Chapter 9
DEVIN
It felt weird, maybe a little charged, to be left alone in Alex’s penthouse with Frankie the next morning, especially after we’d all gone a little wild during her “punishment” last night.
Alex was off doing some mysterious task he’d never tell us about, which was typical, and Jonathan had an assignment from his father—something Anthony Butera wouldn’t trust anyone but blood to handle.
Which left me working from home on my techie day job, trying to think of anything but the woman in the other room, even while I was ostensibly keeping an eye on her.
It might have been hours after my friends and colleagues left, or might have been minutes. But eventually, the door to the office where I’d set myself up with my laptop and a black coffee cracked open and a lovely face showed itself there.
She wasn’t wearing makeup today, and while she looked just as unassumingly pretty as before, something about this fresh, younger-seeming face of hers had its own kind of appeal.
And it wasn’t just because I’d already become addicted to her taste, the feeling of her body with mine. Hell, we’d all become addicted. Even Alex, the cold-hearted bastard, couldn’t deny after last night that there was something different about Frankie Taylor.
And it wasn’t just that we owned her. Auction or not, at this point, she was fucking ours. After the life I’d led, I held on tight to the things that were mine.
“Um, Devin?” Frankie cleared her throat after her voice squeaked a little. “I, um. If you have a minute, I was hoping we could talk.”
“I have all the minutes.” I gave her a goofy grin. It was part of my charm offensive, sure, but the grin also sprung to my face naturally. The girl had that effect. And it seemed to calm her nerves enough that she could finally ask her question.
“Um, I was just…wondering when I get to go home.”
Ah, fuck. It struck me hard in the chest, a pang of affection laced with intense guilt because I knew I couldn’t give her a clear answer. We were ordered to keep her, and though the girl was sweet and compliant like a pet in bed, nothing else about her was suited to a tight leash.
Years with the Buteras had prepared me for this, though. Charm offensive turned up to eleven. I reached for her hand, tugging her down into my lap.
She gave a breathless little laugh, then the warm weight of her was on me.
Just that little bit of innocent contact had me itching to kiss her breathless, to sink into her like the night before.
Still, I kept my eye on the prize, locking eyes with her as I pulled her close, our lips close enough to touching that we were breathing each other in.
“What’s the matter, angel?” I asked her, my voice a low, sensual growl. “Don’t you like it here? Is it so bad staying with us?” I leaned a fraction of an inch closer, my lips brushing hers as I spoke. “You don’t like getting fucked into oblivion by all three of us?”
When Frankie blushed, she let out a little needy sound I wanted to devour. Her eyes glazed over with the need it was so easy to stoke in her. For a long moment, I thought I’d done it. Distracted her from the question she’d come in to ask, from the dire situation she only barely understood.
But Frankie was smart, too. Once she’d let the wave of desire roll over her, settle back away from the shore, she refocused.
“You know I’m having a good time, Devin,” she said softly. “A better time than I ever thought I could have when I…when the auction happened. But I still have a life, a job that I really like and don’t want to lose by taking more time off than I said I would. And…I want to see my mom.”
Well, I couldn’t very well argue with that. Not if I wanted to be anything but the villain my lifestyle often turned me into.
She wanted to see her mother, and despite all the logic and loyalty to the mob I held in my body, I wanted to give her everything she wanted.
“Of course you do,” I told her softly. To make her feel better, maybe, or else to indulge myself, I gave her a quick, nearly-chaste kiss. She smiled so sweetly when I pulled away from it that it cracked something open inside me.
“Alright,” I decided once I was back on level ground.
“We can do that, angel. I’ll take you to go see your mom.
But you have to promise me you won’t tell her anything about us.
About…about any of this.” She nodded, but I thought of another stipulation.
A harder ask. I winced as I tacked on, “And you should probably give her some kind of excuse as to why you’re not coming home just yet. ”
I watched the frown form on Frankie’s face, the gears turning in her head. But like always, the sweet little thing agreed, giving me a brave, determined nod.
