27. Chapter Twenty-Seven—Cassiel
Chapter Twenty-Seven—Cassiel
“I’m proud of you for getting out,” Lottie utters, stroking the back of my hand with her soft fingertips.
It’s fucking loud in the bar—it always is—but I only have eyes for my girl, tuning everything else out so all I can see and hear is her.
I take a gulp of beer to wash away the warmth building inside my chest. I can’t be fucking crying on our first date.
“Thanks, Princess. Means a lot.”
“You two lovebirds ready to order yet?” Genie asks, popping up out of nowhere as is her magic trick.
She used to love doing it to me when I was younger, catching me unawares in a lip lock with Rome behind church or with one of the reaper’s daughters we we’re sharing at the time, my hand almost up their skirts.
Even now, as a grown man, I think Genie takes pleasure in catching me red handed, watching my cheeks flush red. She’s the only other woman I know in this world, except for Carlotta, who can make me blush under their watchful gaze.
Her kind eyes crinkle at the edges when she looks at me, pen poised over a pad of paper, ready to take our order the old-fashioned way.
It never fails to amaze me that after everything Genie has seen and everything she’s experienced in her chaotic life; she’s never lost the sparkle in her eyes and the kindness of her tongue.
Unless you cross her, of course, and then fucking hell breaks loose…
People like to underestimate Genie, but I know the truth. She’s tougher than she looks, capable of more than people think and she’s a spine of steel when the time comes.
Just like the redheaded woman sitting in front of me, who plagues both mine and Rome’s dreams.
“I’ll take a double bacon cheeseburger and—”
“Fries with extra pickles on the side,” Genie mutters as she jots down my order. “His order hasn’t changed since he was boy… And what can I get you, sweet girl?”
“Can I take the portion of nachos, but with no jalapenos?” Lottie asks.
“Coming right up, sugars. Food shouldn’t be too long.”
Inside the pocket of my jeans, I feel my phone vibrate against my thigh—twice in quick succession.
Whilst Lottie is sipping her wine and peering round at the hardened faces of the motorcycle club, I slide my cell from my pocket, turning it over to find two messages from Rome.
Rome: Ruby’s been dealt with. The fucker.
Rome: How’s Carlotta? Does she look okay?
I resist, just barely, the urge to roll my eyes at him. He should just tell her the fucking truth; admit he’s been in love with her for years and then he can ask her himself if she’s okay.
I fire back a quick message, watching the dots dance across the screen seconds before Rome’s reply.
Me: Find your balls and ask her yourself. Love you.
Rome: Asshole. Love you too.
Slipping my cell back into my pocket, I take another sip of Budweiser, wrinkling my nose at the bubbles that tickle my nose as I stand.
“Wanna play a round of pool while we wait for food?”
Lottie nods, taking my hand without hesitation and allowing me to lead her across the sticky wooden flat, the slats worn with age and to the green velvet pool table.
I grin at rise of glasses and the shouts of my name in greeting from members of the reapers—they’re faces more beaten and weatherworn than when I saw them last—but I don’t stop to talk.
Grabbing two thin pool sticks from the wrack, I thrust one at Lottie and crank the lever hidden beneath the table to dispense the fifteen shiny balls.
“Do you know how to play?”
“Sort of. Run me through the rules, again.”
I set the balls into a perfect triangle formation whilst I explain how to play, momentarily distraction by the bat of Lottie’s long lashes as she watches me.
“I’ll be the solid-colored balls, one through seven, and you can be the stripes, that’s balls nine through fifteen. To win, you need to pot all of your balls, meaning get them into one of the four corner nets and then the black eight ball before I do. Got it?”
Lottie jerks her head in agreement.
“Here, before we start, we need to chalk up the tips of the cues. It makes it less slippery for the balls to roll away.”
I swipe the cube of blue chalk over Lottie’s cue and then mine and then I line it up to take my first shot.
“So… Genie and Fox own this place?”
I nod, straightening up as the balls ricochet apart from one another like they’ve been struck by lightning, jerking my thumb behind me. “And the compound and church way up in the back.”
Lottie wraps her hands around the cue as she tilts her head to the side. “Church?”
“Yeah, it’s what they call the meeting place for the Reapers.”
