Page 31 of Rent a Mob Boss

“Be gentle,” I beg, while he takes me by the hips and pulls them back so my ass is in the air. Air that is cool against my heated flesh, making me shiver even while the heat deep inside me rages like an inferno.

“Always,” he promises. I believe him, too. I believe him as he kneels behind me, and I feel the pressure from his wide head. I squeeze my eyes shut, fists getting tighter, until I remember I need to relax. Once I take a few deep breaths, he hums like he approves—then he works his way inside me.

Full. So full. Stars dance behind my eyelids, and I’m caught between the feeling he’s going to split me open and feeling that I’m about to explode with pure joy, because oh, sweet Lord, does that feel incredible. Once the newness passes, there’s nothing but the delicious friction, and the sound of his satisfied grunts as he takes me slowly, so slowly, while his hands roam over my ass.

“That’s right,” he whispers as he moves. “This ass is mine. Your pussy is mine. Say it.”

A ripple of pure, dark pleasure races through me, lighting me up. “Yes. Yes, yours,” I moan, moving against him.

“That’s right,” he grunts. One of his arms snakes around me so his fingers can find my clit and work it in time with his strokes.

“Yes!” I whimper, bearing down on his fingers, willing myself to come again. “Yes, yes, Dorian, do that, keep doing that…”

“You’re gonna come for me again?” he asks with a dark chuckle. “Are you going to come while I’m fucking your ass? Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Yes!” I cry, suspended in almost agonizing pleasure, right on the edge. “Make me come! Please!”

“Fuck…” His strokes get deeper, stronger, while his fingers flick my clit faster, faster, until there is nothing but the all-consuming, glorious relief that hits and leaves me almost screaming, one fist in my mouth.

“Fuck… fuck, Quinn…” he whispers before driving himself deep. A rush of heat fills me back there, and he groans, and the sound of his satisfaction makes me smile, knowing I made him feel that way.

He lands next to me, and for a little while, it’s enough to lie side by side, catching our breath, catching up to what just happened. “Are you all right?” he asks. His hand finds my back and starts to move up and down in long, slow strokes. “Do you need anything? What can I do?”

“Keep doing that,” I mumble, and the sound is half muffled by the mattress under my face. “That’s nice.” I roll onto my side, and he pulls me against him, the big spoon to my little spoon. I am boneless and breathing hard, but I’m safe, tucked against him.

“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” I whisper. I’m not even sure where it came from. It just feels like the right thing to say in this moment.

I’m pretty sure he stops breathing for a few seconds before the sound picks up again. “I know,” he murmurs.

My eyes slowly close, and his arm tightens around me, and for right now, this moment, it’s enough. More than enough.

12

DORIAN

Three days of this, and I understand for the first time in my life what men mean when they talk about coming home.

I’ve always had a house. The best house money can build, in fact. Stone walls and iron gates. Staff and security. A kitchen that could easily serve forty. But it was never a place I walked into and felt like some gear I didn’t know I had was clicking into a position it was always meant to be in. I walked into my house the way I walked into my office. It was a location, a base of operations. The place where Lillie slept, and I paced, and the work followed me in no matter how many guards I posted at the door. No matter how determined I was to leave it outside for her sake.

That’s changed.

Quinn’s shoes are by the front door. Her sneakers, kicked off at an angle, because she takes them off the second she’s inside and never puts them where they belong. There’s a hair tie on the kitchen counter. A mug she didn’t finish sitting by the sink with a lipstick print on the rim. Her phone charger is plugged in next to mine in the bedroom, and the bathroom smells like whatever it is she puts in her hair. Something clean and sweet. I can’t name it, but I’d recognize it anywhere.

She’s everywhere now. In every room, on every surface. She’s even in the way the house sounds now. It’s not quiet the way it used to be. It’s alive. There’s music. She plays music from her phone while she cooks with Lillie, terrible pop songs I pretend to hate. Lillie sings along, and sometimes I hear them from down the hall, and I stop walking and just stand there listening, like a man who stumbled into someone else’s life and is afraid to move in case it notices.

It’s been three days. They’ve been the best three days I can remember. They are also, by a wide margin, the most dangerous.

The Castellanos have been quiet. That’s worse than noise. Noise I can respond to—a car outside the wall, a rumor at the docks. Quiet means planning. It means they’ve moved from measuring to deciding. The deciding is what kills people.

Tristan’s briefing two nights ago was short. The shell company behind the car has been linked to a second shell, which connects to a property the Castellanos purchased six months ago. A warehouse, three miles from my east wall, with a clear sight line to the service road. They bought it six months ago. That means they’ve been thinking about me for longer than I’ve been thinking about them. That gap is the kind of thing that gets families put in the ground.

I’ve doubled security yet again. There are now more men on my property than I’ve had since my father was alive, and the house feels it. The way the grounds hum with a low, constant alertness.

Quinn feels it too. I see it in the way she looks out the kitchen window. She noticed the new face at the gate, too, when we came back from her apartment with the things she packed. She’s started watching me when she thinks I’m not paying attention.

She’s too smart for this. That’s the problem I didn’t plan for. I planned for a girl who would accept the explanations I gave her. I didn’t plan for a girl who pays attention to the guards and notices patterns and hides it all behind a smile that says okay while her eyes say I don’t believe you for a minute.

This morning, she asks.