Boston Underworld: The Collection

by A. Zavarelli

  I drive to her apartment first. But the light inside isn’t on and she isn’t home. I’d let myself in, if I believed she was here, or would be back anytime soon, but I know that isn’t likely.

  Whatever the reason she came to the fight tonight, she put it out of her mind just as quickly. The woman is as elusive as ever.

  After scoping out her usual stomping grounds and checking in with Mack who hasn’t seen her, I drive to my place.

  I’m only planning to grab a shower and a change before I go back to her place, but when I let myself into the house, there’s no need.

  Her perfume still lingers in the entryway, and her shadowed profile sits atop the window seat. Her knees are hugged into her chest, her bare feet crossed at the ankles as she stares up at the moon.

  “How did ye even know where I live?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer me. Instead, she gets up and moves across the floor in my direction, quiet and predatory.

  “Scarlett?”

  She comes too close. Her hands moving up over the expanse of my chest before her fingertips are on my neck.

  I know what needs to be done. Logically. But right now, with her hands on me, my cock is doing all the thinking.

  So, when she leans up on her toes and pulls my head down to hers, I give in. There's honey on her lips, but destruction in her kiss. And in the darkness, it’s easy to forget why she’s even here, or if it matters, as I yank her body against mine and grab her ass.

  But when the slightest of whimpers escapes her, it comes back to me quickly.

  I pull away and she follows.

  “Scarlett,” I warn her. “Don’t come any fucking closer.”

  “Fuck me,” she begs.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  I walk to the wall and turn on the lights, and whatever fleeting thought I had of doing just that vanishes when I see her face up close. She’s moving towards me again, like the hunter she is, only limping and in pain. She’s playing it off like it’s nothing. But it isn’t nothing, and it’s a whole lot of something and I’m fed up with seeing her hurt.

  “Rory,” she whispers. “I need you.”

  Her voice is soft and sweet, but her eyes tell me the demon in her wants to come out and play. She reaches up to take control again, but I put the kibosh on it by pinning her up against the wall with my body. I’m covered in sweat and blood and dirt, and she doesn’t give a fuck. Her lips move to my neck and she doesn’t just kiss me, she tastes me.

  And fuck me, she’s pure evil.

  “I want you,” she tells me again. “I want you so fucking bad.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  I grab her face between my fingers, careful not to hurt her as I examine the damage. I close my eyes and take a breath. Trying to calm myself before I speak.

  “Name.”

  She doesn’t answer, and my fingers dig into the flesh of her arm.

  “Give me a name, Scarlett.”

  “For what?” she teases. Like this is all some big fucking joke. “So you can go and defend my honor?”

  “Aye,” I answer. “So I can go and defend your goddamned honor.”

  “Rory,” she sighs.

  “Scarlett.”

  We’re at an impasse. Our eyes locked together. There’s a tiny flicker of emotion in hers. Guilt maybe. Regret. I don’t know.

  But she came to me. She came to me for a reason. She brought herself to that warehouse knowing exactly what I would do.

  In the past, this is where I’ve always lost her. She’d run, just as soon as things started to get too hard. When she started to feel vulnerable.

  I let it slide then.

  Because I didn’t know her. I had no right to tell her how to live her life, even though I wanted to. When I found out she was trick rolling clients instead of fucking them, there was a part of me that was relieved. Because I wanted her for myself. No doubt about that. But there was another part of me- the one I’ve always been a slave to- that wanted to save her.

  When it comes to women and children, I have a weakness.

  I can’t fucking stand to see them suffering. And knowing Scarlett was doing this to herself triggered every caveman instinct inside of me.

  The thing I discovered about Scarlett though, is that she doesn’t take orders from anyone. In her ship and in her life, she’s the fucking captain. No bones about that. She doesn’t accept help, and she doesn’t show weakness. And the minute a man tries to tell her what to do, even with the best of intentions, she will tell him to fuck right off.

  Needless to say, we’ve been butting heads ever since.

  But there’s a limit for everything. And seeing her bruised face and her bloodied lip, my mind is made up. I’m done playing this game with her. And I’m about to let her know it too.

  I force her gaze to mine. Scarlett doesn’t like to look people in the eyes. I have a notion that she’s afraid of what she thinks they’ll find there. She always keeps herself locked up so tight.

  But I’ve just made it my mission to know all of her. So she better get used to being uncomfortable.

  “A name,” I repeat.

  She smiles up at me in challenge.

  “Why did ye do it?” I ask. “Why did ye come there? You had to know what ye were doing. You had to know ye were going to push me past my limit, sweetheart. There’s only so much a man can take.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” she asks. “Hold me hostage again?”

  “Aye,” I answer her.

  She laughs, until she realizes I’m not fucking joking. Then she tries to bolt for the door. I catch her around the waist and lock my arms around her. That’s when she moves for her knife again.

  Scarlett’s wild like an animal. When she feels threatened, she will fuck up whatever is standing in her way.

  I learned that lesson the hard way.

  I grab hold of her wrist, and she tries with her other, which I grab hold of too. They are small in my hands. Too fragile. I don’t know how a girl so fragile has survived for so long on the road she’s chosen for herself.