“Oh, interesting name choice. What’s it like inside?”
I pop my broad shoulders. “I wouldn’t know; I’ve never been allowed inside. It’s strictly for Dolcie Reapers only.”
“And you’re not one?”
“Depends on whose asking that question, Princess. Rome’s been inside—once. He said it was like the Catholic church service his grandmother used to make him go to, only with no hymns and more bloodshed.”
“Who leads that service? It sounds—”
“It used to be Fox, he bought this place in the seventies and built the Dolcie Reapers from the ground up. But he stepped down a year ago after his second heart attack and MJ took his place.”
“MJ?”
“Yeah, Mariah Jean, Genie and Fox’s daughter.”
“Oh. How old is she?”
“Twenty six.”
Lottie runs the pad of her thumb up and down the thin length of the wooden cue. “Do they have any other children?
I shake my head. “MJ was a miracle child. She’s their little princess.”
“And did you… grow up with her? When you we’re here, I mean?”
Cocking my head to the side, I catalogue Lottie’s body language. It’s something I’ve always been good at reading—after being on high alert for so many years, anticipating the next hit, I learnt to read how people truly felt without them even needing to say a single word.
Plus, when you spend as long as I have, staying quiet and masked beside Rome, ensuring nothing shady happens to him, then you begin to pick up certain tells; a nervous twitch, a fearful laugh, the grin of somebody who thinks they’ve successfully pulled the wool over our eyes.
“Princess? Are you… jealous?”
I can’t help the smirk dancing across my lips, which grows even further when two twin spots of crimson appear on Lottie’s cheeks.
“Shut up,” she chastises, poking the end of her cue into stomach. I hardly feel the thing, but it leaves a blue dot of chalk on my black button down. “I just wanted to know if you grew up with her, that’s all.”
Taking a step forward, I crowd Lottie’s personal space, pressing her up against the ledge of the pool table. I grip her hip with my free hand, leaning down until our faces are inches apart. “That’s all, hm? Tell me the truth.”
“Or what?” She juts out her chin and her chest, pressing her soft tits against my hard body.
“Or…” I pinch Lottie’s jaw with my thumb and forefinger, keeping her exactly where I want her, where I need her, as I suck on her pulse point and then press my lips to the shell of her ear. “I’ll spin you around, bend you over this pool table and spank your ass raw until you admit the truth.”
“You wouldn’t fucking dare,” my girl breathes, trying to act unaffected but I feel the shiver that runs through her, the downy hairs on her skin rising.
I pull back just an inch to watch her pupils blow wide, eating the pretty color of her iris, before I spin her around and bend her over the table.
In one fluid motion, I slap her ass before I mold myself to her back, forcing her hands to grip the pool cue, one inches above the other.
I lay my much larger, more calloused hands, on top of hers, directing Lottie to take a shot at one of her striped balls while I whisper, “I’ve got to admit, I like you jealous and a little possessive, Princess.
But to answer your question, yes MJ and I grew up together.
But I’ve never seen her more than a little sister, and that’s not just because Fox and her best friend, Lake, would have my head on spike if I’d dared tried anything.
I never wanted to because I had Rome occupying my thoughts and now I have you too. You’re both more than enough.”
“Cassiel.” Lottie squirms, rubbing her ass against my quickly thickening cock. I know the moment she feels me, hard and throbbing against her lower back, when she pauses before she huffs and continues to grind back against me. “Everyone is looking at us.”
“Your kitten hiss is so sweet, Princess. Almost as sweet as your cunt. Nobody is looking at us.” I catch eyes with Pandora, who simply flips her hair over her other shoulder and continues flirting with the man sitting beneath her as if nothing is out of the ordinary.
Within the walls of the Dolcie Reapers dive bar, hardly anything, bar drawing blood, is off limits.
In fact, me bending Lottie over is rather tame to some of the stuff I saw as a growing teenage boy.
“Do you know why?”
“Fuckk. Why?”
“Because you’re mine. And nobody here, or on either side of the Hudson, is going to look at what’s mine, let a known dare to touch you. Because if they do… they’ll be dead and buried before they can even finish their thought. Do I make myself clear, Princess?”
