Bound by Lies: A Dark Mafia Romance Read online

  “Looks like I’ve caught you again,” he whispers in my ear. His hands start running up my side then under my breasts.

  “Maybe I wanted to be caught.”

  “Indeed.” His hands travel back down my waist and over my hips. They stop at my dress’ hem, which sits an inch under the cup of my ass. “This is almost an inappropriate dress.”

  “Almost?” I say in a mock innocence. “Why? What would make it completely inappropriate?”

  “This.” He slips his hands under my hem and pushes my dress up so that it bunches at my waist. “Now it is completely inappropriate.” His palm slaps my ass cheek, making me gasp, the sting spreading wonderfully through my core. “That is for being completely inappropriate.” The same palm rubs the mark in tantalizingly soft circles.

  “Cade. Someone might see.” I push his hand off me and try to smooth my dress back down but his hands circle my wrists, pinning them to my sides.

  “No one can see us up here.” He places my hands on the balustrade. “Don’t. Move.”

  My breath shakes through my teeth. “Please. I don’t want to be blindfolded.”

  He tenses behind me in a long pause. “But you’ll still let me bind you?”

  I consider this. And decide that it’s better to take this slowly with him, like he did with me. I’ll get him used to things. One step at a time. “You can still bind me.”

  He nips at my ear from behind. “Then yes. We don’t need blindfolds this time.”

  For a moment I can’t believe that I’ve won. I grin to the moon and it grins back. I grin to the stars and they wink back.

  Oh Cade, I need you everywhere and all over me. Please don’t keep me waiting too long.

  He doesn’t this time. We are both gone too far thanks to this outrageous dress and the thrill of being this high and my teasing behavior. I groan when his hand runs down my ass and between my legs. I can barely think when he pushes my underwear aside and dips a finger into my soaking wet ache from behind, just as his other hand slips down the front of my underwear to find my clit. My body reacts by shaking, and my need for him flares.

  He withdraws his finger from behind. I moan as I lean heavily against the railing, pressing back into him. I am rewarded with two fingers that spread me wider as they push just inside my entrance. “Move for me.”

  I push back from the railing and impale myself on his fingers. Oh God. With his other hand he continues to rub my clit. Fuck. No. I should demand that he stop and turn me round so I can see him. But my resolve is becoming lost under these waves of pleasure. Instead, I cry out for more. I can’t help it. I am a desperate fool for Cade and I can’t stop. Stupid, stupid body.

  “That is so fucking sexy,” he says and it breaks into my thoughts. I realize I’m thrusting myself up and down on his fingers, pushing back against the railing and moaning like a whore. He chuckles. “You know, they might not be able to see you, but they can hear you.”

  “I don’t give a shit.”

  They don’t exist to me right now. No one and nothing else does except for him and me. And the spaces inside me that he exists in. I hear him growl as I thrust and tighten around his fingers. I know in that instant he means to take me on this balcony.

  He takes his hands from me and peels my underwear down off my hips, the black lace pooling around my heels. He forces my thighs wider with his knees and I gasp as the night breeze cools the moisture between my legs. His fingers find their home again inside me. I move against him again, more urgently this time. The pressure builds and builds and I cry and thrust and there’s the brink…

  He withdraws his hand and his body from me. I tremble from the loss and I have to slump on the railing to keep myself from sliding to the floor in a puddle. I don’t notice that he has pulled out his red silk ties until he swiftly ties my right wrist to the balcony. I let out a small cry and tug on my binding. Before I can react any further, my left wrist is secured to the railing.

  I hear the drop of his shirt. Then his pants and belt clink and drop, too. As I look out over the glittering city below, I realize I have been fooled. Bound like this to the balcony I can’t turn around. I can’t see Cade. His hands grab my hips. I feel his erection slide between my legs, his head poised at my entrance. “I want you to push back again, this time onto me.”

  For a moment I don’t care that I’m bound, I just want him inside me. My fingers grip the railing and I…

  I remember, he’s naked behind me. But I can’t see him.