  “I wasn’t going to stab you again,” she lies. “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  A tiny flicker of panic moves through her features, but she’s still playing it cool. Scarlett doesn’t like to be restrained. But like I said before, I’m done coddling her. She’s going to get used to me. And she’s going to learn to trust me.

  I lean in with my body, pressing hers into the wall. Her wrists are pinned between us. Her eyes wide when she looks up at me and my face dips down to hers.

  Before tonight, I’ve never had the pleasure of tasting her lips.

  She’s never let me get that close.

  But right now, as vulnerable and skittish as she is, I have a notion it’s not going to be the only time.

  Her eyes plunge to my chest, and I laugh. It pisses her off.

  “Kiss me again,” I tell her.

  She opens her mouth, prepared with something hostile. But I don’t let her get that far. My mouth crashes onto hers and I groan because fuck… she tastes so good.

  I think she’s going to push me away. Or maybe loaf me in the head. But instead, her jaw relaxes, and she gives in. A dangerous thing when my self-control is currently hanging by a thread.

  All I want to do is bury myself inside of her. Claim her in a way that nobody else can ever have.

  But what I want more than that is her trust.

  And fucking her like every other lad on the street tries to isn’t the way to accomplish that. So even though she’s kissing me back, and I’m so fecking hard I could drill a hole in the wall with my cock, I pull away. Only to bury my face in her neck and inhale her.

  She’s breathing hard, and the tension in her body has dissipated, at least a little. So I let go of her wrists, and she slides them down my chest and into the loops of my jeans.

  Then her eyes meet mine, warm like brandy, and so different from only moments ago.

  “Fuck me.”

/>   I groan and give her one last squeeze in my arms before I pull away.

  “Ye’re going to be the goddamn death of me, woman.”

  My rejection triggers her armor to fly back into place, and again, she’s on the verge of fleeing. So I grab her by the hand and drag her down the hall to my bathroom.

  “What are you doing?” she asks as I pick her up and plant her arse on the countertop.

  I reach for the button of my jeans and flick them open. Sliding down the zipper as she watches with curious eyes.

  “Trust is a two-way street, sweetheart,” I tell her. “And I trust that ye’re going to stay put. Because otherwise, I can promise you, ye won’t like it if I have to come to collect your arse again.”

  She smiles at me in challenge, so I drop my jeans and kick them off.

  Scarlett swallows, and her curious gaze wanders over my body. I give her a full minute to do just that before I walk to the shower and turn it on. And though I want nothing more to have her join me, I settle for letting the ice-cold water calm me the fuck down.

  When I get out, she’s still there, her legs dangling off the countertop. I grab a towel and dry off, and then I move my hips between the small gap in her legs. Dragging my fingers up her calf to her bruised and swollen knee.

  When I touch it, she flinches.

  “A name,” I say again.

  “I’m going to let you take me out on a date,” is her reply.

  Again, I lean in and taste her mouth. For just a minute. Because I can’t help myself. And because I want to believe I’m making progress with her even though I’m suspicious as fuck.

  Then I smooth away her hair and twist it back over her shoulders.

  “What does my girl like to do?” I ask. “When she isn’t fucking shit up out on the streets.”

  “Your girl,” she scoffs. “For the record, Ace, I’m nobody’s girl. And you really ought to stay away from me.”

  I smile and she frowns and she isn’t done.

  “I mean that,” she repeats.

  “Do your worst, Scarlett.”

  She stares at my chest and her fingers move over the tattoos there while she speaks.

  “This dating thing,” she says. “It’s my game. My rules.”

  “Tell me what sort of things ye fancy. And I’ll see if I can make it happen.”

  She ponders this for a moment while she swings her legs back and forth in a childlike fashion before wincing.

  I try to focus on her words and not the fact that she’s in pain, because it will only make me homicidal all over again.

  “I don’t like people,” she says. “Or texting. Or foods that are orange. Black licorice. Television. Concerts. Restaurants. Clubs. Malls.”

  She falls silent as I stare at her curiously.

  The sad part is, she isn’t even joking.

  “Did I mention people?” she adds.

  “Twice,” I tell her. “But I’m the exception to that rule.”

  “You can’t declare yourself an exception to a rule. The rule maker has to do that.”

  “Scarlett.”

  My voice is a warning, which she ignores.

  “I’m just laying it out for you, Brodrick,” she says. “You think you’ll get me liquored up and I’ll ease up a little. But that’s not going to happen. What you see is what you get. Always. I’m incredibly dull and very blasé in regards to literally everything. So, you should just move on along now and save yourself the trouble of a failed attempt.”

  “I did get loafed in the head tonight,” I tell her. “But I do recall you just asking me to have a go at ye not so long ago after I walked in the door.”

  “Only because I had a moment where I wondered what it was like,” she says. “But the moment is gone now.”

  “What do ye mean, what it was like?” I press.

  “Just, you know.” She waves her hands about in an ambiguous fashion. “What fucking someone that didn’t repulse me was like.”

  Scarlett is blunt. That’s one thing I’ve come to know about her since we met. Mack regaled me one night with countless admissions about her. How she is a genius with no filter and no social skills either. That she never fit in so she’s never bothered to try after that. But this admission catches me off guard.