She nods, turning her head to peer at me over her shoulder with those big doe eyes of hers.
“Tell me who you belong to, Lottie?”
“I’m,” she licks her lips, “I’m yours, Cassiel.”
“And?”
“And?” she repeats, this time confusion lacing her tone. “I’m not Ro—”
I squeeze her ass to soothe her. “Not yet you’re not. You’re yours.”
“Mine?”
“Mhm. Your own person, with your own mind who can make her own decisions. Isn’t that, right?”
“I… guess so.”
Easing up on her back, I hook my chin over her shoulder when she straightens up. “Hasn’t anybody ever told you that before, Lottie? That you’re your own person?”
She hesitates for a heartbeat before she shakes her head. “No, never, I was—Did you know I was engaged?”
It’s my turn to shake my head while I take my next shot. This time, the ball rolls across the smooth green velvet and drops into the net below.
“I never knew his name, but Mother was forever talking about it, preparing me for our marriage. Tablescapes, cooking, cleaning, it was for him. So, I could be his perfect little wife.”
I purposefully keep my tone steady and my eyes on Lottie’s, reminding her I am here with her, when I ask, “How old were you?”
“Twenty, but I was—” She licks her lips. “I was five when it first began.”
“When what began?”
“The beatings. The control she had over me.”
I blink. The words tumble from Lottie’s sweet lips so simply, without any deflection, devoid of emotion.
I curl my hand into a fist on the wooden ledge of the pool table; the only sign of anger and surprise I allow myself to show.
If I show it on my face, Lottie is liable to bolt like a spooked horse, so I do what I do best, what I’ve always done—I shut it down until I’m alone.
“Did you ever meet him?”
Lottie raises a single, elegant finger. “Once. He wasn’t much. It was out in the gardens. I wasn’t supposed to be out there, but it was such a nice day, and I convinced the maid to let me feed some of the wild rabbits in the hedges with the leftover carrots we had from the cake she was making.
“Mostly, I think she just wanted rid of me for a couple of minutes, so she said yes. I ran out to feel the sun on my face and found him sitting under a tree in the shade, his nose buried in a book whilst Cristiano swung from the branches above like Tarzan. I didn’t know who he was at the time, so later on, when Cristi snuck into my room to say goodnight, I asked him.
He looked at me as if I’d grown three heads and told me the boy was my betrothed and how on earth didn’t I know that already?
I remember shrugging and then Mother called for him and he had to go. We never spoke about it ever again.”
Carefully cataloguing the dilation of Lottie’s pupils and the way her lids droop, gazing just past my shoulder and something that isn’t really there, I take a step forward and gently place my middle finger under her chin.
I know first-hand what it’s like to be caught in a sudden flashback, reliving a mental video of a memory and I know what it means to jerked out of it too, slamming back into your own body, back into the present time with a hard bump.
So, I touch Carlotta with a gentleness I didn’t even know I possessed, carefully coaxing her mind out of fight or flight and back into the here and now.
“You with me, Princess?”
The tip of her pink tongue darts out to wet her lips as she nods jerkily. “Yeah… yeah, shit, sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. Not now. Not ever.” I press my lips to hers, my heart soaring in my chest when Lottie kisses me back with a fire in her gut.
There she is. My brave girl. My fighter.
“I didn’t mean to ruin the moment,” Lottie whispers against my lips. I can’t help but steal a second and then a third kiss. She’s too addictive not to.
Swiping the pad of my thumb along her cheekbone, I nudge her nose with mine. “You haven’t, Princess. I asked. I want to know everything about you. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry you went through that. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
Did anybody else know?
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask, but I swallow it back with difficulty.
In all the time Rome mentioned Carlotta, Cristiano, and the entire Bellucci family, he never once mentioned Lottie being beaten by her own mother; the person who’s supposed to love you unconditionally, more than anyone else in the world.
But my mother did it to me—left me unloved and abandoned, still pink from birth, in the women’s bathroom at the hospital.
Still, it has my mind ticking into overdrive.
Does Rome know?
“Neither did you,” Lottie murmurs, smoothing her hands over my chest, her pool cue long abandoned on the table. “We’re a pair.”
“Mm, the perfect pair.”