“You look like a golden retriever.” Blaine’s amused voice made me pull my head back in, but even though I gave him a glare for good measure, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. I was sure he was pretty spot on, and I didn’t care.
“I haven’t been out of London in eons,” I sighed as I flopped back in my seat. “This is amazing. I wish we could do this every day.”
“Hmm,” he hummed noncommittally. I took that to mean I shouldn’t get too used to impromptu picnics and sighed with resignation. Perhaps, when I did manage to escape, I should find myself a village in the countryside somewhere and settle down for a while.
After we’d turned off the motorway and had driven along windy farm roads for a good twenty minutes, Blaine finally pulled up a long driveway that led to what looked like an equestrian farm. Horses nipped at the frozen ground behind wooden fences on both sides of the driveway.
“What are we doing here?” I asked. Even though I couldn’t fathom what business Blaine had to see to on a farm, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I’d loved horses with a fiery passion since I was a little girl, but hadn’t had much chance to be around them since I left Ireland. Hopefully, I’d be able to at least pet one before we left again.
“You’ll see.” Blaine looked extraordinarily smug, and I frowned as he got out of the car and headed toward the tweed-dressed, middle-aged woman approaching us from one of the stables. Whatever he had planned, I couldn’t so much as hazard a guess as to what it might be.
My curiosity piqued, and I hurried to undo my seatbelt and get out of the car. When I got to Blaine and the woman, he put his arm around my shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I froze at the unexpected touch, but if he noticed, he ignored it.
“Mrs. Wallace, this is my wife, Mira.”
Mrs. Wallace nodded at me, with a smile on her weathered face. “Pleased to meet you. You sure are one lucky girl, to have such a doting husband.”
I blinked, too stunned to form any words in response. Doting husband? Just what the heck was Blaine playing at? I narrowed my eyes and gave him a hard stare as Mrs. Wallace turned back to the driveway. Blaine just gave me a smirk and pointed in the direction Mrs. Wallace had turned.
“Oh look, perfect timing. Here they are now.”
I looked down the driveway and saw a horse transport slowly make its way up. A nervous knot formed in my stomach as I saw the large vehicle approach. He hadn’t. Surely, he hadn’t. There was no way Blaine would do something like that for me. No way at all.
When the vehicle stopped in the middle of the yard, its passenger gave a loud whinny from within. A couple of horses from the field answered it.
I did my best to shake the chills of excitement that ran down my back. “Blaine, what is this?” I said, my voice low to keep Mrs. Wallace and the driver, who had just jumped out and walked around to the back, from hearing me.
Blaine released his grip on my shoulders and shoved both hands into his jean pockets. His gaze was fixed on the horse transport in front of us, so I couldn’t decipher his expression, but his voice was calm and devoid of emotion when he said, “You warned me about Gerald. Turns out you were right.”
The driver flipped the ramp at the back end of the transport down, revealing the horse inside. It was a gorgeous, white gelding.
“It’s a Lipizzan. I’m told it’s got a fancy pedigree, but if it’s not the type you want, we can take it back and get another one,” Blaine said, as casually as if he’d gotten me a necklace.
I stared open-mouthed at the horse while Mrs. Wallace untied it and led it out of the box, stopping in front of us.
“What do you think, Mrs. Steel? He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?”
“Y-Yeah,” I croaked. “Gorgeous.”
“I’ll let you two get acquainted. The grooms have his box ready when you’re done looking him over. Just lead him to stable six, and we’ll get him settled in.” She handed me the rope and walked back toward the stables, and I was left staring dumbfounded at my very own horse.
“Is he… really for me?” I managed, without taking my eyes off the horse.
“Yeah, he’s yours,” Blaine confirmed. “Mrs. Wallace will be in charge of his daily care, but we should be able to get someone to drive you out here once a week or so.”
The anxious knot grew until it made my chest tight with emotion I couldn’t begin to name. Blaine Steel, the man I’d hated from first sight, the man who had made it perfectly clear he hated being forced to marry me as much as I did… had fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams. To say I was shaken to my core would have been an understatement.
“How did you know?” I whispered, not trusting my voice for anything louder. “How on earth did you know I’ve always wanted a horse of my own?”
“You said you wanted one as a kid. I assumed you likely still did, since you brought it up.”
With a start, I realized he was referring to the time he’d saved me from that group of thugs and walked me to the train station. That he had actually remembered a detail like that, and put it to use to… to what, reward me for being useful? I finally managed to tear my gaze from the horse to look over my shoulder at Blaine. He looked as calm and arrogant as ever as he stood with both hands down his front jeans pockets and the black leather coat zipped all the way up. But past the façade, there was more than just the bad boy mafia son. I wasn’t sure if I only just noticed it now, or—more likely—he finally let down one or two of the shields he usually kept up. Either way, I suddenly, and with a warm flood of confusing emotion I didn’t dare decipher, knew that the real Blaine was in there underneath all the swagger and smugness. And he might just be a man I’d like to get to know.
* * * *
Chapter 17
Blaine
I hadn’t really thought about what would happen after I gave Mira that horse.