  “Caden, no,” I force myself to say, “I want to look at you when we make love.”

  A knot forms in my gut when he lets go of me. “You said you didn’t want to be blindfolded. I didn’t blindfold you.”

  “I can’t see you his way. I need to see you. Please, turn me around. You can re-bind me, but please turn me around.”

  He voice is low and I can hear the bitterness that taints his timbre. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Why? You never tell me why?”

  “Have you stopped trusting me?”

  “What? No, I just...” I squeeze my eyes to stop from crying out in frustration. I need him, but I need more. I need to be strong enough not to buckle to him anymore. “I just want to see you. I want to look into your eyes when you make love to me. I want this to be our new version of together.”

  I can hear him pace behind me. I struggle to turn around. I strain my neck and my back from all my twisting. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the outline of his hard and muscled body, his hands running across his face, but the lights from inside the suite have turned him into a silhouette. I still can’t see him. The world is conspiring against me to keep the man I love in the dark from me. The unfairness of it makes me want to scream.

  When he catches me trying to steal a glimpse of him, he freezes. He lunges for me and my heart leaps to my throat. His hands are in my hair and around my neck, firm like restraints. The insatiable whore in me can’t help but imagine him fucking me just like this.

  He doesn’t. With him pressed up against me I can feel that he has completely lost his erection. He speaks and his voice is wild. “You don’t want to see me, kitten. Trust me, you don’t want to see me.” It doesn’t even sound like him anymore.

  “I do.” I croak, not ready to give up yet.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking for.” His hands shake around me with rage. “If you did, if you only knew, you wouldn’t fucking ask. If you knew… Jesus Christ. You don’t understand.”

  I understand. I understand that you lost your parents and your sister in a horrible murder and you continue to torture yourself by not letting anyone in. But I can’t tell him I already know.

  “Then please help me to understand. You can tell me, Caden.”

  His hands loosen from my hair and fall around my torso like a set of ropes. He grips me tight, so tight I can barely breathe. His cheek rests on my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t.” His whispered voice is so pained it brings tears to my eyes. “I wish I could…” He slips from my body, from my head and from my hair. I grip the railing with the loss of him. “But I fucking can’t.” The night echoes back his sentiment, “can’t, can’t, can’t…” The air heats with his rage and I tremble.

  I hear him take a breath. A steadying breath. He takes another and I can feel the frustration sucking back into him to be tucked away again behind a calm facade. He takes a step towards me. His lips brush my shoulder and his fingers graze my arms. His voice is soft like a prayer, “Don’t you think I want that, too? Don’t you think that I dream about being with you, really being with you? I do. I wish it more than anything.”

  It’s everything I want to hear from him. “Why don’t we? We make our own togetherness, remember, Cade?”

  “I’m not normal. We aren’t normal and we’ll never be. You, I, individually or together, we’ll never be.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut because I know deep down that he’s right. “We could try.”

  “It would never wor
k. We’d both know that we were lying.”

  “We could trust each other, really and completely trust each other. We could be ‘not normal’ together,” I whisper. I’ll tell him everything. My real name. Who I am. Why I’m running. I will. If he asks me, I’m ready.

  I feel him pause, and I pray that it’s because he’s truly considering it, too. My heart begins to flutter anew with hope. We can. Together we can deal with both our demons.

  His lips brush against me again. “I’m sorry.”

  I hear him gathering up his clothes and he begins to redress himself. I tug against my bonds, trying to look at him over my shoulder. “No, Cade, wait.”

  I tug harder as I hear his zip go up. I can’t get loose.

  I feel him step behind me and his arms slip around me like a blanket. His warmth is a relief. He hasn’t left.

  He pulls at the ties of my left hand and backs away. “Goodbye.”

  I turn, reaching my free hand wildly for him and find myself straining against the binds of my other hand. My skin is burning under the pressure of the ties, but I don’t care. I have this feeling. This horrible feeling that if he walks out of this room… Oh God. I might never see him again. Stop. I can’t breathe. I need to get these stupid binds off me. Why won’t they just fucking come off me?

