2. Zane
2
ZANE
“Turner, plan B,” I tell my second-in-command on the phone. My captive girl sits next to me in the armoured SUV as we head away from the church faster than is advisable or legal.
Turner swears colourfully.
“I know,” I reply. “You’ll get a pay rise.”
“I don’t want to take over that shitshow,” Turner grumbles. “What happened to ruining the wedding, reminding Witham who he was beholden to, and ensuring there wasn’t anything too grubby about the marriage?”
What indeed? All that exploded when I saw Witham’s bride, and a creature inside of me went berserk.
She’s mine. I have to have her, whatever the cost.
“The plan changed. Deal with it.” Turner will. He was as horrified as I was at what we discovered this morning, and has been loyal to me since before I took over Bethnal Green.
I hang up and regard the girl I just kidnapped. She’s gorgeous. Her body is slender, and the white silk hugs her curves. Her long brown hair has a slight wave that gives it movement and life. But it’s her face that captivates me in a way I can’t begin to explain. She’s perfect.
My heart rate won’t lower. My cock is solid.
I have never responded to anyone like this before. I’m one of the grumpiest and most violent members of the London Mafia Syndicate, but I don’t abduct women.
And neither do I fall in love.
Never, in fact. I thought I was immune, or incapable.
“Wedding crashers usually just drink the booze, you know that, right?” she says, smoothing her dress over her knees, and glancing around the car nervously. She’s remarkably calm, all things considered, but her pulse in her neck is as frantic as mine.
I have the rash desire to bite her there and feel her heartbeat against my lips. To hold her life between my teeth, and consume her completely. I want to lick her all over then bury my cock in her.
Keeping from mauling her is taking all my strength.
“I took the best thing on offer,” I reply instead, and it’s true.
Something that should never be mine. She’s obviously young and innocent, and quite aside from the fact I’m a London mafia boss and she’s a Maldon mafia princess—part of the Essex cartel who regularly cause problems for London—there’s the age gap. I’d like to comfort myself that I’m at least not as ancient as her now-dead almost-husband, but it doesn’t change anything. I’m too old for her.
“Mmm.” She hums sceptically. “I’m glad we didn’t stay for speeches. They usually are pretty dull, but Witham’s would have been murder.”
I give a bark of unexpected laughter, and see our future with her giggling as I tickle her in bed. The image of punishing her for her sassy mouth by pinning her down and thrusting into her hardens my already-rigid cock further.
Her dark-green eyes—the colour of a pine forest at dusk—flit towards me and take me in. I swear her look is so piercing she can tell how much this tie cost and knows how many grey hairs I have to the nearest ten.
“Though, Robert—my eldest brother—had some embarrassing stories in his speech from when I was five, so maybe they would have been almost as entertaining as my abduction.”
“I’m glad I saved you from any embarrassment,” I reply. And him from death. Humiliate my girl? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
“Thanks. No one is going to hear about that time I puked because I ate too much chocolate. They’ll be too busy gossiping about how my butt looked over your shoulder.”
The growl that wells up from my chest is feral. They better not have been looking. She’s mine .
She looks askance at me, and I restrain myself. A bit. I still probably look like a grumpy old bastard, which is nothing more than the reality.
“Why did you kidnap me?” she asks casually.
The answer is complicated and simple. Because I had to. Because I think I fell in love with her at first sight. Because leaving her in that church was out of the question, and anyone who might take her from me remaining alive is unthinkable.
I want long nights with her sweaty and satisfied and asleep in my arms, and I can’t accept anything that isn’t moving us towards that inevitable end.
“What’s your name?” I say instead. My obsession needs every detail about her, and this is a good place to start.
“Willow Maldon.”
“Zane Bethnal.” Two words she’ll get to know well. One as her surname—sooner or later—and the other as the name she’ll use to beg for mercy when I’m licking her to orgasm for the fifth time within an hour.
“I know who you are,” she replies with a little eye roll. “We do have the internet in Essex.”
“What a relief. It’s not possible to recognise anyone without it. How old are you?” I’m just torturing myself now.
“Twenty.”
Damn. She’s a baby, and I’m a full twenty-two years older than her. Old enough to be her father, and while young, sweet women have never been my preference before, Willow is different. I simultaneously long to protect her and use her beautiful body in filthy, depraved ways that make her writhe and moan and scream my name as she’s overcome with pleasure.
She’s twenty .
And yet… I run my gaze over her again, taking in her curves. She’s old enough to make her own decisions. She was getting married, after all. There’s no denying the curiosity in the tilt of her head as she waits for me to reciprocate. I don’t. I’m loath to admit I’m more than twice her age.
“Where are we going?” she eventually asks, in a light conversational tone, like we’ve met at a party.
We’re almost out of Essex and green fields whiz past. “My estate in Suffolk.”
“And then what?”
I bounce you on my cock until you’re pregnant? We get married, I fuck you raw, fill you with my come over and over? I treasure and love you and defile you in bed?
I really didn’t plan this.
“Am I your hostage now?”
“My guest,” I correct her abruptly.