Originally, I’d gotten it because she had saved me an arse load of money—along with my reputation. Okay, so I saved my reputation as someone not to be messed with when I burst into Gerald’s home with six other, heavily armed men and demanded he draw the contract back, but without her, I wouldn’t have known it was needed until it’d been much too late. And to top it off, I’d gotten to see Gerald nearly wet his pants as he pleaded with me to spare his miserable life.
I had, of course—if I’d killed him, my dad would undoubtedly have found out how close I was to getting fucked out of forty million pounds, and that was not a road I particularly wanted to travel down. I might have outgrown the belt, but he had other, much more unpleasant means of punishing his employees. Lose the family that kind of money and I’d sure as hell not be worth more than a second-rung employee to him, blood be damned.
So I’d given Mira a horse, because I remembered how she’d looked when she talked about how desperately she’d wanted one as a kid. She might have meant it as a snarky commentary on what she thought I did wrong with my life, but the wistful expression in her eyes had betrayed her true desires. And I’d paid a pretty penny for it too, not so much because I cared about equine pedigrees myself, but because I wanted her to know I valued what she’d done for me.
Sure, I had some measure of ulterior motives behind that decision—mainly that she was going to sit in on all my business deals from now on, whether she wanted to or not—but also just because if I gave someone a gift, I wanted it to be good. It didn’t happen that often, after all.
What I hadn’t expected was the change in Mira after we came home from the stables. It was so subtle that it took me a few days to catch on to something being different, but when she knocked on my door the next afternoon to ask if I wanted anything specific for dinner, I knew something was most definitely up.
“You’re making us dinner?” I asked, my eyes narrowed in suspicion at the curvy woman in my doorway.
“Yes,” she said, wrapping her arms around her midsection in that way she did when she felt defensive. “Or, I’m making me dinner. You don’t have to have anything if you don’t w
ant to. I’m not your mother.”
The catastrophe that was Lasagna Night and when I’d made her cook for Leo and Gerald aside, we hadn’t eaten together since the pizza that first night, and her asking me what I wanted her to make for me was definitely a first. I bit back my urge to ask her why she was suddenly being nice—and that’s when I realized the small changes that had happened for the past few days, since we came back from the stables. She’d made tea and told me there was still some left in the pot when I came in the other night, she’d initiated a few small conversations when we met in the hallway, and—more noticeably—she’d smiled at me once or twice.
I blinked as the past few days’ interactions suddenly slid into a new light.
Was she… trying to be genuinely friendly? Because of the damn horse?
“So, do you want anything, or are you just going to stare at me until I starve to death?” she snapped, effectively ripping me out of my dawning realization.
I smothered a snicker. Clearly, my snarky little wife hadn’t lost her bite just yet.
“Yeah, thanks. Whatever you’re in the mood for would be nice.”
“Soup, then,” she said, before spinning around on her heel and walking out of my room, presumably to go cook.
I resisted the urge to follow her down to the kitchen to watch her. The thought of how overwhelmed with memories of my childhood I’d become when coming home Sunday to the smell of dinner cooking and Mira rummaging around with pots and pans was still in fresh recollection. But she was right—she wasn’t my mother, and I didn’t need to delve deeper into whatever fucked up Oedipus complex was happening whenever I saw her in that apron. ‘Cause I’m not going to lie, I’d spent more than one night wanking to the thought of bending her over the kitchen counter and fucking the living daylights out of her while she was wearing nothing but the apron and the messy bun she usually had her auburn hair up in these days.
My cock stirred at that thought, and I sighed wistfully. If only her sudden onset of friendliness would transform into an equally sudden, acute desire to let me get between her thighs. How many horses would that take, anyway?
With another sigh I slid my hand down my pants to alleviate the increasingly uncomfortable pressure in my cock. If nothing else, hopefully I’d get over my borderline obsession with her soon, so I could at least find other women to slake my desires with. I hadn’t spent this much time masturbating since I was thirteen years old, and the novelty was quickly beginning to wear off.
* * *
“Blaine!”
The sound of Mira’s irritated voice came from inside my bedroom.
After getting off to yet another fantasy of kitchen sex with my bitchy little wife, I’d headed for the shower to clean off and calm down. It had apparently taken longer than I thought, judging from the annoyance in Mira’s voice.
I briefly wondered how long she’d been calling me for as I grabbed a towel to wrap around my midriff, but such contemplations came to an abrupt halt as a devious idea sprung out.
Much as she wanted to pretend like it wasn’t the case, I knew for a fact that the little prude got nice and turned on from seeing me naked. And I was really fucking tired of being the only sexually frustrated person in this house.
With a devilish smirk I dropped the towel on the floor and sauntered into my bedroom.
“For God’s sake, I’ve been calling y—” Mira turned toward me, hands on her hips and undoubtedly gearing up for a longer tirade. However, the sight of my naked body stopped her cold.
My smirk hiked up higher when her eyes traveled down my body until they got to my crotch. A furious blush rushed to her cheeks, but she kept staring at my cock as if mesmerized.
Yep. She wasn’t anywhere near as uninterested as she’d spent the past few weeks pretending like she was.