  “No. Don’t say ‘goodbye’, say ‘be good, kitten’.”

  I tear at the binds of my right hand with my left. My fingers are too frantic and my eyes keep darting back to watch him walk away. The knots are done up in some special way. Some special way so that they can’t be pulled out by the hand in the restraint, but with a tug of the right piece, the whole thing can come apart. I don’t know which part and I can’t see what I am tugging against because it’s dark on this balcony and I keep looking up to watch him leave. He steps inside, closing the balcony door behind him.

  I keep yelling, “‘Be good, kitten’. ‘Be good, kitten’, say it!” but he can’t hear me now. Through the glass I see him pause at the suite door and take one last look at me. Before he disappears.

  I find the right thing to pull. My binding comes loose. Before the tie has a chance to flutter to the floor I kick off my heels and lunge for the balcony door. I yank my dress down as I bolt through the suite.

  I run out the door. I can’t see him in the corridor. The elevator. I speed down the corridor towards it, smacking my hand against the down button as I come to a stop. “Come on, come on, hurry up.”

  I glance over to the fire escape. Should I run down? Will the stairs be quicker? Fifteen flights of stairs. Fifteen flights. Which way is quicker? Which way? Shit.

  The ding of an elevator arriving takes me out of my indecision. I rush into it, hitting the ground floor button several times. Thank God it’s empty. It seems like it takes forever for this damned elevator to travel to the ground. I’m lucky that no one dares to come on from another floor.

  When the doors fully open to the lobby, I tumble out. I can see him through the glass entry doors, getting in the driver’s seat of a black car. No, stop! If Caden leaves, I have no way of finding him. I bolt through the hotel entrance screaming for him to stop. My wrists jar as I slam open the entry doors, startling the doorman. The black car accelerates away from me as I tumble onto the asphalt. The sting of the exhaust in my face is all he leaves behind.

  He left.

  “Goodbye.”

  I can’t believe it. He can’t have gone forever. He’ll be back. He’ll be back, won’t he?

  I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the glass doors. I look crazy. Mascara running tracks down my face, shoeless and screaming at the tailgate of a black rental car.

  “Madam?” The concierge is staring at me with such concern. “Are you alright?”

  “We had a fight. But he’ll be back, right?” I look at his face and my stomach twists when I see pity in his eyes.

  “Of course, he’ll be back. You just had a fight.”

  I nod. But I don’t believe him. Lies.

  “You should get back to your suite. Have a long, hot soak in the tub and a good night’s sleep. Let him blow off some steam and you’ll both feel better in the morning.”

  I can’t even imagine sleeping, let alone sleeping in that big empty suite that was meant for both of us. He would be inside me right now if I had just accepted the way things were. Later, I would be sleeping next to him if I hadn’t opened my big stupid mouth. Instead, I tried to change us and I tried to change him. I played this game and I lost.

  Oh fuck. I lost.

  I feel tears pricking at the backs of my eyelids. The concierge is holding me gently by the arm and is leading me inside. “We’ll just get you back to your suite.”

  I don’t want to go back. But my shoes and my bag are still up there.

  “I forgot my key when I ran out,” I mumble.

  “That’s okay. We can get you in.”

  I nod, numbly.

  Within minutes we are standing in front of suite #1501 and the concierge is unlocking the door for me. He turns on the light and lets me in. After my reassurances that I will be okay, he leaves.

  The door clicks shut behind me and I’m alone.

  The suite looks almost untouched. It doesn’t even look like a crime was committed here, but one had been. I died here. I died when you left me, Caden Thaine.

  I can’t stay here.

  I pick up my bag from the couch. My shoes. Where did I leave my shoes? My underwear? Of course, outside. I swallow and force myself to brave the balcony. A single red silk tie is caught on the railing, fluttering in the breeze like a flag, marking the spot. The other is nowhere to be seen. I pick up my left heel closest to the door. I pick up my underwear and tuck it into my bag. I bend down to pick up my right heel when something small and black catches my eye.