It didn’t take too much preparation to get Frankie into a car and on the road toward her childhood home.
She had clothes at Alex’s place now, and she donned a simple ensemble of jeans and a cozy long-sleeved shirt, something she said wouldn’t be too conspicuously new to her mom’s eyes.
Frankie had grown up at the opposite end of the city from Alex’s high-rise, so with traffic added in, we had plenty of time alone together on the ride over. It felt like the right opportunity to ask a question I’d been turning over in my head since that night at the auction.
“I guess it shouldn’t matter now, but…what brought you to the auction in the first place? What could possibly have made someone like you choose to sell your virginity?”
“Someone like me?” she asked. Though I had my eyes on the road and couldn’t see her face, I could hear her raised eyebrow.
“Someone…sweet. Pretty. The kind of girl who probably dreamed of falling in love before she slept with some guy.”
Her silence drove me a little nuts. It was worse when a soft, nearly-cracking voice answered, “I did dream of that, yeah. But…things change.”
I left her the space to explain if she wanted to, and I felt like the luckiest man alive when she did.
“It’s all for my mom, really. She…well, she’s been sick a lot. She used to walk, but she’s in a wheelchair now. And through it all, it’s been the financial burden that’s worried her the most. Even though I was just worried about her being okay.”
I swallowed hard, gripping the steering wheel more firmly in my white knuckles, unsure of exactly what was happening inside me in response to her words. Frankie went on, oblivious to my turmoil.
“When she got better—stable, at least—it was like she couldn’t even recognize how hard she’d been fighting.
How much she’d done. How strong she was.
It was all just about the stress of making all the payments, and her not wanting to be a burden on me.
I think she was…thinking ahead. More about like…
when she’s gone. What she leaves behind for me. ”
I wanted nothing more than to take this girl, this strong young woman, into my arms. The thought of her losing her mother and being saddled with medical debt on top of the grief of it…
hell, I’d been through a lot of bullshit in my life, but I couldn’t imagine the suffocating pain of that.
Still, Frankie kept talking, earning more respect from me with every word she said.
“And there was worry about our house, too. It’s stupid, but I love that house.
It’s always been home. So when the auction opportunity arose, I figured taking care of Mom, of both of us, was more important than my fantasies about falling in love.
It’s not like losing my virginity to the three of you means I can never have that in the future, anyway.
But I might not have been able to even think about something like romance if I couldn’t have gotten the money to fix this. For her.”
The loyalty in her voice matched the determined look on her face when I was finally able to turn and look at her—blessed red light. And in that sight, I saw something in her that matched something in me, too. Loyalty was a concept I understood. It’s just about the only virtue I held in my bones.
“Well, you’ve got your money now. But even without that…none of us, Alex and Jon and me, not one of us would ever let your mom go without. Even if you can’t be there with her day to day right now, I can make sure she has what she needs. That you both do.”
She didn’t have to thank me, but she did. She even left me with a kiss on the cheek that could’ve melted even Alex’s ice-cold heart to a puddle. Then she was bounding out of the car and up the cracked garden path toward her mom’s front door.
Maybe it was the emotional overwhelm of hearing Frankie’s story, embracing the way it hit me in a place deep within me that often went untouched, but it took me longer than it should have to notice that I wasn’t the only one lurking on this quiet, suburban street.
Across the road from me sat a similarly dark vehicle to the one I drove.
Shiny and expensive, out of place among humble normal folk like Frankie and her mom, but as common to someone like me, someone involved with the Buteras, as any old nondescript silver sedan.
And now that I saw it, I recalled something from the drive that hadn’t registered as I was so absorbed in Frankie’s words.
This car had been following us. Dark tinted windows, I had no idea who was inside, but I knew they were a threat. And I’d led them directly to Frankie’s Mom’s house.
The car was speeding off, screeching tires and all, before I could think about anything. Inside, it was just one refrain: Protect Frankie.