by Leah Wilde
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.
BEND ME: A Dark Romance copyright 2016 by Leah Wilde. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
Table of Contents
Bend Me: A Dark Romance
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
RIDE ME: A Dark Romance [FREE Bonus Book]
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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Bend Me: A Dark Romance
By Leah Wilde
How far can I bend her until she breaks?
She looks like she’s innocent, but I know better.
I know what kind of dark desires are lurking beneath the pretty white teeth and the glistening eyes.
I know the heat surging below her perfect skin.
It is the same heat, the same darkness that’s rising within me.
Like recognizes like, and she’s drawn to me, just like I’m drawn to her.
The trouble is, the slightest touch is strictly forbidden.
The world we live in demands that we honor its strict rules.
Life as a mafia prince has always meant obeying the code.
But now that I’m in charge, the code can go to hell.
I’m going to take what I want.
I’m going to break what I want.
I’m going to make her scream – whenever I want, however I want, for as long as I want.
Prepare yourself, darling.
In the playroom, I make the rules.
Chapter One
Vince’s date for the night was rather pretty, in a kind of bland, boring way. She looked more interesting in her picture on her online profile, but he tried his hardest to hide his disappointment, smiling stiffly at her and offering her his arm as they walked into the place he’d picked out for the occasion, a loud nightclub in downtown Manhattan, filled with neon lights and incoherent music. “So where are you from?” the girl, Amanda or Allison or something like that, asked him, beaming up at him with hope in her eyes.
“Jersey,” Vince answered, laughing inwardly at the temporary expression of disgust that crossed his date’s face in response. Most of the girls he met in the city were like this: snobby and kind of full of themselves. He honestly didn’t know why he bothered anymore, trying to find the “one,” that hypothetical perfect match that would fit him exactly right. At this point, after all the failures he’d experienced over the past several months, it was like he was addicted to the disappointment. Some part of him knew it was hopeless. He wasn’t going to find his submissive this way, but there was another part of him—probably the dumbest, most immature part—that just couldn’t give up. She’s got to be out there somewhere, he thought to himself as he signaled toward the bartender to put in a drink order for himself and his date. She’s got to be.
“What are you doing here in the city?” Amanda (Vince decided that was her name, even though for the life of him he couldn’t remember) asked as soon as the bartender handed them their drinks.
Vince shrugged. “Nothing really. Just hanging out.”
Amanda looked a little confused, furrowing her brows together. “But what do you do for work?”
“I took care of that years ago,” Vince said as he began to toss his Long Island Iced Tea back. Amanda just gave him a questioning, blank look, wordlessly urging him to elaborate. “By being born with money. I’ve just never had to worry about it.”
He’d meant to sound funny and charming, poking fun at his own privileged upbringing, but judging from the hard look on Amanda’s face, she wasn’t amused. Strike two against her, then, Vince thought. “You want to dance?” he asked, gesturing towards the packed dance floor.
“Sure,” she said, her face brightening up a little as she took Vince’s hand and led him out onto the dance floor, immediately grinding her ass against the front of his pants. Vince instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her in harder against his chest and letting his hands wander a little bit to get a sense of her curves. Amanda didn’t seem to mind, tossing her head back onto his shoulder and continuing to move her hips in long, drawn-out circles to the beat of the music. So he was definitely getting laid tonight, at the very least. But Vince couldn’t even pretend to be excited about it. Any other guy would have been thrilled to hop into the sack with a girl like Amanda, but he could tell by the way she moved against him that sex with her would be nothing special. She had no passion, no fire in her movements. Vince was about to engage in another round of predictable, vanilla sex. He already knew he’d never call her again.
