“Um, Devin?” Frankie cleared her throat after her voice squeaked a little. “I, um. If you have a minute, I was hoping we could talk.”
“I have all the minutes.” I gave her a goofy grin. It was part of my charm offensive, sure, but the grin also sprung to my face naturally. The girl had that effect. And it seemed to calm her nerves enough that she could finally ask her question.
“Um, I was just…wondering when I get to go home.”
Ah, fuck. It struck me hard in the chest, a pang of affection laced with intense guilt because I knew I couldn’t give her a clear answer. We were ordered to keep her, and though the girl was sweet and compliant like a pet in bed, nothing else about her was suited to a tight leash.
Years with the Buteras had prepared me for this, though. Charm offensive turned up to eleven. I reached for her hand, tugging her down into my lap.
She gave a breathless little laugh, then the warm weight of her was on me.
Just that little bit of innocent contact had me itching to kiss her breathless, to sink into her like the night before.
Still, I kept my eye on the prize, locking eyes with her as I pulled her close, our lips close enough to touching that we were breathing each other in.
“What’s the matter, angel?” I asked her, my voice a low, sensual growl. “Don’t you like it here? Is it so bad staying with us?” I leaned a fraction of an inch closer, my lips brushing hers as I spoke. “You don’t like getting fucked into oblivion by all three of us?”
When Frankie blushed, she let out a little needy sound I wanted to devour. Her eyes glazed over with the need it was so easy to stoke in her. For a long moment, I thought I’d done it. Distracted her from the question she’d come in to ask, from the dire situation she only barely understood.
But Frankie was smart, too. Once she’d let the wave of desire roll over her, settle back away from the shore, she refocused.
“You know I’m having a good time, Devin,” she said softly. “A better time than I ever thought I could have when I…when the auction happened. But I still have a life, a job that I really like and don’t want to lose by taking more time off than I said I would. And…I want to see my mom.”
Well, I couldn’t very well argue with that. Not if I wanted to be anything but the villain my lifestyle often turned me into.
She wanted to see her mother, and despite all the logic and loyalty to the mob I held in my body, I wanted to give her everything she wanted.
“Of course you do,” I told her softly. To make her feel better, maybe, or else to indulge myself, I gave her a quick, nearly-chaste kiss. She smiled so sweetly when I pulled away from it that it cracked something open inside me.
“Alright,” I decided once I was back on level ground. “We can do that, angel. I’ll take you to go see your mom. But you have to promise me you won’t tell her anything about us. About…about any of this.” She nodded, but I thought of another stipulation. A harder ask. I winced as I tacked on, “And you should probably give her some kind of excuse as to why you’re not coming home just yet.”
I watched the frown form on Frankie’s face, the gears turning in her head. But like always, the sweet little thing agreed, giving me a brave, determined nod.
It didn’t take too much preparation to get Frankie into a car and on the road toward her childhood home.
She had clothes at Alex’s place now, and she donned a simple ensemble of jeans and a cozy long-sleeved shirt, something she said wouldn’t be too conspicuously new to her mom’s eyes.
Frankie had grown up at the opposite end of the city from Alex’s high-rise, so with traffic added in, we had plenty of time alone together on the ride over. It felt like the right opportunity to ask a question I’d been turning over in my head since that night at the auction.
“I guess it shouldn’t matter now, but…what brought you to the auction in the first place? What could possibly have made someone like you choose to sell your virginity?”
“Someone like me?” she asked. Though I had my eyes on the road and couldn’t see her face, I could hear her raised eyebrow.
“Someone…sweet. Pretty. The kind of girl who probably dreamed of falling in love before she slept with some guy.”
Her silence drove me a little nuts. It was worse when a soft, nearly-cracking voice answered, “I did dream of that, yeah. But…things change.”
I left her the space to explain if she wanted to, and I felt like the luckiest man alive when she did.
“It’s all for my mom, really. She…well, she’s been sick a lot. She used to walk, but she’s in a wheelchair now. And through it all, it’s been the financial burden that’s worried her the most. Even though I was just worried about her being okay.”
I swallowed hard, gripping the steering wheel more firmly in my white knuckles, unsure of exactly what was happening inside me in response to her words. Frankie went on, oblivious to my turmoil.
“When she got better—stable, at least—it was like she couldn’t even recognize how hard she’d been fighting. How much she’d done. How strong she was. It was all just about the stress of making all the payments, and her not wanting to be a burden on me. I think she was…thinking ahead. More about like…when she’s gone. What she leaves behind for me.”
I wanted nothing more than to take this girl, this strong young woman, into my arms. The thought of her losing her mother and being saddled with medical debt on top of the grief of it…hell, I’d been through a lot of bullshit in my life, but I couldn’t imagine the suffocating pain of that. Still, Frankie kept talking, earning more respect from me with every word she said.
“And there was worry about our house, too. It’s stupid, but I love that house. It’s always been home. So when the auction opportunity arose, I figured taking care of Mom, of both of us, was more important than my fantasies about falling in love. It’snot like losing my virginity to the three of you means I can never have that in the future, anyway. But I might not have been able to even think about something like romance if I couldn’t have gotten the money to fix this. For her.”
