Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

J uly 29 TH

I’d always wondered about the girls who lusted after the bad boys. Why? All that would come from it would be hot sex and heartbreak. However, now I know. Danger is an aphrodisiac. Once you’re in its spell, all you want is more until it’s left you broken and addicted. Danger, power, sex, lust, control . . . you take a taste and want more. But in the back of your head, there is a little voice warning that you’re heading toward destruction. The question that you must decide is if it’s worth it or not. In books, it’s always worth it. No one loves a bad boy more who will scorch the earth and kill all the people to love and protect you. I wonder if that’s true in real life.

Paige looked at her watch. She had book club but had to drop off a manuscript with Jack at his penthouse. She could have had it sent by courier, but she’d wanted to make a pitch to Jack for it to make sure he took it seriously.

“Hi, Leonard!” Paige waved to the doorman who opened the door for her to the secure building. She was a frequent visitor and had already learned who everyone was.

“In a hurry, Miss Turner?” he asked with a chuckle as she ran past him on her tippy toes so she didn’t faceplant in her high heels.

“Always!” Paige pushed the elevator button repeatedly as if it would make the elevator arrive quicker.

The elevator arrived, and before the doors were even halfway open, Paige barreled inside only to slam into something hard. The doors closed, and Paige looked up to see a gun pointed at her head and a very sexy man holding her by the throat.

“Step away from Mr. Luciano,” the man with the gun and a thin scar that ran the length of his said in heavily Italian-accented English.

Paige couldn’t turn her head but moved her eyes back to the man she’d knocked back into the elevator. His hand, which smelled amazing, was wrapped around her throat. It wasn’t tight enough to hurt, but it was tight enough that she couldn’t move. His dark brown eyes looked down, assessing her. His dark brown hair was perfectly cut. His jaw was sharp and his eyes sharper.

“I’ll step away if he lets go of my throat,” Paige said, fear shooting through her at the way the man pressed the gun to her temple. Why did she know the name Luciano? She knew she’d heard it . . . oh shit. This was the mafia boss of New York. She was going to die. This wasn’t sexy at all.

“Search her,” Nikolas Luciano ordered as his fingers tightened enough to make Paige squeak.

Suddenly, hands were on her. They were proficient as they ran down her sides and around her waist, looking for a weapon. Then they ran under her breasts and between them before dipping down to run over her ass. Sexual assault was not sexy. It wasn’t hot. It was horrible to feel all her autonomy being taken away from her. “Hey, get off me, asshole. I don’t have a gun up my ass.”

“You’d be surprised where women have hidden weapons trying to kill me. Spread your legs,” Nikolas ordered very seriously.

“The hell I will,” Paige squirmed and Nikolas squeezed her throat tighter.

“I can think of better ways for you to put that dirty mouth to work,” Nikolas growled as he began to shove her down to her knees.

Paige’s adrenaline spiked. Fight or flight kicked in. She was not going to be attacked in an elevator of one of the richest buildings in New York. Paige flung her arm back, hitting whatever buttons she could, before coughing as the fingers around her throat tightened.

“Who sent you to kill me?” Nikolas asked as two hands reached in between her legs, feeling each inner thigh before disappearing.

Her bag was dumped out next to her. Papers were scattered everywhere as Paige tried to tell them she wasn’t there to kill him. No words came out. All she could do was open her mouth in a silent gasp. Her knees wobbled and she dropped to them as Nikolas kept a tight hold on her neck.

“She’s clean,” the man with the gun told his boss. “You can let her go.”

“I don’t know,” Nikolas said, cocking his head as he looked down at her on her knees with his hand around her throat, loosening his grip slightly around her throat. “I like the view from here. It would look better with your lips around my cock.”

“You put that thing anywhere near me and I’ll bite it off, then steal it so they can’t reattach it. Maybe make it into a necklace to warn off any other rapists from coming at me,” Paige said slowly and shallowly through Nikolas’s grasp.

Nikolas smiled and loosened his grip enough to let her breathe easily once again. “What’s her name?” He didn’t ask Paige. He asked his muscle.

“Paige Turner. She works for Griffin Publishing. Looks like she had a manuscript with her. I believe Jack Griffin, the owner of Griffin Publishing, lives above us.”

Nikolas’s thumb stroked her bottom lip and Paige snapped. Her jaw, that is. Her teeth sunk into his thumb, but Nikolas Luciano only smiled as she tasted the metallic tang of his blood.

“You have spunk, Paige Turner. Luckily for you, I don’t like spunk unless it’s to break. Do you want me to break you?” Nikolas asked, not even trying to pull his thumb free.

Paige shook her head and the elevator began to slow, indicating they were about to reach a floor. She didn’t care which floor. She was getting off.

