Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance (41 page)

“What are you thinking about?”

I blinked at his forwardness. “Nothing, just a chill from the AC,” I lied.

“Ah,” he nodded. His sky blue eyes met mine in a sort of challenge, but when I didn’t blink, blush, or turn away, eventually he gave a little shrug and looked toward the paintings.

“I really like these,” he said.

He stood in front of a group of small, casual sketches. They were just simple paintings of common objects but with dramatic lighting.

“Oh really?” I asked, walking up beside him but not too close.
Well, Edna didn’t
, I answered bitterly in my mind. But the scent of his expensive cologne crept into my lungs anyway and started calling my name.

“Hm, yes,” he said. “They’re humble. But intimate.”

I smiled despite myself. “Well. Yeah, totally. That’s it.”

A doorway opened up in my heart. He may have been a fan of the Tilt-A-Skull, but he also seemed to understand some wordless thing that most people didn’t. The humble paintings were definitely intimate. They were about how a person gets accustomed, even attached to little things in their lives. And that’s your home: a collection of small but immensely important things that only you know the value of.

Had I underestimated his sensitivity? I thought about the way he instantly understood my anxiety in the faux-carnival ride, and talked me back from what would have been a disastrous panic attack. He was so confident, so secure. I had felt so safe with his low voice encouraging me to calmness.

He turned his head and looked at me and I realized I had just been staring up at him unabashedly. My instinct was to blush and turn away but I didn’t. He didn’t either. He blinked his eyes slowly and then turned the rest of his body to face me.

He was close. Too close.

“Did you decide then?” he asked quietly.

“Umm… Decide?”

“Didn’t Jackson talk to you?”

I shook my head. There had been almost no talking at all. He had listened. He acted like an anchor while my thoughts were all in a whirlpool until they had started to sort themselves. I had to wonder if they would have settled at all without Jackson’s solid presence.

He chuckled. “Oh that figures,” he sighed. “Jackson’s not much of a talker.”

“I guess,” I said.

“Hmmmm...” he started. He pushed his hand through the fringe of dark blonde hair that had fallen across his brow. He sucked his lower lip in and then released it. It gleamed moistly and I realized that I had not kissed him Friday night.

OK, get a grip, Margot, you’re not going to do that. Jackson was just here last night.

“We want you,” he said finally in an even, confident voice as though I had been offered for sale, and he had just finished considering the terms.

I shook my head like I didn’t get it. But some part of me wanted to hear more.

“We want
you
. Both of us,” he said again. His eyebrows creased together in a shelf.

“Wait, both of you?”

“Yes. I just said that.”

“Like…” my mind flopped about looking for synonyms. “Wait… To share? Like, boyfriends?”

He shrugged.

“If you need a word, I suppose,”

I raised my hands, palms up. Whoa. This was preposterous. Taking one at a time at least made some kind of sense… I mean, people do it every day. Some people, at least. But two?

He stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart. A small smile played around the corners of his mouth as he stared keenly at me. Apparently, he really meant it. And furthermore, he was enjoying asking.

I tried it out on my imaginary Bridget in my mind.

Hey, Bridge, me and Jackson and Declan are all together now.

What the hell do you mean?

Like, you know. They’re my boyfriends.

Both of them?

Yeah, both.

Imaginary Bridget’s red-lined mouth fell open and she just stared at me, but I couldn’t tell if it was awe or horror. She was no help at all.

Declan stared at me like he was seriously waiting for an answer, knuckling his lower lip. I shook my head.

“Declan, I really had a great time…”

“Oh, don’t do that, Margot,” he cut me off. “You barely gave it a chance. Think. What do you have to lose? You should give
this
 a chance.”

He edged a little bit closer to me and my mouth went as dry as toast.

“But Jackson--”

“Jackson is cool,” he replied immediately.

“Jackson is cool?” I repeated. How could anybody be cool? This was straight up insanity.

He nodded and grinned. “We talked about it. We’ve been fighting over you since the airport. This is really the only thing to do.”

“You’ve what?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Was this just some billionaire player line he was feeding me?

“Listen, Declan…. It’s not really professional of me,” I protested weakly.

He shrugged. “Is that really your concern at this point?”

Yeah, Margot, I think it’s too late for the shy girlfriend routine.

My mind reeled. They were both fine with it? It sounded so simple they way he said it with a clinical sort of detachment. Why should I have to choose if they were both happy with that sort of thing? But something told me that if I thought about it, the logic would dissolve away to nothing like cotton candy on my tongue.

“Why both of you?”

He shrugged. “We like to share. And we can blow your mind. And you can take it.”

A smile broke through my face, no matter how hard I tried to hold it back. I could take it. I had
absolutely
 taken it, like a champ. I felt rare, unique, and a little dangerous.

But also terrified. Everything was on the verge of falling apart. How could I throw something else into the mix?

“I don’t know,” I muttered, edging away from him and looking around for something to look at that didn’t represent some kind of personal failure.

“Why not?” he said firmly.

I shuddered at his tone, feeling myself getting smaller under his inspection. “Listen, I just have some… personal, uh,
work
 issues I have to work through. I can’t get involved in anything else right now.”

“Sure you can.”

“No, really, I can’t… You wouldn’t understand.”