“Excuse me for a minute; I got to go take a leak,” Vince shouted into Amanda’s ear after a few songs. He headed into the bathroom, which was miraculously empty despite the crowds of people on the dance floor outside. Vince went up to the row of sinks, bracing his hands on the hard countertops as he stared at his own reflection in the mirror, searching his eyes as if they held the answer to his dilemma. But there was no hint of a solution on his face, nothing except utter exhaustion. He was bone-tired, down to every last cell in his body. For months upon months now, he’d been searching for a Sub to dominate, to take into his playroom, where he kept all the tools of his trade, all the toys he used to take women apart and put them back together again. The last time he showed a woman into his most secret, sacred place, she’d run away screaming, yelling at him, “Stay the fuck away from me, pervert!” Even now, staring into his own reflection, he heard her voice echo insi
de the emptiness of his mind, accusing him of being sick and dirty and wrong. Maybe she was right. After all, he hadn’t found anybody who could really match his desires. Even the women at the submissive/dominant escort services in the city were just pretending, visibly biting back their disgust even as they played with him. Maybe he should have just given up months ago. There was no point, really. Nobody was ever going to be able to even tolerate the darkness inside of him, let alone accept it the way he wanted to be accepted.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. His phone vibrated within his pocket, signaling a family member was calling him. Vince groaned and let his head hang down between his shoulders, his whole body sagging as his phone continued to buzz. “All right, all right,” he finally muttered after several more seconds, digging into his pocket to grab his phone and seeing his younger brother Guido’s name flash across the screen before answering. “What?” he said tersely into the phone, too irritated at the moment for any pleasantries.
“Vince,” Guido said on the other end before exhaling loudly. “Vince, you need to come home.”
“Oh, fucking save it,” Vince snapped back. This was just like his brother, trying to guilt him for living his own life. It wasn’t Vince’s fault that Guido was still stuck back home, forever a slave to their domineering mother.
“Vince. Seriously, shut up and listen to me,” Guido said, sounding more intense than Vince had ever heard him before. “You need to get on the first train home. Dad’s dead.”
The words didn’t pierce Vince’s skull right away. They reflected off of him like his brain was holding up a shield to keep unwelcome thoughts out. “What?” he said, his voice sounding weirdly distant, even to himself.
“Dad’s dead. He keeled over sometime this evening. We don’t know what happened yet, but it looks like it was a stroke or something like that. He’s gone. You need to come back as soon as you can,” Guido said.
“He’s…gone?” Vince repeated, the words leaving his mouth slowly as his brain caught up to the reality of the situation. “What?”
“Yeah,” Guido said, sighing heavily again. “Come back to the compound, Vince. Mom needs you.”
Without any further warning, Guido hung up, leaving Vince in silence that just stretched on and on. Vince didn’t know how long he stood there, staring blankly at himself in the mirror until somebody else finally walked into the bathroom, tearing him away from his empty reverie. Dad is dead, he said to himself silently as he straightened up his shirt and cleared his throat, trying to get used to the idea. Dad is dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s fucking dead. No longer with us, no longer living, he’s gone.
Paulie Romano, the biggest mafia don that North Jersey had ever seen, was gone. Forever.
Chapter Two
“Okay, thank you for telling me,” Fiona whispered before she slowly hung up her cell phone, putting it back down on the nightstand next to her bed. She swallowed thickly to clear the lump that appeared at the base of her throat and shuffled down further under her blankets, cuddling up underneath her sheets to counter the cold sweat that just enveloped her whole body. Her boss, Paulie, the man who’d helped her more than anybody else on the face of the planet, was no longer alive. Guido had just woken her up with the news.
“Fuck,” Fiona murmured to nobody. She grabbed the nearest pillow and buried her face into it, screaming until her throat was hoarse, making a scant amount of noise while do so. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
When she wore out her throat, she dropped the pillow and allowed her body to sag against the mattress, limp and useless. She shut her eyes, staring at the blank blackness of her own eyelids, willing herself to go back to sleep, back into her dreams, where none of this had happened. Maybe when she woke back up again, she’d realize that the whole thing was just a nightmare, an awful trick her own brain was playing to torture itself. But the longer she waited, the more and more her head ached, a pounding sensation in her temples growing worse and worse as the minutes ticked by. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she muttered to herself as she finally kicked the sheets and blankets off her body, letting the cold air wash over her until her legs shivered. She couldn’t afford to run the heat very high during the winter. She laughed a little hysterically and buried her face in her hands as she thought about how much worse her financial situation would become very soon, now that Paulie was gone.
Okay, snap the fuck out of it, she told herself a few moments later. She couldn’t stand pitying herself. It was the most disgusting feeling in the world, as far as Fiona was concerned. So, your boss is dead. So what? You still have to go on. You still have to pull yourself together and act like a person. After all, her dad still depended on her. She couldn’t afford to fall apart.