  The last thing I want to do is delve into who she was shacking up with before me. But now, I can’t stop myself from asking about it.

  “You’ve never been with a man ye weren’t repulsed by?” I question her. “Really? What about your boyfriends?”

  “Boyfriends?” she blinks. “I’ve never had a boyfriend. Well, not since high school anyway.”

  This time I’m officially stunned into silence. Which only seems to offend her more.

  “Who needs a fucking boyfriend?” she huffs. “Relationships are just a headache. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to put themselves through such hell. And willingly too. I might be sadistic, but a masochist I am not.”

  “Scarlett?”

  “Yes?”

  “Stop talking.”

  She does. And I take a few moments to file her words away where I can stew on them later. But for now, I just need to get her out of the house before I fuck her into next week.

  “Get ready,” I say.

  “For?”

  “I’m taking ye out tonight.”

  8

  SCARLETT

  IF THE ROAD to hell is paved with good intentions, then I must be headed straight for heaven.

  There isn’t a single part of me that has ever felt bad for fucking over a man. Some say you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.

  I say you’ve got to be cruel to survive.

  I don’t owe anyone anything. Especially Rory.

  But when I dart glances over at him, driving me through the streets of Boston like he actually gives a fuck, I want to go for a long run. Over a bed of Legos.

  If I punish myself, then I feel better.

  But I can’t punish myself, because I’m trapped in this car now and all I can smell is him. He’s clean, like the ocean. He’s cool and mint flavored and olive-skinned and his body is all Alpha, and I keep checking him out when I don’t mean to.

  His body is hard, but he isn’t hard like me. He’s open. Lazily draping his hand over the wheel and leaning back in his seat, his tee shirt stretching across his chest. He’s a tee shirt and jeans guy. A dimples guy. A jokes guy. A punch-you-in-the-face on Thursday nights guy.

  He’s too many things. Tall and casual and funny and green-eyed.

  And I am only one thing and it’s not his girlfriend.

  But it doesn’t matter.

  I made up my mind, and I’m no quitter. I tried to warn him away, but if he isn’t smart enough to listen, I can’t take responsibility for that.

  I’m a wrecking ball, and you don’t fuck with a wrecking ball.

  He fucked with me and now he’s going to help me, and I’m going to use him, and in the end it will ruin him.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. And it’s only for Rory’s own good that I’m going to teach him this lesson. Because after everything I’ve already said and done to him, he shouldn’t trust me.

  But he took me back into his life just like that.

  And do you know what happens to people who give out second chances like Halloween candy? They get fucked over.

  I’m not a toaster, and I can’t be rewired. You can’t plug me into the wall and get a connection where there was none before. Because this is how I was programmed. From birth, I was wrong. Those symptoms my mother used to bitch and moan about? They weren’t symptoms. They were lifelong afflictions.

  I don’t have feelings for people or objects or places or sentimental longing for old memories. While most people have an emotional capacity that rises and falls in relation to the object or person, I was not plagued with such a hindrance.

  My mother knew I was wrong and she couldn’t have wrong in our family. She put me through the works. Blood tests and speech tests and ink blot
s and diagrams of reptilian brains. At first, it was a learning disorder. Then a social disorder. Communication disorder, perhaps. The word spectrum was tossed around, which my mother quickly put the kibosh on…. because those types of disorders didn’t live on the upper East Side. Brooklyn, maybe. But not in her home.

  I told her once that I didn’t feel anything. That I was just a flat line. And I stayed flat forever. She told me never to speak of such nonsense again and then sent me to boarding school for a year.

  So, I never spoke of it again.

  There was satisfaction in being right. In being flat.

  But now there is something else. I’m second guessing the boundaries of my linear emotions. There is a blip in the line when I look at him.

  Fear, I reason. Because I’ve never felt as dangerous as I do when I think of what I could do to him.

  Rory isn’t flat like me.

  He’s all jagged edges and soft corners. A contradiction of dark masculinity and soft humor. But inside, he feels.

  And I’m the girl that’s going to soak him in kerosene before I light a match.

  There’s a faint whisper of the conscience I didn’t know existed telling me to stay away. But the destructive part of me wants to punish him.

  I want to stay linear. Because it’s easy. And it’s familiar. But it’s like one of those heart monitors when they bring someone back to life. I can see the small peaks and valleys forming already. My flat line is altered.

  Pliant, when before it was unbendable.

  I stare at him too long and he feels it. His eyes move over me too, suspicious.

  He knows something is up. Because I never would have come to him otherwise. So, I need to give him a reason. Something to think that I need him. I’m going to make him a good soldier. The Clyde to my Bonnie. And we’re going to fuck up everyone who’s ever crossed me before I turn on him too.

  Because in this world, you can only ever rely on yourself.

  And I am going to end this. One way or another.

  Rory pulls up into the parking lot of Slainte and turns off the ignition. This is the Irish mafia’s stomping grounds. Headquarters, if you will. A strip club and gambling establishment and who knows what the fuck else. Mack was a dancer here for all of two seconds before Crow went and married her, so I know a little about the place.