“Not an issue,” he said with an arrogant purse of his lips.

“Well, it is an issue, to me,” I insisted.

Who the hell does he think he is?

“I’m sure any reservations you have, I can work with.”

“Listen, I’m not like a shipping business or dry cleaner or anything, Declan. You can’t just buy me.”

He shrugged. Again. I was getting a little sick of that.

“So tell me why not.”

I shook my head and sighed through my nose, angling back toward my easel as though I wanted to get back to work.

“Tell me,” he insisted in a growl.

“I just… I need to get a few things finished in a hurry.”

“Not a problem. We won’t be in town more than a couple weeks anyway. It’s not a long-term commitment.”

I cough-laughed at how quickly he batted aside my objection.

“Well I need to work now. As in right now, today.”

“Not a problem. I’ll be out of your hair in a jif.”

“No it
is
 a problem, Declan,” I pushed back. “You know, I’m really not feeling like you’re hearing me. Are we having a translation problem or something?”

“No, I hear you loud and clear. You have reservations, and I am telling you there is nothing we can’t work around.”

Frustration coiled up in my chest. His stubbornness was really starting to get on my nerves and I wanted to fire back something he couldn’t argue with.

“Not everything has a work around, you know? Some things are just problems. Regular people problems. Not problems on your level. I doubt you would understand.”

“Like what?”

“Like I have a job! An actual job I am supposed to be doing at this moment!”

“Fine. Agree and I will leave.”

I snorted. “Wow, you really are accustomed to getting your own way, aren’t you?”

He nodded infuriatingly with a confident grin.

“Well not everybody’s life is like that, you know? Not everybody just has everything handed to them.”

“Oh you don’t seem to be doing so bad,” he shot back, looking around. “You were handed all this, weren’t you? And Bridget
handed
 you two major collectors who
handed
 you a third.”

“Ha!” I blurted out, unable to control myself any longer. “You know what that got me, Declan? NOTHING. Reserving paintings is not
selling
 paintings. It killed the opening night and when I went to Edna, she didn’t even fucking want them.”

I stood there panting, filled with venom. He nodded solemnly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he admitted. “I didn’t know that part.”

“Oh yeah? Well there’s a lot you don’t know. All of
this
,” I waved my arms around my head like a crazy person, “will be in my possession for exactly two more days. That’s it. After that, you can find me in my fucking car with everything I own.”

His expression became completely serious.

“What are you talking about,” he said, coming closer to me.

I started to tremble, barely covering up the pressure building up inside me. I was going to scream or cry soon, and I prayed desperately for screaming.

“Fucking taxes,” I yelled out, then wilted as the words echoed back to me. “Stupid fucking taxes on the stupid fucking handed-to-me house.”

“Oh,” he said flatly, waving his hand in the air. “That’s not a problem.”

I wanted to pick up the easel and hit him with it like it was a bat. I saw the entire scene so vividly in my mind, I was almost sure I had started doing it.

“THIS IS A HUGE FUCKING PROBLEM!”

He shook his head.

“It’s not a problem.”

My mouth opened and closed pointlessly. There was no way to make him understand.

“How much is it?”

I snorted and shook my head. “Too much. If I had sold every painting… Well frankly it would have still been too much. It’s over. I just need to deal with that now.”

“How much?”

I shook my head again.

“Thirty thousand?”

I looked down at my bare feet on the low-pile carpet.

“Fifty?”

I shrugged. “Something like that,” I muttered.

He walked closer to me, close enough I could hear the hum of his easy, even breaths.

“See? Was that so hard? You just have to ask for what you want, Margot.”

“Wait, no… I didn’t ask you for anything, Declan,” I objected. Had I asked? I was sure I hadn’t.

He shrugged again. “You presented your reservations, and I met them with a counteroffer. It’s standard procedure. I’ll have my guy get certified funds for you tomorrow morning.”

I shook my head emphatically.

“No, that’s fucked up. No.”

“It’s done,” he said simply. “Any further objections?”

I stared at him in shock. How could he just do that? Just…. poof… fifty thousand dollars like it was no big deal?

Take the money, stupid,
 my Invisible Bridget commanded me.

“I don’t… This doesn’t feel right,” I muttered.

He took another step closer until we were only inches apart.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I think it feels completely right. I can’t imagine what else you could possibly say at this point except yes.”

But it was wrong, and I knew it. It was my problem to solve, and I had legitimately failed. Being bailed out - bought? Was completely wrong.

“Say yes,” he growled.

“No I really can’t,” I whispered, averting my eyes, afraid of what would happen if I looked at him.

I can’t take money for… nothing. For sex. There’s no way.

His fingers found my chin and tugged at it. I had no choice but to stare up into his eyes. He was breathing hard, his nostrils flaring slightly with every exhale. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. They held me locked in.

“The foundation of any deal is trust. You can trust me. Your condition has been satisfied. Now, say it,” he commanded me.

A chorus of internal voices threw up a wave of denials, but I could feel the sand they stood on shifting beneath their feet. All was swept aside by his eyes roving over my simple cotton wrap dress, lingering on the bow like he wanted to open it with his teeth.

I nodded suddenly, even as I begged myself not to.
Yes
. My body went all electrified with shivers as that thought cascaded through me.
Yes.