by Madison Faye
The spell is broken as we pull up at a small riverside dock. He opens the car door and the cool air blows into the car. Dominic escorts me out and I see that there’s a boat waiting for us. Maybe it’s the shock of the cold after the warmth of the car, but I’m snapped out of my haze.
I freeze there on the river bank. He nudges me, but I don’t move.
“What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong? Everything. I saw a man die tonight. I’ve been taken from my job, my home, my life. I know I probably won’t see any of them ever again. Now I stand on the banks of the Hudson, flowing dark like the river Styx.
“It’s time to go, Marina.”
My lower lip quivers as fear rises up to meet me. “I don’t want to sleep with the fishes.”
Dominic laughs. “This is the boat to my house. We’re going to Long Island.”
“Oh.”
I have no way of knowing if that’s true or not, but there’s no escaping him now. His hand is wrapped around my arm and I am stepping into the boat.
“Come,” Dominic says. “It’s a beautiful night. Look at the city.”
He directs my attention to the skyline as we set off across the river, but my eyes keep dipping from those gleaming lights. The water below is black. Like Dominic’s eyes. And his heart. I am not safe. Should I scream? Who would hear me? And what would I even shout? We are propelled over the water far more swiftly than the ferry can go. The night air is cold and my uniform does little to protect me as I shiver.
His hands descend on my shoulders, rub up and down my arms. I am warmed, not just from the outside, but from the inside out. He’s dangerous. He’s lawless. Whatever he and Marcel were talking about, I know it has to have been illegal. Nobody gets shot or stabbed over cannoli.
The boat ride ends with a short walk across a sandy beach. This would be so beautiful and romantic if I wasn’t a captive, and if a man wasn’t dead.
His home is set on a sprawling estate. I can’t see much in the night, but the driveway is long and well lit and it leads to a three-story house that is nothing short of a mansion with high-pitched roofs. The lower story doesn’t have much in the way of windows, and the walls are made of solid stone. There’s something fortress-like about it, which doesn’t surprise me. This place is worth in the tens of millions at least. To own a place like this, you don’t have to be just rich, you have to be a billionaire.
Dominic escorts me inside, and I forget all over again why I’m here as I’m enveloped in the kind of luxury I’ve only dreamed of. It’s decorated in modern style. He leads me into a lounge where there are no fewer than three couches and four armchairs. You could host two dozen people here easy, on expensive black leather furniture set against dark walls with bold modern art displayed. Somehow, the cavernous space is cozy.
“Sit down, little girl,” he says, escorting me to a couch in front of the fireplace. He makes me sit, but he stays standing in front of me, his tall frame looming, long legs and strong torso. Dominic Leone is a frighteningly powerful male specimen. I feel so incredibly vulnerable, so utterly small. He called me a little girl in the car, and I feel every inch a little girl as he looks down at me with those dark eyes.
“What are you going to do with me?” The question scares me, but I have to ask it.
“You’re a witness, Marina. I can’t have you running around serving pasta and telling tales, little girl.”
That isn’t an answer. It’s a problem. I don’t think Dominic tolerates problems in his world for long.
“Who is going to miss you?”
The question startles me for a moment, but it’s not hard to answer.
“Nobody.”
“Aw.” He makes the sound with mock sympathy. “But truly, Marina. I need to know who your family are. Friends. Some explanation has to be made when you don’t show up for work tomorrow, or when you don’t return their calls. I intend to keep you here for quite some time, and I don’t want to see your picture on the back of a milk carton.”
“I don’t have family. Or friends.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
His expression grows hard. “You’re lying to me.”
“I’m not!”
“A beautiful young woman, a waitress. A woman who sees hundreds of people every week, and who catches the eye of every man who enters the restaurant. She says she has no family, no friends, and no lovers? I do not believe you, Marina.” His brow is cocked at me with almost paternal disbelief, as if he is chiding me for being so naughty as to lie to him.
