Page 17 of Claimed By the Mobster
“Payment for my compliance, and not reporting you to the police?”
“If you choose that interpretation. The police do what I say. But I’m offering you safety, Anwyn, if you can just be pliant enough to take it.”
It’s not security I desire, it’s him. I bite those words back. “Fine. I want breakfast,” I grumble.
A sad smile tugs at the lips I kissed last night.
It’s much like our Sunday mornings together, except I’m aware of what he looks like without clothes on.
Which, you know, is an issue. It makes me hungry, but not for the treats he sets out. Sweet and milky Darjeeling tea, toast with lashings of butter and marmalade.
Over the past six months, a wall between us had come down, chipped away, brick by brick.
We’ve lost all that intimacy. Every casual laugh and shared smile. We’d started telling each other truths and revealing details of our lives without even noticing. I’d told him about my studies and he’d spoken about the petty squabbles of the other mafias that he adjudicated.
It’s only when we sit across from each other in silence but more physically aware than ever before that I feel how far we’d come and how much I long for its return.
I spread deep red cherry jam over a piece of toast. Ben’s eyes follow my hands as I take a bite. He’s staring at my mouth as I chew and his eyes go dark when I lick the jam from my lips.
It’s lewd and forbidden, how I feel about him. But we said one night, so although I’m desperate to ask what his watching me means, I don’t. I sip the tea he made me and consider the last thing he said.
“Tell me about the house.” Because rich as this man is, buying me a home is still… Significant. To someone like me, whose main family has been a boarding school and primary home—homes—shared with dozens of others, it’s the promise of spring after the longest winter. I love visiting Ben here. Powerful kingpin he might be, but his house is always calm and quiet, unlike anywhere I’ve lived before. Just him and me, despite the fact I know he has dozens of staff.
“It has a big garden.” He frowns. “Trees and stuff.”
My hand stills halfway in bringing toast to my face. A garden. A place to grow plants of my own and sit in the sunshine. My throat goes dry.
“There’s a breakfast room with French doors that lead to a terrace with long stone troughs full of plants.”
“Herbs?” I choke out, because in my imagination that’s what a fantasy house has. Fragrant pots of lavender and rosemary and mint, and a deckchair that I lie in. An umbrella so I can see my laptop screen as I work, bare legs stretched before me.
He raises one eyebrow in an eloquent statement ofhow would I know, you’re the plant expert. “I noticed the purple one that you like.”
Lavender then. The rest of the house might be a wreck, but I’m already entranced.
“Is that why you bought it?” I joke.
“Yes.” A simple reply, his expression serious. I don’t know what to make of it, because yes, he’s observant. I told Ben I liked morello cherries once, and the next Sunday morning there was this jar on the table.
Nothing escapes his notice.
But maybe this is more than his professional diligence?
“It’s just outside London,” he continues.
My heart jumps again. Close enough that I could visit him. I could continue to see him.
“So you can finish your studies.”
Oh.
My heart snaps, a tender shoot from a seed broken off before it can reach the light. This doesn’t make me special.
Probably lots of girls would be too proud to accept a gift like a house, but I’m not going to argue when someone is offering me what I’ve wanted since I was old enough to comprehend what a home was, and that I didn’t have one. Just a place to live.
Many things have changed since the time I first dreamed about a home and a family to love. Not least, all those fuzzy dreams have sharpened into focus. Not just a home, but a townhouse in Westminster. Not just a family, but children with big grey eyes. Only one person to love me: him. Ben.
“Thank you, Mr Crosse.”