Fiona wiped the cold sweat off her forehead and sat up slowly, letting her body adjust to the cold for a minute before she put her feet on the ground, stood up, and stretched to wake herself up before heading across the hall towards her father’s room. She knocked lightly on the door before opening it a crack to peer inside. Her dad was already awake, reading the previous day’s newspaper while sitting on his bed. As soon as he noticed her, he patted the space next to, wordlessly telling her to come over and sit by him.
She smiled a little as she complied, settling on the bed next to her father and leaning her head on his shoulder, careful not to put too much weight on him. He had been doing better recently, relatively speaking, but he was still recovering from a heart attack—multiple heart attacks, in fact. He needed to be treated carefully, even if it drove him crazy to accept her tender care. “My boss is dead,” she murmured softly, sighing a little as her father wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” her father said softly, putting the newspaper down to focus on her. “Was he sick or something? You never mentioned it, if he was.”
Fiona shook her head. “No, I just saw him yesterday, and he was perfectly fine. He’s always been perfectly fine. I can’t believe this.”
Her father was quiet for a long moment, rubbing the back of Fiona’s head soothingly. “These things happen.”
“I know,” Fiona whispered, but deep inside her mind, there was some little voice that resisted. She’d never thought of Paulie as mortal before. He was larger than life, really, the type of person that people tell their grandchildren about, the type of person that filled every moment with joy or terror or intrigue. For Fiona, he was a second father, giving her a job when she needed it most, when no one else would. Now what was she going to do?
She cleared her throat and spoke up, careful not to let the panic she felt bubbling up in her stomach slip into her voice. “It’s just that I don’t know what’s going to happen now, you know?” she said to her dad, keeping her eyes focused on the carpet below them.
“To Paulie’s business?” her dad suggested.
Fiona nodded slowly, even though she wasn’t entirely sure her father understood the whole situation. She’d never really explained to her dad that she was paid for assisting a crime lord, but somehow, she figured that her father was smart enough to pick up on it anyway. If he disapproved, he kept it to himself, probably aware that she only took the job in the first place to help save up for his medical expenses. “Yeah, it’s so sudden. I don’t think anybody was expecting him to go for another ten or fifteen years. I guess his son Guido will take control now, but…” She shook her head at herself, unwilling to state her anxieties out loud to her father. Sure, Guido was a dick that Fiona hated dealing with, and in all likelihood, he was about to become her boss or even fire her. But it was selfish of her to unload her worries onto her sick dad. He had more than enough to worry about.
Even still, his grip tightened on Fiona’s shoulder, keeping her in place as he brushed over the back of her hair with his other hand. “It’ll be okay, sweetheart,” he said.
“How do you know?” Fiona whispered back, almost embarrassed to be asking for reassurance.
Her dad shrugged. “I know you. You’re the best at w
hat you do.”
“You don’t even know what I do,” Fiona said with a chuckle, thinking about all the drug trafficking deals she’d helped organize over the past year.
“Doesn’t matter,” her dad replied easily. “You’re smart, and you’re loyal, and you’re resilient. No matter what happens, it’ll be okay, honey. I know it will.”
Fiona smiled up at her dad, lightly squeezing his hand. “You always know how to make me feel better.”
Her dad shrugged and grabbed his newspaper to resume his reading again. “It’s my job,” he said.
Fiona straightened up her posture and toughened up her shoulders before getting to her feet. “Right. Time to get to work.”
“So early?” her father asked, not looking up from his newspaper.
“Yep. No sense slacking off just because I’m not sure who my boss is anymore,” Fiona said with a laugh. “Anyways, they might need my help planning the wake and funeral and everything.”
“Atta girl,” her dad said as she left to get dressed for work.
Thirty minutes later, Fiona stepped into the Romano compound feeling awkward and acutely aware of how out of place she looked among the clumps of relatives and family friends who’d gathered in the immediate aftermath of Paulie’s death to give their condolences. She exhaled heavily and headed towards Paulie’s office. Maybe there was paperwork to deal with. Paulie definitely left behind a detailed will, even though he never let Fiona see it while he was alive.