“See anything you like?” I shifted my hips a bit and saw her tongue slip out to wet her lower lip as her eyes followed the movement. Nice. Having her look at me like this made my cock swell in no time.
Mira made a half-choked little noise and finally found the will to snap her attention away from my rapidly growing cock.
“For fuck’s sake, Blaine! Put that away!”
“Why?” I grinned, taking a few steps toward her. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
Mira retreated backward toward the door, as if fleeing from a prowling predator. She did everything to look anywhere but at my now fully hard dick. “Just—just stop it! God, why do you have to be such a prick! I mean jerk—oh, God!”
I laughed out loud at her flustered sputtering. It turned into a full belly laugh when she seemingly gave up on winning the argument and turned around on her heel to flee down the stairs.
“Hey, wait up, what were you going to tell me?” I called after her. “Is dinner ready, or what?”
No reply came from downstairs, apart from some loud banging of pots from the kitchen.
I was tempted to follow her down without putting my pants on, but figured it might not be the best idea if I ever wanted her to cook for me again. Besides, my cock was already uncomfortably hard. Seeing her all flustered and trying desperately not to look at it while we were in the room most of my fantasies about her played out in would likely torture me more than it would her.
Sighing, I walked to my closet to find some clothes.
* * *
When I came down the stairs, Mira sat at the dining table, already eating what looked like tomato soup. She’d set a plate out for me as well, and a bottle of wine.
“Smells lovely,” I offered as I sauntered in to take my place.
Mira didn’t look at me, but I could see her cheeks turning a delicious pink again.
I grinned. “Oh, come now, love. I’ve put pants on—it’s all safe.”
She made a huffy little sound, but finally raised her head to level me with a glare. “I really didn’t need to see that.”
“Oh, on the contrary—I think you did.” I winked at her and grabbed a chunk of bread to dip into the soup. “Gotta give you a bit of material for those late night self-loving sessions. I am your husband, after all.”
Her cheeks went from light pink to a tomato red that rivaled the soup in seconds. “Thanks, I’ll manage!” It came out as a hiss, but her flaming face spoke its own truth.
My grin widened. So she did, in fact, use me as her source material to get off? Hmm. I popped the bread into my mouth while I enjoyed her squirming in her seat, no doubt regretting that she didn’t just eat in her room. As much as I wanted to continue needling her, just to see how far I could take it before she snapped, I reined myself in. I did need to talk to her, and I’d rather not do it with a faceful of wine.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you—how often are you right when you assess people like you did Gerald?”
Mira’s eyebrows shut up, probably in surprise at the change of subject. “Most of the time. Body language is pretty universal and hard to control. Why?”
“Because I’ve got a…” Best make it sound optional to avoid resistance. “...business proposition for you.”
Her mouth flattened into a disapproving line. “I’m not going to come with you to poker games, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.”
“Always think the worst, huh? It’s got nothing to do with gambling. I simply want you to come along for my business meetings. As an adviser. You can sit in while I meet with potential business partners, and give me your opinion of them after. It would be a good way for you to get out of the house. Since you’d be with me, you’d be safe.”
Mira frowned, a somewhat conflicted look passing across her pretty face. “I… I don’t want anything to do with illicit affairs, Blaine. If the day ever comes where I need to explain to the police how much I knew about your activities, I don’t want to have to lie to tell them I had no involvement.”
I nodded. That was fair enough, given how she’d tried her best to get away from this world. “It’ll only be above-board dealings. You won’t be privy to anything les
s than kosher.”
“And after these meetings, we’ll go somewhere else for a little bit?”
I raised an eyebrow at the excitement she was clearly trying—and failing—to hide while she attempted to negotiate with me. I might not be as skilled at reading body language as she was, but I knew I had this one in the bag. She was way too desperate to not be cooped up in this house to turn me down. However, I didn’t see the harm in letting her think she had some pull.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe just… browsing a few stores, some window shopping… stopping for an ice cream if we fancy. Normal things that normal people do. A museum visit once in a while, perhaps?”
I grimaced. “How about we skip the museum and catch a movie instead?”
“Can it be French?”
“No.”
Mira sighed. “Fine. But no explosion-y action flicks, either.”
I laughed and reached my hand across the table. She sure did drive a hard bargain. “Okay, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Tentatively, she reached out her own hand and put it in mine. It was small and soft, and the touch of her palm sent a pang to my needy cock. “Deal.”
I wrapped my fingers around hers for the briefest of moments, under the guise of shaking on it, but really, all I cared about was feeling the touch of her skin. Why, why was I so desperately attracted to her? From the first time I saw her I’d wanted to bed her, but after our drunken night together, the urge to be inside of her hadn’t diminished. Quite the contrary. I’d never been with a woman who made all others seem completely uninteresting, even for a short while.
Reluctantly, I let go of her hand. “What types of movies do you like? And don’t even bother listing any artsy shit.”
“Oh, the usual stuff. Dramas, rom-coms, an occasional psychological thriller. How about you?” She raised a teasing eyebrow at me. “And don’t even bother listing any action-y shit.”
I Need A Bad Boy: A Collection of Bad Boy Romances Page 68