me buy it for you.”

  I looked up at him. His glistening skin was the color of a dark honey and his body looked like it could drag a train. “The whole ‘I want a drink on my own’ thing, that isn’t getting through to you at all, is it?”

  He moved nearer like a big cat. I lifted my arm to wave him away. His hand, huge and impossibly strong, caught my forearm. A charge bolted through me as soon as his fingers touched the inside of my wrist. My knees sagged.

  My cheeks prickled as I tried to pull my arm away. It was like trying to tug against a girder. Then he let me go and my whole body slumped. Why hadn’t the wonderful hunks of this world made big, macho plays for me before Tony had staked his claim?

  He gave every appearance of being an arrogant player, but God, he was smoking hot. He put up both hands as he stepped backwards.

  “Okay,” he said, “I have a really strong instinct. You look like a woman in urgent need of a man, and my instinct is never wrong.” He arched his brow and my stomach fluttered. “But it’s your choice. I won’t interfere.

  “I do need a man.” I should not have spoken. I should have let him back away and shake his beautiful head, watching me with amusement in his killer’s eyes. Before the words even formed in my mouth, I knew that the right thing to say at that exact moment was nothing at all.

  He was backing away, and I could have just let him go. Should have, too. Even though I knew it was wrong, and I had a powerful sense of just how bad it could turn out, I’d started talking before I was able to stop myself. “I need a man, but not for what you’re thinking of.”

  I should never, never have said that.

  And now, here he was. In the apartment. Tony telling me he brought him in to ‘protect’ me. Two nights ago I had played, dangerously, with the fantasy that he could be mine. Now I knew that he was Tony’s. Another man I couldn’t trust, just like all the others.

  If I’d have known it was going to be her, the ‘subject’ I was detailed to ‘protect,’ would I have passed up the job? No. Truth be told, I would have wanted to do it all the more. First time I saw her in Bar Sicilia, I wanted to fuck her, obviously, but there was something more. Something compelling. I wanted to… I don’t know, know her or something. And for once, not just in the Biblical sense.

  Alexa had a charge, a spark. Something I couldn’t put my finger on, but I was drawn to her like there was a magnetic pull. It made me wary, of course. Attachments of that kind were never in my playbook, but as soon as I saw her, I needed to know more about her.

  It was Bruto brought me the job, the day after I saw her in Bar Sicilia. Bruto had never been a welcome sight to me, or anyone else, as far as I knew. He was the surliest, grouchiest, and most bad-tempered member of any SEAL team that any of us ever had the displeasure to deal with.

  He was also the least trusted team member wherever he went. In every part of our training, we learned the importance of being able to depend on every member of your team and I know I wasn’t the only person who wondered how in hell he ever made it through to active service.

  Work was work, though, and I needed the money. He told me that I would be working ‘alongside’ him, so I’d know I was in company I could trust. I nearly choked. Then he said it was a protection detail.

  “It’s for Fat Tony.” Bruto looked in my eye as he started to say, “No one,” and I joined in, and we both finished it together, “calls him ‘Fat Tony.’“

  We both laughed. It may have been the first time we ever laughed together, Bruto and I. Won’t happen again, that’s for sure. Not now.

  As he said more, I started to remember the woman that I met in the bar. The woman who didn’t drop down for me. In my head I began to put two and two together, but then Bruto went on with telling me all the things I had to keep in mind, and what I must never forget and all the usual bullshit that he always numbs your brain with.

  He too
k up so much time and attention saying how incredibly important everything was, blinding you with his bullshit, you came away feeling like you knew less than you did before he started talking. You were always sure that some things he told you must have actually been important, but as usual, I had no way of pulling any of them back out of the fog.

  The sparkle in his dark, hooded eyes flashed in my peripheral view. It made me sure that he was about to speak, to greet me by name, to say or do something that was bound to give me away.

  In the bar, I’d seen his broad shoulders, his long legs, and his wicked smile. His body shook me as much as his voice did with his improper suggestion. I knew, of course, that I had to tell him ‘no,’ but his voice alone was more than enough to make me pine to give him a soft, breathless ‘yes.’

  Big, slow, and sure to a point beyond arrogance, his eyes fixed mine as soon as I opened the bar door. He looked like he had been waiting just for me. Like I was the feast he had spent all day anticipating. He moved like a predator. A hunter. A man like him, I saw straight away, would have a banquet of women. Every day, every night. Two or three at a time, most likely. He was the kind of a man any woman would be ready for, aching to say ‘yes’ to, even before he asked her a question.

  His kilowatt smile made me feel like all my clothes would dissolve. The weight of them irritated me and I wanted to pull and scrape off their remains. In case they got in his way.

  He was the kind of a man that, as soon as you saw him, you hoped with a thud that he would make a lewd proposition. A thrilling, dangerous demand. One that you knew you must refuse. One that you wanted to beg to accept.

  A man you’d hope would be demanding. Exhausting. Unstoppable. You’d want him to wear you down, stretch you out, push you to your breaking point, invade you from every direction. Assault all of your senses. Make selfish and brutal use of you.

  You’d know that as soon as he had his fill of you, when he had used you all up, he would discard you without a thought. From the tiny twist in the corner of his mouth you knew, knew straight away, that he would leave you in a quivering, sobbing heap, then turn and chuckle as he walked away. He wouldn’t look back, and he would never give you another thought.