“It’s true.” I go into my bag, unlock my phone with my thumbprint, and hand it to him. “Look for yourself.”
He takes my phone and sweeps through my contacts.
“Who is Ronnie?”
“McDonald’s.”
Dominic raises a dark brow at me. “Why would you have a fast food restaurant on speed dial?”
“They have a delivery service.”
“You have McDonald’s delivered to you, when you work in an Italian restaurant?”
He’s judging me, and I think he’s a bit suspicious too. “Call the number,” I say. “Check it.”
He presses dial.
“McDonald’s delivery. Whaddya want?” The voice of a disinterested teenager whose high is wearing off comes over the line.
Dominic ends the call and shakes his head at me. “You have no friends, no family, and you live on McDonald’s. I do not believe this.”
“You don’t believe a waitress can be a loser?”
“You’re too beautiful.”
I have a symmetrical face and a decent body shape. My mother and father blessed me with those attributes and not much else. I’m also not exactly skinny, so it’s not that far-fetched to think I eat fast food a lot. Besides, lots of chefs and food service workers eat like crap. It’s a function of working really late and not having the energy to cook when you get home.
“You think pretty people can’t be bad at life?”
“Hard living usually takes a worse toll,” he says. “But you are young. You don’t have to pay the price for living that way yet.” He holds his hand out. “Give me the keys to your apartment. I will have your things brought over.”
“I don’t really have things,” I say as I hand my keys to him. They’re not my keys anymore anyway. They’re his. Everything belongs to Dominic. Has since long before I met him.
His frown deepens.
“You don’t have anything you want? Most women have a hundred sentimental items.”
“I guess I’m not like other women you’ve abducted before.”
He smirks. “I don’t make a habit of this. I’m usually more careful. No witnesses.”
A shiver runs through me. I know what ‘no witnesses’ means. It means usually he would have put another bullet to use.
“Are you going to kill me, Dominic?”
“No,” he says, his dark eyes failing to reassure me. “I’m going to train you, little girl. When I’m done, I won’t worry about you telling anyone anything. You’ll do exactly as I say, when I say. You’ll be mine, to your very core.” He sits next to me and his hand slides over my shoulder, his fingers brushing against my neck as his hand wraps around the back of my neck and squeezes gently.
He pulls me forward and his lips crush mine as he kisses me deeply, possessively. I taste him. His power. His ruthlessness. His desire. It calls to me and my body responds.
This is what I always dreamed of happening—but not this way. Not as his captive. Not having seen him do one of the worst things a man can do. He breaks the kiss and looks down at me with dark eyes that gleam with malicious desire. Will he hurt me? Yes. How could he not? He is a knife, and all knives eventually cut.
“Don’t tremble, Marina,” he purrs softly. “I have no intention of hurting you.”
Would he tell me if he did?
“Just tell me there was a good reason for it. Tell me Marcel deserved to die. Tell me you had to kill him.”
“Y
ou saw what happened. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter what I say. I can’t explain my world to you, or what I had to do. It won’t make sense to a woman like you—and it shouldn’t.”
I search his eyes, hoping he’ll give something away. I need to know that he’s good underneath it all. That I’m not in falling in love with a monster.
“I’m not a good man,” he says, dashing my hopes. “I won’t harm you, but I’m not going to be good to you.”
“What?”
“I tried to protect you from all of this, Marina, but you didn’t listen and now you’re mine. There are consequences for your disobedience.”
His fingers are stroking up and down the back of my neck, gentling me in my fear even as his words stoke it. I find myself caught in his stare, my silent gaze pleading for mercy even though I don’t know what his consequences will entail.
“You were a good waitress, Marina, but you’re going to be an even better little fuck doll.”
His crude words make my pussy clench.
“Do you want to fuck me, Marina?”
“Yes…” The word emerges from me in a husky moan.