  It’s a matchbook. It’s black with gold lettering that says Cha Cha’s. It isn’t mine. It can’t have been left here from the previous guests. The cleaners wouldn’t have let something like this slip their attention.

  It must be Caden’s. Fallen out of his pockets maybe? However he dropped it, he didn’t realize it was gone when he left. Caden doesn’t smoke. Does Harper Lexington smoke? An uneasy feeling begins to settle in my stomach. I drop my shoes. When I pick up the matchbook, my fingers are shaking. I open the flap. Inside, all the matches are there, but what has my heart skipping a beat is the phone number written across the cream inner flap in blue ink.

  Whose number is this?

  Another woman?

  Cade would never cheat on me.

  You don’t even have a real relationship. It wouldn’t even be cheating.

  No, he would never. I can see it in his eyes and the way he touches me and looks at me. He cares about me. Maybe even loves me.

  It must be a colleague… Or a new friend? Whoever he or she is, it doesn’t matter.

  I should call it.

  I shouldn’t. I have already messed things up enough. I can’t keep prying. I trust Cade. I trust he will contact me again once he has had some time to cool off. I trust that it doesn’t matter who this number belongs to and why it is written on a matchbook for a bar. He’ll come back. I know it. He will.

  I close the matchbook and brush the smooth surface with my thumb. It makes me feel better having it. It’s my only tangible link to Caden. I slip the item into my bag and slip on my heels. I leave the silk tie on the balcony and I exit the suite without looking back.

  Chapter 7

  I can’t sleep. I can’t eat.

  It has been three weeks and four days since I left that hotel room and I haven’t heard from Caden. It’s the longest I have gone without hearing from him. I check my mailbox several times a day just in case. Yeah, I know. I’m pathetic.

  That matchbook has been burning a hole in my nightstand drawer next to my gun and the stack of all his notes that I keep. Sometimes at night I take the matchbook out and just hold it because it’s one of the few things that I have of his. Other times, when I’m feeling especially sadistic
, I take out the pile of his notes and read each one and remember each time we met, causing the ache inside my soul to burn. Burn, burn, burn me alive. I’m not afraid of dying anymore – I am already in Hell.

  Since Caden left, the only time I cry is after I come. When my body shudders with release it’s like a dam is broken inside me and the tears flow. I’ve stopped touching myself when I miss Caden. This constant ache makes me speedy and jittery like I’m on caffeine, but I’m just so sick of crying that I can no longer handle the repercussions of satisfying the need.

  Dixie and the gang at work don’t know anything. I’ve gotten so good at hiding all the crap I feel inside. Mick knows something is up. I have been training almost every chance I get and I smash myself until I am numb and I collapse. Mick doesn’t ask. Sometimes he gives me a small squeeze on my knee. “I’m fine,” I snap at him. He just nods at me. He understands not to ask. His concern should make me feel better, but I hate it. I don’t want anyone’s goddamn pity. I don’t want my own goddamn pity. But damn, do I have it in spades.

  Earlier tonight I went out looking for a distraction for the first time in over six months. I slipped on a small red dress and put on one of my old pairs of heels.

  Everything felt wrong. The dress felt borrowed and itchy and my heels pinched my feet. I made it just inside the door of Bound. My gaze flicked over to the wall where I first saw Caden. He wasn’t there. I felt sick. I had to turn around and go.

  Like I said, pathetic.

  Right now, I’m lying on my bed, turning the matchbook over and over in my fingers. I’m glad that I have a shift starting in a few hours as it’ll give me something to take my mind off Cade. All I’m doing is trying to make it through the times when I have nothing to keep my mind off him. The times between sleep and work and working out.

  I replay the night he left over and over, wondering if I could have said anything different. Wondering where he is right now. Wondering if he’s hollow like I am without him.

  He can’t really be gone. He can’t. We’re bound. We’re tied together forever. But the knot in my gut grows tighter with every second that passes and I don’t receive a note.