  The room was hot. Airless. My chest filled and swelled. Every move that I made, each unsteady breath I took, I feared I would risk giving myself away. Expose myself. That some signal, some clue, would lay bare my deceit, my treachery.

  That was how Tony would see it. Anything that I did without his knowledge was a betrayal, in his eyes. I drew my lips between my teeth, trying to keep my mouth shut. Stop any unguarded sound, any untamed whisper, from escaping.

  My fingers were clenched. With an effort, slowly, hoping no one would notice, I relaxed them. There was no way to relax the heat between my thighs, though, or the perfume, the scented call of the wild, that rose into the room. It seemed so powerful, so forceful as to be almost overpowering.

  I couldn’t imagine that Tony wouldn’t detect it, wouldn’t read its significance with the massive clarity of a billboard, a screaming advert. Wouldn’t know me for the deed it betrayed. It would be his chance to curse me and call me that name, that thing that he so loved to call me. Only this time, he really would mean it.

  The waiting was unbearable. I felt weak enough to pass out from the tension. And still, there on the other side of the room, the flame of desire that I felt for this man was as strong as it had been in the bar. Stronger. Now that I knew a little more about him, I knew enough to know that I had an even greater, more urgent need for him.

  Now my life could depend on him. Assuming we didn’t get ourselves murdered in the next five minutes, of course.

  At first, Tony had been discreet, covert about having me followed everywhere I went. Maybe he had realized from the start how I despised him, how I spent almost every waking hour cursing my father for giving me to Tony. Selling me to him, practically.

  “You’ll find a way to be happy.” My father avoided my eyes as he told me, as he pulled me—practically dragged me—by my wrist to hand me over to the Mafia boss. He didn’t even sound as though he was pretending it was true. It was just what he knew he had to say to try and salvage some face in Tony’s eyes.

  I couldn’t begin to imagine how a man believes that he can save face while he hands over his daughter to a gangster on her eighteenth birthday like a bag of dope.

  But I couldn’t ever understand how a man—not a completely stupid man, even—could gamble himself so deep in the hole to a mobster like Tony. Especially not a man with a young daughter who depended on him.

  But like the TV, the car, the furniture, and then the house, my father had traded me for another deal, another late night seat to sweat at the table.

  It made no difference how many hours I’d worked in the restaurant, or the market, or the cleaning job I got up in the freezing cold at four in the morning for. All that to keep everything together, and he sold me. Well, Father dear, without me working three jobs and with you not working any, who’s going to pay the rent? Who’s going to save your sorry ass next month?

  Another run of utterly, horribly predictable luck. From when I was young, I knew that my father wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but to let me go, and to a lascivious thug like Tony...

  How could he do that to me?

  That day I knew I would never trust a man ever again.

  The dream came again, the night I was with Vix. It always started the same way, and whatever I did, the end was always the same. It came more often now and I should have realized what it was trying to warn me about.

  A foxy brunette smiles, reaches out and takes my hand—this time it was Vix—and she leads me into a hazy, soft bedroom. More women are in there, sprawled, purring on the huge, fluffy bed in pale, silky lingerie.

  A ginger, a blonde, and the brunette crawl on the big bed like they're prowling. I start to get excited as their fingers all reach for my robe. My pulse begins to race as their hands swarm over my body. Their fingers caress me. They feel me and arouse me. They coo and say, “Oh,” as they feel the round firmness of my ass, the hard bulges of my chest, and the rigid force of my cock.

  A sense of unease hangs over me, like I've sniffed something bad in the air. Not enough to detect a smell, just the hint that sets my instinct on alert. I know what's coming. I know that I can't do anything about it and how it's going to end up. And there's no way to alter its course.

  Their mouths press, taste, kiss and suck me all over. Everywhere. My head rolls as two women suck at my neck and the other one slides her lips over my cock.

  Then one more girl climbs onto the bed. I can't see her face. But the mattress starts to tip. The heat rises. Someone shakes their head slowly and her voice changes, it slows as it says, “It's too heavy.” Then it's getting impossibly hot. The voice says, “Too much weight!”

  I try to steady the bed, but it wobbles and tips more and more wildly. It rises up through a thick, green poisonous mist, but too slowly. It all starts to spin. There are trees and bushes below.

  Beams of light slice into the hot, misty air through sudden cracks and holes that appear, and I know right away…

  “We're under fire,” someone says, and I'm back in the chopper that night in Afghanistan. It's spinning sluggishly. I pull back on the control column can't get it to climb fast enough. I give it all the lift there is, but I can't get the height we need.

  The big ammo box in the corner slides toward the open door. Bruto lunges for it. Grabs hold. Then the box sparks as it catches a bullet. Bruto gets behind a seat and the whole cockpit is engulfed in flame. I lunge for the box, but it's burning.

  I wake in a sweat with my hands on a woman's shoulders, shaking her, shouting, "Why are you here?!"

  The dream comes back more often now. It always starts with a woman, she leads me to more women, then it all goes to hell. Literally. The scene is swallowed up in a swirling ball of fire, with me in the center of it. Just like the chopper was. And it crashes.
Burning. Like the chopper did.