“You’ve had boyfriends before,” he says. It’s not a question. It’s a statement. How much does this brutal man know about me? His fingers curl around the back of my neck as he keeps speaking, his voice low, his accent purring erotically in my ear, making my tender parts quiver with desire. “You’re used to pedestrian sex. Grunting and rutting. That is not how it will be with me. I don’t just want your pussy. I want to fuck you so you feel it in every part of your sweet little body. It will hurt, Marina. Make no mistake. But it is the only way you will ever be free.”
“Hurt?” I whimper the word as his lips brush mine.
“Oh, yes, my sweet little girl,” he growls. “Pain is part of the deal. But it will not be in vain.”
I don’t understand what he’s talking about. I have no references for the threats he is making, but I know how his words make me feel. Something delicious is winding its way through my body. The very core of me is becoming volcanic. There is heat and there is pressure inside me. I have wanted him for so long and he has always been just out of reach, in a world apart from mine.
But now he is in my world. Now I am his. And now there is no need to pretend what I have pretended for so long—that I can resist him. That it doesn’t make me ache just to be near him. My heart has been beating only for Dominic from the first moment I met him, and what he has done doesn’t change that one bit.
I kiss him, my teeth catching his lower lip. If there’s going to be pain, it will be shared. I hear him hiss and then his hand catches the underside of my ass in a hard slap. I yowl against his mouth and release his lip. He sucks it in between his teeth and looks at me with an expression I can only describe as being one of pure erotic delight.
“You’re a bad girl, Marina,” he growls. “You need to be punished.”
Am I bad? No. I’m a boring waitress. But he has made me bad. He has made me accomplice to a crime I don’t understand. He has taken me and corrupted me. I supposed if I were to face a jury of my peers they would be skeptical that I could be twisted so quickly, but this has been weeks in the making. Every time I laid eyes on him, I became more and more willing to do whatever it would take to be his. Dominic has a charisma few men have, a dark mischief and a dominance that work in tandem to make him irresistible.
His mouth meets mine again, his kiss deepens, and my mind goes blank. I forget the world outside him. Nothing matters but this handsome devil who has me in his arms.
Dominic starts to strip me of my clothing. There is no request. No warning. He rips each and every piece from me, shredding my shirt and my skirt in his impatient fists. When he is finished with me, nothing remains, just the slight indentations left in my shoulders and across my breasts from my bra. I am sprawled on the couch in a very indelicate position, stuck where he left me like a doll he’s yet to be done playing with.
His eyes rake over me, one hand on my belly in case I even think about getting up. My legs are spread, one on his lap, the other off the couch. He can see everything I have to give—everything that is his to take.
“You were told to leave the restaurant. Why didn’t you go?”
“I…”
“You must have sensed the danger. Your chef told you to leave. But you didn’t go. You stayed, and you spied.” His fingertips find my nipple and squeeze just hard enough to make me gasp. “Why?”
“I was curious…”
“Curiosity is a dangerous trait, especially around me, little girl. You will have to contain yours from now on. If I find you snooping or sneaking around, you will be punished harshly.”
There’s a growl in his voice that tells me he’s serious. He will punish me. He will hurt me. I say nothing as his eyes roam over my naked body, taking in everything, even the parts of me that are a little too soft. I wish my belly was flatter. I wish my thighs weren’t dimpled here and there. I wish I’d had a few less chicken nuggets and spent a few more hours at the gym.
“I knew you would be beautiful,” he breathes, thrusting his hand between my thighs. He cups my sex, finds me wet in spite of—or perhaps because of—my fear. His dark eyes light up with triumph. “You’re so damn hot, Marina.”
Me? He really thinks I’m hot? Part of me is afraid to believe it. Usually men go for the sleeker girls, the more sophisticated women. Not the ones with marinara sauce under their fingernails and hair that is a little frizzy from the humidity from an evening in and out of the kitchen.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson,” he says. “I’m going to teach you what happens to bad little girls who disobey their daddies.”
I should be afraid of his threat, but it’s delivered in a passionate growl that doesn’t scare me—at least, not in the way I was scared of him at the beginning of the evening.