What am I going to do with Willow? My little bunny. It would be better for her if she never knew how I feel.
Maybe I can just keep her, as she says, as my captive. Perhaps that would be enough?
“Kidnapping your guests and carrying them over your shoulder is normal in London?”
I sigh.
“Because it feels more like I’m a deposit to ensure my brother pays up for the Witham territory,” she continues when I don’t respond.
And that’s when it hits me that though I’ve given this girl my heart, she doesn’t know me. Yet.
“I don’t need your brother’s money. I have plenty.”
“So why were you at the wedding, demanding payment?”
As it turned out, I was at the wedding to have my entire world rearranged by meeting my soulmate.
But I didn’t realise that until later. I told myself it was to ruin Witham’s nuptials and ensure he paid, but it wasn’t that either. It was because I couldn’t accept that shithead continuing to live after I saw what he’d done.
Despite my well-earned reputation for ruthlessness, it was an inconvenient sense of justice that brought me to her wedding, drew me to working with the London Mafia Syndicate, and even makes me play along with their absurd “maths” games. I walked out of an emergency meeting of the London Mafia Syndicate to be here. Admittedly, I would probably have left anyway, because although I now understand why a mafia boss would do something so stupid as pretend the Syndicate was a maths club to protect his wife from the truth, I’m better at killing than mental arithmetic and spreadsheets.
“I dislike the hurting of innocents,” I say eventually.
I saw far too much of that as a kid in the care system. I was lucky that the kingpin of Bethnal noticed me, and took me in. But that wasn’t the case for many, many others.
“Again, interesting logic, Bethnal. Is ruining my wedding not hurting me?”
“Not compared to going through with it.”
“Until I get home,” she mutters under her breath.
That’s better left unacknowledged, because will I let her go? I’m not sure I can.
“What would you usually be doing on a weekday morning?” I ask instead.
“Reading.” She shrugs. “Not many options available given my family,” she adds defensively.
“What’s your favourite book?” I need to know everything about Willow, and this is a good place to start: with a hobby she likes.
“There’s a mafia story I really like. The heroine is kidnapped by an enemy, and then he lets her go .” Her gaze is fixed on the window, gazing out.
“That doesn’t sound exciting.”
Willow raises her eyebrows. “It’s a great ending for everyone.”
Not the ending I want for our story.
“I’m not much of a reader myself. I might skip that one. Unless it’s in audio?” I take her very literally to see what she comes back with.
“It’s a live-action movie,” she says tartly. “Complete with very realistic special effects.”
I smother a laugh. “Realistic huh. Do they include the part where she falls for her captor and he makes her come repeatedly, until she begs him to stop because it’s too good?”
“No. That bit got cut out.”
“Edited. What a pity. It was in the book then.” God this is fun. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a woman’s company so much. “They always say the book is better than the movie. This proves it.”
Maybe despite our differences we can work this out…
I relax slightly as we turn past the gatehouse into my estate and make our way through the woods, along the twisting drive that leads to the house. We’ve found some common ground—she loves books and I’m willing to try whatever will please her—and we’re back safe in my territory.
“You know,” she continues thoughtfully, toying with one ugly ivory white shoe. “I was looking forward to the cake.”
“You like cake?”
She glances casually out of the window and slides the shoes off, revealing perfect little feet. Good to see she’s getting comfortable, and I’m glad I carried her from the church because they look like torture devices. Maybe she’d lend them to Turner.
“Who doesn’t like cake?” she replies.
“I can take it or leave it.” I’d rather eat her. “I’ll get you more cake.”
“Oh, thanks.” She looks into my eyes, and behind the light chatter, there’s something else that I can’t identify. “Lemon drizzle is my favourite.”
“I’ll have the chef?—”
She grabs the handle, shoves the door open, and before I realise what she’s doing and grab for her, she’s dived out of the moving car. Fear surges through me as she rolls on the grassy bank.
Shit. What if she’s hurt?
“Stop!” I yell and bash my fist on the obscured glass between me and the driver.
We screech to a halt that jerks me forward, and I scramble after her, out of the car, just quick enough to see her white dress streaming behind her as she sprints into the woods. She’s lifted it so it doesn’t trip her, and I catch a tantalising glimpse of delicate ankles.
My heart thuds not for panic, but for life. She’s okay, and my relief at seeing her unharmed is so intense it’s like someone rewound time on a shooting.
I stare after her. My little bunny can run . She’s trying to escape. She’s clever, and fuck, she’s so brave . I admire that as much as the beautiful wrapping.
Did I just fall for her even more? That dignity in the church as my men walked in armed to the teeth to wreck her wedding, and when her unworthy fiancé was shot right beside her. Her humour and her fearlessness. She’s remarkable.
I should let her go. It would be consistent with all those fine thoughts about how I’m too old for her, and she’s too good for me. But my ideals are gone in the reality of her absence. Even after mere seconds, I can feel the empty sensation of being in a glass jar descending again.
I’ve waited forty-two years to find her. I’m never giving her up.
She wants a chase?
I’ll catch her.