Begging for Bad Boys

by Willow Winters

  “Fine,” she spits, whirling away from me and finding a seat in one of the chairs in Mick’s waiting room.

  Well this is going to be fun.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  She flips me off as she goes for her phone.

  “Mick, we’re gonna head to the house now.”

  He looks up from his desk. “Good, good.”

  “You wanna fill me in on what this is all about?”

  He reaches for his cigarettes. “You know.”

  “No I mean, what’s her deal? What sort of troub—”

  “Kid.”

  Mick’s eyes narrow.

  “Just do your fuckin’ job, and get it done.”

  I swallow the fire in my mouth before I nod. “Yeah, you got it.”

  “Change is coming, Liam.” Mick lights his ever-present Marlboro Light. “And I want you on the right side of the change. You get me?”

  “Yeah, of course, Mick.”

  “Good lad. Take her home, you watch her, and you report everything you pick up on back to me.”

  “You mean about the Russians?”

  “About her.”

  My brow creases.

  “I don’t trust her, kid,” Mick mutters.

  “She’s Jack’s daughter.”

  “Exactly.”

  I raise a brow at him. “C’mon, Mick. She’s family.”

  He drags on his smoke, leaning back in his chair as he eyes me. “She left that a long time ago.”

  “He did send her away.”

  “And she never came back. Oh, what, for that one day two years ago for her old man’s funeral?” Mick ashes his cigarette into an old Styrofoam coffee cup and shakes his head. “She ain’t family, kid. Remember that. Who the fuck knows who she’s in bed with.”

  I bristle at his choice of words.

  Mick shrugs. “She could be with the Feds.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Mick. This is Aela we’re talking ab—”

  “She disappears for six fuckin years and suddenly she’s got this big problem that I happen to hear about?” His lips purse around his cigarette, smoke exhaling through his nose.

  “You watch her, and report back. You got that?”

  I frown. “Yeah, got it.”

  “Don’t let the fact that she’s Jack’s kid fuck with your head. She ain’t been around for a long time. Remember that.”

  I nod, and head for the door.

  “Liam.”

  I turn.

  “I don’t have to mention the ways I’ll kill you if you touch her do I?”

  I clear my throat. “Nah, course not, Mick.”

  He looks me in the eye. “Not a finger, kid.”

  “Won’t be a problem.”

  But it will.

  Because putting my hands on Aela Reilly is the one of the two things I’m good at, not to mention one of the only things I’ve thought of for the last six fucking years.

  And now she’s back within my reach.

  Chapter 4

  Aela

  Thirteen Years Ago

  “Watch closely, Aela-girl, because I’m only going to do this once.”

  The smile spreads across my father’s face as he reaches past my ear and pulls the queen of spades out of seemingly thin air.

  “Dad, that’s an easy one.”

  “Hey, there’s nothing easy about magic.”

  “You had it pinched between your pinky and your ring finger, on the back so I wouldn’t see it when you reached for my ear.”

  He raises a brow at me, grinning. “You’re getting too good at this.”

  I beam at him. “I’m not a kid anymore, dad.”

  For the record, I’m eleven.

  “Okay, smart-girl, let’s try this one since you’re too big for magic tricks.” He shuffles the deck in a rapid blur before dealing us both cards and laying down the river.

  Texas hold ‘em is a favorite of ours.

  “You holding or trading?”

  “Holding.”

  He grins. “You’re not trying to sneak a pocket pair past me again, are ya?”

  I keep my face perfectly neutral. I’ve been practicing my poker face in the mirror after I brush my teeth in the mornings.

  “Remind me,” he sighs, frowning as if trying to remember something. “What are the odds of me having just dealt you a pocket p—”

  “Sixteen to one.”

  Dad grins. “Smart girl.”

  What I don’t tell him, and what my face doesn’t give away, is that I also know that the odds of being dealt the two aces I’ve got in my hand are two-hundred and twenty to one.

  Dad strokes his chin thoughtfully as he mulls over his cards before he shakes his head.

  “Nah, I’m folding.”

  My face falls. “What? No fair! Let’s just play!”

  Of course it’s fair, I was just really excited to triumphantly toss down my aces.

  “Nope, no way.” He shakes his head, still looking at his hand. “Not with those aces you’re holding.”

  My jaw drops in shock. “How did you do that?!”

  My father looks up and grins at me.

  “Magic.”

  Present Day

  “I can carry my own bags.”

  “What?”

  “I said I can carry my own bags.”

  Liam pauses in the doorway to my father’s house and gives me a look.

  “Bodyguard, sweetheart. Not servant.” I gruff out in this sarcastic, overly-manly sounding voice.

  His brow arches, and a shadow of a grin teases the corners of his mouth. “That supposed to be me?”

  “Look, just let me take my own freaking bags upstairs. I’m not a little kid.”

  “You know, people say chivalry is dead, but personally, I try to—”

  “Believe me, chivalrous is the very last word I’d use to describe you.”

  That smug grin crosses his lips. “Well don’t keep me hanging, sweetheart.”