“Come and lie over my lap, Marina.”
I do as he says. My breasts swing beneath me as I squirm around and crawl on hands and knees over his broad thighs. I don’t question his order, because I don’t want to. I want to know what he has in store for me. I want to find out how my daddy is going to deal with me.
I’m accepting this all far too easily, but Dominic weaves a spell I can’t escape and don’t want to even if I could. He’s right that I’ve had sex before, but I’ve never felt an energy like the one that is humming between us. This isn’t simple arousal. This is an intoxicating need that makes me moan softly as he settles me over his thighs, his palm stroking my back and bottom.
“This is going to hurt,” he says. “But not as bad as it could hurt, and not as bad as it will hurt if you disobey me in the future.”
His fingers curl in my hair, taking control of my head as his fingers splay across my ass. My pussy is pressed hard against the ridge of his thigh and my hips are grinding because this is the hottest thing that has ever happened to me, along with the worst and most frightening.
“You want this, don’t you, Marina,” he says, his fingers scratching my scalp lightly. “You want your daddy to spank you and teach you a lesson.”
I want him. I want him to touch me. Take me. I want him to make me feel better, and I want him to make me hurt. Fear and lust are so closely entwined, I can’t tell them apart anymore. This man I have wanted for weeks is handling me with a masterful touch and I want everything he has to give.
His hand slides away from my ass. It’s only gone for a fraction of a second before it returns with a hash slap that sends a burst of pain through my rear.
“Ow!”
“It hurts, I know,” he murmurs, repeating the act again and again. Six hard swats land in quick succession, burning and blazing over the surface of my ass and suddenly the hand in my hair makes perfect sense because I can’t stay still for this. I buck and I squirm and I writhe, but his hand keeps finding my ample ass and my thighs.
“Naughty little girls get spanked,” he drawls. “And so much more. If you’d just gone home like you were to
ld, you’d be tucked up in bed by now.”
I wouldn’t be. I’d be sitting in my shitty apartment eating chicken nuggets, watching late night television, and dreading work tomorrow. I’d be lonely. I’d be dreaming of him.
Now I have him and even though it hurts, it’s finally real. The pain is worth it.
Dominic keeps spanking me, making my bottom hotter and sorer, his hand going lower and lower, until he is spanking me right where I sit.
“Open your thighs.”
He gives the order and when I don’t follow it immediately, he slides his hand between them and pulls them open. His fingers find my sex, run along the slippery seam of my lower lips and part them. My inner lips are exposed, the little hole at the entrance of me.
“My little girl likes being spanked by her daddy, doesn’t she?”
“Mnnnnngghhhh…” I can’t answer him coherently.
Dominic’s finger pushes between my lips and finds my pussy, thrusting in with a confident, commanding stroke. Oh, god. Oh, fuck, yes. I need more than his finger. I need his cock. I need him to take me.
Chapter Four
Dominic
Marina’s hips writhe over my lap, her pussy clenching at my finger with erotic desperation. She’s so damn eager. I expected more resistance than this, but Marina isn’t quite the girl I thought she was. No family. Nobody to miss her. There’s a story there and I’ll find it eventually, but right now I can read her like a book.
She’s not just going along with me declaring myself her daddy. She’s embracing it. She’s hungry for it. She needs it. My instincts were correct. This is a lost little girl who needs to be looked after. I’m not a man known for his nurturing side, but I do have one, and she brings that latent instinct out in me big time.
I slide my finger in and out of her pussy, pleasing her slowly. I could throw her down on the floor and fuck her right now. Maybe I will. But I want her even more turned on before I do that. I want her begging with desperation.
Taking my finger out of her pussy, I tighten my grip in her hair and start spanking her harder and faster, whipping her hot little ass with the flat of my palm. Her ass is turning a brilliant red hue, and the sounds emitting from her make my cock rock hard. I love her squeals and gasps of pain. This is hurting her, but in the right way.