Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance (62 page)

I slapped her hand away, aware of the sidelong glances we were getting from nearby tables.

“You just leave my crotch outta this, Mel,” I warned her.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah sure, why not.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I,” she sing-songed.

“Ugh.”

I pulled my phone out of my purse again and checked it, hoping she would savor the last word and be done with this conversation. No new messages. Shit. Melita cut her eyes toward it and quickly looked away.

“If he’s not here in five minutes,” she started again, her voice deceptively reasonable, “I want you to drop them tits on the next handsome guy that walks in.”

I thumbed the smartphone face bitterly and chucked it back into my purse.

“OK, first of all, Carl’s just late, let’s cut him a little slack--”

“Again,” she reminded me in a mutter.

“Yes…
again
, whatever. Shit happens. And second... exactly who drops their tits, Melita? Seriously? Is
dropping tits
 like even a thing?”

Her face fell into a perfect diagram of surprise.

“Is it even a thing?” she repeated incredulously, her voice spiralling up like an air raid siren. “Is dropping your titties
even a thing
?”

I looked around, nervously yanking on the deep V of my dress as a few nearby hipsters angled their eyes toward us.

“You’re telling me you’ve never just rolled up on a man and brushed your nips against his arm? Are you serious?”

“Lower your voice!”

“Why do you even have them big ol’ country girl titties if you’re not going to use them, Bree? It’s a waste, I tell you! It’s a damn shame!”

I snatched my purse off the table and threw it on my shoulder, hugging it across my cleavage with both arms.

“OK, I’m leaving,” I announced.

She swished the straw around in her mouth, suddenly demure and thoughtful. “Well. But. I’m not done with my drink.”

“Melita, you were right…” I said through my clenched teeth, folding forward at the waist and trying to stay stable on the hooker heels she’d strapped to my feet. “He’s not coming… It’s late, I’m tired… What. What can I say. Let’s go.”

“I don’t want to go,” she moaned, tipping her head to the side. “You said we were going out. I got the babysitter, I paid for the babysitter, and now here we are in this fabulous fake-country bar for rich people…. I fucking love it here. We are not leaving.”

“But you were right,” I said slowly, drawing the words out for maximum effect until she started smiling like a cat. “You were riiiiiight.”

“I sure do love it when you say that,” she admitted.

“I know you do. And you were so,
so
 right.”

“Because your boyfriend is a weenie,” she said too loudly, one finger poking toward the ceiling, preacher-speaking-truth-style.

“Melita--”

“Say it,” she commanded.

I sighed and made a face. “Because my boyfriend is a weenie,” I repeated glumly as some kind of country pop song started, just like the other one.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “That really does feel pretty good. Tell you what. We can call Operation Harden Carl’s Flaccid Manhood a failure and go catch a movie or something if you do me one favor…”

“OK, what?”

“Drop your titties--”

“MELITA!”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest, rolling her eyes to the conspicuously wood-panelled ceiling like she was having a conversation with the angels about how stubborn I was being.

I paused to consider my options: Was I going to be able to get her out of the bar without a theatrical monologue about either my boobs or Carl’s manhood? I couldn’t be sure. She certainly seemed to be enjoying herself, and I had a suspicion the three Long Island Iced Teas were egging her on.

“Fine,” I sighed resolutely. “You did loan me this dress… after all…”

“And it looks a-
mah-
zing on you, did I mention?”

I nodded. “You did. And thank you. You’re a good friend. And it’s totally not your fault that Carl is not here to see your handiwork and throw himself at me.”

“Pssht,” she agreed. “Exactly.”

“So tell me,” I said sweetly, reaching out to stroke her arm, “what do I need to do to get us out of this fucked up hillbilly outpost of a bar?”

She cocked her head at me, her lips pursed in a thin line.

“Melita, dear? Just clue me in?”

Her breath came out in a puff through her flared nostrils. “Brienne, I just want you to try it. Just flex your girl muscles a little bit. Show me you can.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. The joke seemed to be over and I could see her grandma’s face coming through, all serious and intense behind her thickly made-up features. This was the expression she reserved for her most grave moments. She was Making A Point, and I realized she wasn’t going to give up.

“You seriously want me to, like, hit on somebody.”

“Yes,” she nodded once, her curls flashing forward in agreement.

“Which is totally unlike me. Because I have a boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m just… not that kind of girl.”

“Agreed,” she nodded. “You’re not that kind of girl. You’re a goddamn country song in a borrowed dress and everything. And you are going to flirt with a man….”

“Melita, why?” I whined. On the one hand, it was probably harmless and I should just do it so we could leave. On the other, it seemed gut-churningly disloyal.

“Because I want you to prove it.”

“Prove what? What are you talking about?”

“Prove that Carl didn’t trade in your vagina for, like, a travel-sized packet of Kleenex or something.”

“Stop it.”

“Or a bag of wavy Ruffles.”

“Oh, I do love potato chips.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Great, now I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” she snapped. “Now I want tacos. So do it. Show me you’re not really letting some chucklehead turn your cootch into dust. Prove you still have your V card, and then let’s go get us some barba-freakin-coa.”

“But seriously whyyyyy?” I whined again, now full-on freaking out. I felt cornered, and I didn’t like it one bit. She leaned forward and glared at me.

“Because you keep telling me how
unhappy
 you are, how
lonely
 you are, how
sad
 you are that your weenie boyfriend acts like you’re invisible, and yet you won’t do a damn thing about it. It’s like you think you are a passenger on this train and you are
not
. This is your life. You’re the goddamn conductor, Bree, so act like it. Be a woman. Go.”