  “Arrogant? Asshole? Two-faced?”

  Liam’s brows go up. “Been waiting a long time to let that out, huh?”

  “Fuck you.”

  He rolls his eyes and drops the suitcases on the hardwood floor at the bottom of the stairs. “Fine. Have at it.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I give him a sour look as I grab my two suitcases and heft them up the stairs. I make it one step up before the larger of the two crashes into my shin, sending a cry and a string of expletives from my lips.

  Liam clears his throat, and I glance up, puffing and shoving hair out of my face. I glare at him before I put my back into it and yank the bags up another step, directly on top of my toe.

  I swear again.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, let me get that.”

  “I’ve got it,” I hiss, batting his hand away.

  “You’re fucking up the hardwood.”

  “Oh, what do you ca—”

  “Aela.”

  His voice is right in my ear, making me gasp as I feel his arms circle past me. I freeze, there on the second step of the staircase in the house I grew up in, with the man I once loved closer than he’s been in six years. I swallow as his hands push mine from the handles, fingers brushing my skin as he closes them around the straps and lifts them away.

  Muscles tense and ripple under the ink of his arms as he effortlessly hefts the bags, glancing at me once more as if looking for more fight before he brushes past me and up the stairs.

  “Pushover.”

  I hate the grin that comes to my face as I follow him up.

  Liam turns left down the hall to my old room, and I’d say it was out of habit, but this is never the way Liam Roarke used to get to my room back then.

  I briefly wonder if the ladder he stashed behind our garage is still there as I follow him into my old bedroom.

  We both freeze.

  The last time we were in this room together was six years ago, in the dark, whispering lover’s prayers into each other’s lips as we crashed together under the sheets. Back when we were
each other’s world, sneaking around behind my father’s back, heedless of the storm that was about to crash into us all.

  He’d snuck out in the morning, that last time, leaving me smiling, breathless, and silly-happy, like he always did. Of course, I didn’t know then that it was the last time.

  I didn’t know then that the morning after was the day everything would change.

  Liam drops the bags to the floor, breaking the spell as he slowly turns back to me, his eyes seeking mine.

  “The hell are you doing back here, Aela,” he says quietly.

  “You know what.”

  He shakes his head. “What are you into? I mean what’s Mick got on you?”

  My mouth goes tight. “Nothing. It’s being handled.”

  “Handled like coming back here and actually agreeing to this fucking plan of his?”

  “Just leave the bags there, thanks.”

  His brow furrows as he leans against my old dresser, arms folded across his chest. “Why do you always think you have to be the tough girl?”

  “Besides that I’m from Southie and that my dad was a major crime boss?”

  He smiles quietly, nodding without saying a word.

  “I need to shower.”

  Liam grins.

  “Leave?”

  “You still do that thing where you stand with your arms and legs crossed under the water?”

  “Stop.” I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut. “Just stop. We’re not going there, and we’re not doing this.”

  “We’re just talking.”

  “No, we’re not,” I say quietly.

  There’s no “just talking” with Liam Roarke and I. There never was, and something tells me six years, with a history like ours, hasn’t done much to change that dynamic. Which is why I can’t do this. I can’t go down memory freaking lane with him, especially here, in this room, where so much happened all those years ago.

  “Out.” I point to the door, still not trusting myself to look him in the eye. “I don’t need you hanging around me.”

  He barks out a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  I whirl on him, face red.

  “I don’t need to hang around after you, sweetheart. I do just fine by myself.”

  “Oh, I’m so happy for you, Liam,” I sneer. “Fucking your way through the skanks of Boston?”

  “Least I’m not marrying Tommy fucking Flaherty.”

  “Careful.” I smile sweetly at him. “That’s my fiancé, you know.”

  Liam’s eyes narrow, his arms drop, and for a second, I feel my breath catch. For a second, there’s that fire and passion in his face that I used to crave — the roaring darkness and coiled power behind those arms and that chiseled jaw that used to ignite something wild in me.

  But then it’s gone. It’s blown away like a breath as he looks at me once more before brushing past me and out the door, shutting it firmly behind him.

  I sigh, dropping my face into my hands and massaging my temples. I push my long red hair out of my face, running my fingers through it as I head into the bathroom attached to my old bedroom and start the shower.

  I meet my own eyes in the bathroom mirror as the hot water runs, and slowly shake my head.

  I can’t believe I’m back here.

  Here in Southie but also back here in my old house too, with the ghosts that linger in this place like shadows after dark.

  Ghosts like Liam Roarke.

  There was no good scenario of me coming back here. When Mick reached out to me in that hotel in L.A., I knew there was no good outcome. Yes, my debt gets paid. Yes, Nico Vecchio doesn’t leave me in the desert to die or outright shoot me.

  But I come back here.

  A prisoner.

  And I’m still trying to decide if I made the right move.

  Steam starts to curl from the shower, and I head back into my room. I strip down quickly, tossing my travel-dirty clothes into a corner and turning to glance at myself in the full-length mirror hanging on my closet door.