As soon as the doors opened, Paige let go of Nikolas’s thumb and scrambled backward, only to be grabbed by his enforcer. The man lifted her up as if she weighed nothing and set her on her feet.

“Don’t worry, little bird. I don’t spoil innocents,” Nikolas said with a smile that, yes, could be considered sexy. It was also devilish and not in a good way.

“Yes, you do, boss.”

Paige’s stomach dropped faster than if the elevator cables were cut at Nikolas’s responding grin.

“True,” Nikolas looked at her and his smile lost some of the menace to it. “Out of respect for our neighbor and out of respect for her spunk, I’ll let her go. If you ever want a walk on the dark side—and now that I know you don’t mind the taste of blood—you know where I live.” Nikolas motioned her to leave with his hands. “Now, fly off little bird. I have a business meeting that you’ve now made me late for.”

Paige scrambled to gather her things. “You won’t hurt me?”

“Not unless you ask me to,” Nikolas promised.

“Does that actually work on women?” Paige’s eyes went wide as she slammed her mouth shut. “Sorry. I’ve read too many books.”

Nikolas chuckled. “You’re brave. I’ll give you that. Those so-called biographies are full of crap. Don’t believe everything you read.”

Paige’s face turned bright red. She didn’t need the mirror in the elevator to know that as the enforcer held the door-open button. “My, don’t you blush prettily. Are you changing your mind about me fucking that mouth of yours?” Nikolas growled.

“No! Eww, that is not as sexy in real life as it is in books. I mean, you can even do the romance growl, which is sexy. But the words do not make me want to throw myself at you. It makes me want to run away. Now, if you did that growl and said, ‘Let me run you a bath while I cook dinner for you,’ I’d totally go for it.”

Nikolas’s lip twitched with amusement and Paige caught the two men sharing a confused look.

“Romance growl?” Nikolas asked finally.

“Yeah, in all those dark mafia romance books. The mob boss or enforcer always steals a woman. There’s some kidnapping, maybe she’s sold to the boss or enforcer to bring peace . . . Anyway, there’s usually force involved. They always get around the consent issue by, no matter how depraved the sex is, saying she ends up loving it and wanting it. And the man always growls the orders in this deep, gravelly voice.” Paige put the last of the papers in her bag and looked up.

Both men were staring at her in disbelief. “Are you shitting me?” Nikolas asked. “I do it for intimidation. If my mother heard me say that to an actual date, she’d reach across the ocean from Italy and smack the shit out of me. And you’re telling me there’s a book that women find sexy with a man doing that?”

“A book? It’s one of the biggest subgenres on the book subgroups on social media. There are a ton of them.”

“You’re going to need to up your game now, boss.”

“I guess I could threaten to tie them up,” Nikolas said with a shrug.

Paige shook her head. “Nope. Everyone gets tied up nowadays in books. Regular BDSM is the new vanilla.”

“I like knives,” the enforcer said. “I could scare the crap out of a woman by showing her what I’m capable of.”

Paige wrinkled her nose. “Sorry. Been there, done that in a ton of books.”

“And they sell these books? I need to talk to the congressman about this,” Nikolas muttered.

“You will do no such thing,” Paige said, standing up, clutching her bag to her chest with one hand as she poked the biggest mob boss in New York in his very muscled chest. “I don’t care what you think about a book, but we do not ban books! One person’s hard no is another person’s kink, and we do not kink shame. It’s not like they’re out there begging you to kidnap them. It’s fiction, for crying out loud. And, as I can now attest, it’s not sexy in real life, so no worries about me stripping my clothes off and begging you to sexually torture me. But, someone else may love that, and that’s what consensual sex is all about. Mutual fulfillment and trust. However, I’ll keep it to the pages of my books. Thank you. Now, if you want to talk to your congressman about something, talk to him about our poor literacy rates in school.”

The elevator fell quiet, and then suddenly, Nikolas broke out in a laugh. “Paige Turner, you’re something else. See you around, little bird.”

“I’m so tired of people calling me little,” Paige grumbled. “Little one, little bird . . .”

“Who calls you little one?” Nikolas asked before she could walk off.

“None of your business!”

“I have ways to make you talk,” Nikolas threatened in the romance growl.

Paige rolled her eyes. “Sorry, you’ve given away your secret—you’re all bark, no bite.” The enforcer snorted and Nikolas stared at her with disbelief. “Okay, maybe some bite,” Paige conceded. “Enough for me to know it’s time for me to leave while I still have my life.”

Paige hurried from the elevator. She’d have to take six flights of stairs to get to Jack’s, but it was worth it to get out of the elevator.

“See you around, Miss Turner,” Nikolas said as the elevator doors slid silently closed.

Paige stumbled backward until she ran into the wall behind her and took a deep breath. The book club would be so disappointed. But after this, there was no way she’d ever be able to read another mafia romance. Ever.