She pointed toward the door and glared at me while she sucked the last couple slurps from the bottom of her glass.

“OK give that to me,” I said with my hand out, figuring that another drink would buy me a few minutes to get a plan straight in my head. She held it out with a vigorous nod, and I wondered briefly if I was going to have to give her a piggyback ride up the stairs to her front door later. Again.

I picked my way carefully toward the bar, avoiding the artfully placed piles of sawdust on the floor. This bar had gone through so many personality changes it was downright schizophrenic. The honky-tonk thing was recent (we had assumed it was still Asian fusion when we planned for the evening) and I could only pray it wouldn’t last long. Bits of grit and peanut shells sawed at the sole of my foot inside my shoe.

Another song started and some of the drinkers let out a simultaneous whoop, followed by the sound of bar stool legs dragging on the floor. Apparently it was a known line-dancing song, if you were the sort of person who knew that kind of thing, and a shiny-faced group of women who looked like bridal-shower-partiers lined right up and started pantomiming a hoe down to the delight of the other drinkers.

Holding the empty glasses straight out in front of me, I swerved for a vacant spot at the bar and leaned gratefully against it. I raised a finger for the bartender as the group behind me swayed back and forth all together, picking up new bar patrons to join in everywhere it went like a Swiffer pad picking up dust.

The bartender rolled up one plaid sleeve and leaned his ear toward me.

“What can I get you?” he hollered over the music.

I pushed the glasses toward him.

“A Long Island, tall, and a gin and Diet Sprite?” I hollered back, shoving myself over the bar as close as I could get.

Behind me, the line dancers trundled rhythmically from one side of the room to the other, slapping at their imaginary cowboy boots. Everyone else scattered to the perimeter and crushed me back to the bar to make room.

“Long Island tall and gin and juice?” he repeated.

“No, wait!” I objected, stepping up on rail and heaving my top half closer to him. “Gin and diet. DIET SPRITE!”

“Yeah, OK,” he said with a scowl like I was stupid or something and walked away shaking his head.

I tried to climb down from the brass boot rail below the bar but the dancers were on their way back, now waving their imaginary cowboy hats. My hooker heel slipped on the shiny metal and I tipped the wrong way, my ankle shooting out from underneath me like it had been greased. I threw out an arm to catch myself as my head dipped below bar height and everything went dark.

Something caught me just as the line dancers came up to me like an ocean wave and then receded again. I fumbled for the bar and pulled myself up, gingerly checking to make sure I hadn’t rolled my ankle or anything.

I didn’t even feel his hand until he moved it, releasing his fingers where they circled my upper arm, leaving a bright ring of awareness in my mind. Gasping, looking up, my jaw opened like a puppet as I willed myself to apologize or something.

“Brienne?” he said softly, his voice so near and familiar that I whirled in my mind, trying to place him.

I know you? I know your voice?

“Oh, I’m-- Owen?” I stammered, hearing the words as I said them. I looked into his bright blue eyes like I knew him and tried to make sense of it.

He’s too close!

“God, excuse me, I’m sorry--”

“No it’s OK, are you OK? Oh here they come again--”

Just like that, another wave crashed into me and me into him. His arms came right up under mine as I fell, sliding under my forearms and supporting me smoothly. I arched my back to avoid slamming completely into him and as I did, my nipples dragged along the front of his shirt from his belt line to his sternum, pebbling into hard stones as they went.

I mouthed an apology of some sort, I think, as his lips parted in surprise. His fingers closed possessively around the flesh behind my elbow. I pushed back, trying to find my feet under me, trying to disengage.

“Owen, hello!” I choked out politely as though none of this was happening: I wasn’t bouncing my boobs along the ridges of his abs, I couldn’t feel his fingers pulling me closer, I wasn’t blushing and sweating like a prom date. I flattened my palms against his (oh my god, rock-hard!) pecs and pushed myself back to standing.

And then,
wham
, another body fell into me from behind, forcing me fully onto Owen and knocking the breath from my lungs which came out in a porn-star-quality heaving sigh. I bit my lips together and prayed no more sounds would come out but the body behind me was crushing the air from me.

I felt a hand slide across the front of my hip and fingers digging briefly into the valley at the top of my thigh. Hot breath swept across the back of my neck and I had to command myself not to arch into it, not to just pretend for just a second to be pinned between two hard, throbbing cocks and the plank-like bodies of the men they belonged to.

Oh my god but I totally am…

Whoa…

“Mr. Jack!” I squeaked out as the crowd stopped all at once and broke out into congratulatory applause. I gasped and looked over at them but they were all staring at each other, nodding and clapping. Apparently the song was over and the line dancing had gone super well.

“Don’t call me that,” he chuckled, still far too close as he politely removed his pelvis from my belly, leaving a ghostly outline of his cock that I could clearly see in my head. He set me sturdily on my feet and paused to make sure I would remain upright.

“Owen, yes right. Sorry,” I mumbled, straightening and pushing my hair out of my face. I had a distinct feeling of vertigo, like at any second I could just tip right back onto him.

“Have you met Lyle?” he said with a shy, curious smile.

The body behind me shifted sideways, disengaging from a position that felt surprisingly natural. It was like having a puzzle piece uncoupled from my ridges.

A man pivoted to my side, pushing his dark blonde hair back with one hand and offering me the other to shake. He gave a wry smile. Not as apologetic as Owen, but not offensively douchey either. Confident, maybe.