  The girl looking back is a world away from the one that used to look back at me. She’s been broken, she’s put herself back together piece by piece with whatever glue was available. My eyes travel over the lines of ink tracing delicately over my upper left arm and shoulder — the delicate swirls of tattoos that trace over my ribs, twisting over the words there, before they tease down to my hip.

  I collected tattoos like battle stories in the years since I left here, and every one tells a story — a swan song, a fairytale, a eulogy. A book of broken love songs, beautifully out of tune and whimsically out of sync.

  For Sheila. For my dad. For the city I left back then, and for the places I saw in the years since.

  For the man who wrecked me. That one hurt the most, actually.

  Of course I knew he’d be here when I came back. In fact, it was the first thought in my mind when Mick had called. Not the offer, not the implications of marrying a total asshole like Tommy Flaherty to settle a debt.

  Liam. The one who let me get away.

  No, the one that pushed me away, and never once looked back.

  The familiarity of being in my old bedroom — of being near him — after all these years slowly creeps over me, until I shake my head quickly just to lose the sense of déjà vu. I stand there in front of the mirror, the water running in the background as I weigh the reality of being back here.

  With him.

  But that’s enough of that. Going there before got me bruised and broken. Going there now could get us killed.

  I grab a folded towel from the top of my dresser to head for the shower, and that’s when the door to my room swings wide open.

  “Wasn’t sure if you needed your purse—”

  I screech, clutching the towel to myself as I whirl on him.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  He freezes in the doorway, but he grins — that half-cocked, shrouded-in-shadow smile of his that turned me to jelly all those years before.

  “Don’t you know how to knock,” I hiss. “The fuck are you doing here?”

  “We’ve been over this, right?”

  I give him a sour look.

  “Protecting your ass.” His eyes dip to the exposed curve of my hip behind the half-clutched towel, and he grins.

  “Stop it.” I pull the towel a little tighter around myself, swallowing the lump in my throat.

  “Sorry, word association.”

  “You said ass and looked at my ass. That’s not word association, that just you being a juvenile dick.”

  “Some things never change I guess.”

  “And other things do.”

  The room grows quiet as I look away, fingering the terry-cloth towel in my fist. Heat creeps into my face as I’m suddenly aware of how short it is.

  “You got more tattoos.”

  I blush again before I remember to scowl.

  “Stop looking.”

  “Sort of hard not to.”

  He steps forward into the room, and my pulse quickens.

  “Can I see ‘em?”

  I glare at him. “Um, no, and stop looking.”

  “You wouldn’t put a tattoo on your hip if you didn’t want someone to see it.”

  “And you somehow assume that someone is you?”

  His jaw tightens. That was a barb and he knows it.

  “This someone still around?”

  “I’m getting married, in case you hadn’t heard.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  I gasp quietly as he steps even closer, his eyes flashing. “I’m making it my business.”

  I shiver.

  And I want to lie. I want to cut him with some wicked, sharp little lie about a boyfriend, or someone special — someone I’ve given my heart to now after finally piecing it back together.

  But of course there’s not, because of course I haven’t.

  “No,” I say quietly, my eyes narrowing at him. “Happy?”<
br />
  His eyes burn into mine once more, that fierce, dark look roaring to the surface. But then his jaw tightens, he takes a deep breath through his nose, and the fierceness is gone, dimming back inside.

  “You still planning on marrying Tommy Flaherty?”

  My mouth goes tight. “Sure looks like it.”

  “Then no, Aela, I’m not fucking happy.”

  He turns and steps from the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving me panting from the breath I never realized I’d been holding.

  Chapter 5

  Liam

  Sweat pours down my face.

  My blood’s pumping like jet fuel in my veins as my feet pound the streets of Southie after leaving Aela’s dad’s place.

  Mick putting me on her was a mistake. Being in that house again with her was dangerous. Seeing a glimpse of that skin, and that fire in her eyes, and the way her lip catches in her teeth when she’s heated?

  Well that just damn near broke me.

  Getting out and going for a run was the only thing I could think of to clear my head.

  To keep me sane.

  I take my usual route, running past the docks, the waterfront — past the gravel depot, the junkyards.

  Then past all the new shit.

  The yuppie spots. The kitschy restaurants, the fucking condos, which are everywhere now. Jesus Christ, if you’d told me ten years ago, that a shit-hole flop of a house in Southie would be going for three million bucks to hedge-fund guys who drive Land Rovers, I’d have laughed in your face.

  I’m not laughing now.

  The neighborhood’s changing, but then, that’s not necessarily a bad thing either I guess. I mean, yes, the charm goes when the yuppies and hipsters come in, but then, so does the darkness. I like a little grit, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not altogether a bad thing to be losing the pimps and the heroin peddlers selling that shit to kids.

  I grit my teeth as I push it harder, feeling my lungs explode.

  So it’s changing here. But it’s also the same. It’s still hanging onto a lot of that grit. It’s hung onto the old families who’ll never leave, no matter how much some fucking prick with an Audi wants to pay them for the home they’ve had since the 1920s.