Chapter 1
Goldie
From the first moment she understood what a book was, Marigold Jane Quinn wanted nothing more than to be the person creating them.
Books were, as far as she was concerned, one of the few forms of real magic in the world.
What other word was there for a series of random symbols printed on a dead tree that could transport you to a kingdom far far away, or to an alien planet, or into the arms of your one true love?
She still had a box in her apartment full of the hand-bound picture books she’d created as a child, as well as a variety of short stories and novellas that had won her awards in school.
And she could still remember, in vivid detail, how proud her teachers had been, how they’d all talked about the heights she’d soar to as an author.
More than once she’d wondered what they’d think about the fact that she spent her days writing filthy smut about dangerous mafia men willing to burn the world to the ground for the women they loved.
Imagining their reactions always made her laugh.
But it wasn’t her teachers on her mind as she settled in front of her desk.
It wasn’t even her standard latte and pastry from Rev and Roll, the bakery a block from her apartment where she went every morning before she sat down to write.
No, the man consuming her thoughts as she broke off a piece of her favored maple-bacon donut was a certain red-haired member of the local Irish mafia who’d recently pinned her to a wall and threatened her life.
Okay, maybe that was being a little dramatic. He’d threatened to “show her how the O’Rourkes really deal with naughty little girls” which sounded more like a threat to her ass than her life. But that kind of thing only happened in books.
Right?
As it always did when she thought of Brody O’Rourke, her pussy clenched painfully, reminding her that it had been far too long since that particular area had received any male attention whatsoever.
Which was the only reason she was having this reaction to him, and not because she found his cocky, bossy, snarling ways the least bit attractive.
One heroine in the throes of denial, at your service.
Ugh.
Annoyed with herself for letting her mind wander to him yet again, she opened her manuscript and stared at what she’d written so far.
Her heroine for this book was a sassy, smart-mouthed brat who was constantly pushing her bodyguard’s buttons.
As the daughter of a powerful mafia boss, she was very confident in her ability to push those buttons as much as she wanted without retribution.
But what if she was wrong?
Marigold stepped aside and Goldie Quinn took her place. The words flowed from her fingertips, faster than she could ever remember writing before.
[“All right, Maria. Enough.”
There’s something in Leo’s voice that stops me in my tracks. An edge I’ve never heard, sharp enough to slice me open if I’m not careful.
But I am a Luciano. Heiress to one of the largest criminal empires in the world and I will not be cowed by a glorified babysitter.
“What if I don’t think it’s enough, Leonardo?” I snarl, jerking my chin up to glare at him, refusing to be intimidated by the fact he has several inches and at least seventy-five pounds of muscle on me.
Before I can blink, he pulls one of the dining room chairs from the table, sits, and yanks me down over his knee. Panic and need crash into each other, a screeching collision of conflicting reactions that sends me into a tailspin.
“Let go of me! My father will—”
My threat cuts off with a loud wail as Leo’s hand slams into my ass, shocking me with how much it hurts.
And how much I am very much enjoying being hurt by him.
“I’ve had enough of your attitude, Maria,” Leo growls, spanking me again and again, covering my entire backside with stinging swats. “From now on, you are going to be polite and respectful to me and my men, or I will put you over my knee like the child you insist on acting like.”
“Fuck you, Leonardo!”
“If you’re still feeling up to it when we finish here, I may give you what you want. If you’re a good girl and beg for it.”
The smarmy response should piss me off. And it does, though that anger is buried under so many other emotions and sensations I can barely reach it.
Over and over he spanks me, until at last the pain is more than I can take and I slump over his muscular thighs, fighting for every breath. “Please… I’m sorry.”
To my immense relief, the spanking ends there and Leo cups my aching ass, giving it a hard squeeze. “You are going to be polite to the people in your employ?”
“Yes, yes, I promise.”
“And you understand that if you aren’t, you will end up right back here? Only next time with your panties around your ankles while I spank your bare bottom?”
Oh. My. God. I have never been so humiliated in my entire life.
Or, impossible as it seems, more turned on.
“I understand.”
“Good girl. On your knees.”
His growled praise, coupled with his command, echoes through my veins as I do as I’m told and slide to my knees in front of him.
There are tears on my lashes, slightly blurring my vision as I stare up at him, and I can only imagine how I look, my hair and makeup ruined, on my knees for one of my father’s men.
But if Leo is at all put out by my rumpled state, it doesn’t show. If anything, he’s looking at me now with more affection than he ever has as he reaches for the buckle on his belt.
“You took your spanking very well, princessa. Now you may apologize for being such a naughty, naughty girl.”]
Sitting back in her chair, Goldie blinked at the screen in front of her. In ten years of writing, she’d written plenty of scenes exactly like what she’d just written. But something about this one just felt different, and she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
Or the fact that she was currently more turned on than she’d ever been in her entire life.
Reaching for her mouse, she dragged the cursor over the words she’d just written, her other hand hovering over the delete key.
But no matter how badly she told herself she wanted to ditch the scene, she couldn’t bring herself to actually press the damn button.
Fine. If the muse said she needed the scene, she’d keep the damn scene.
Bossy fucking muse.
She’d polished off her donut while writing, and now she was feeling antsy all over again, so she shoved away from her desk and wandered into her kitchen in search of the special bucket where she kept her ‘author on a deadline’ snacks.
Which basically consisted of the junkiest junk food she could get her hands on.
Grabbing a sleeve of cookies, she made her way back to the computer, where she tried once more to focus on the words in front of her. But even the crisp, chocolate-cream goodness couldn’t distract her from the ache between her thighs.
As she munched on her snack, her gaze slid to the box of toys she kept beside her desk for inspiration.
Some of them were duplicates of the ones stashed in her nightstand, while others were a bit too intimidating for her tastes, like the giant octopus tentacle one of her author friends had sent her as a gag gift a couple years back when they’d gotten a wild hair and teamed up to write a series of alien romances—featuring heroes with plenty of tentacles, of course.
No. Giving herself a mental shake, she refocused on the computer screen in front of her. She was not going to interrupt her workday for a self-love session because some stupid scene from her own damn book had her all hot under the collar.
Right. It’s totally just the scene and not the man you were thinking of while you wrote said scene.
Her inner voice was a total bitch.
After twenty minutes of continued distraction, she gave up on the idea of getting any more writing done. Stashing her cookies back in their box, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door.
She just needed a bit of fresh air. A walk to the park, maybe.
Oh, and there was that new bookstore in the shopping district she’d been wanting to check out.
It was still up in the air whether she’d tell them who she was—especially in the south, she’d found it was better to go nosing around first, see how the owners felt about smut.
Over the years, she’d developed a pretty good radar for that kind of thing.
People who displayed the spicier romances proudly in the front window versus hiding it on the back shelves—or, as was sometimes the case, not carrying it all—tended to be more open to the idea of stocking her books and potentially partnering with her for a signing.
Buoyed by the prospect of a new business partnership, she stepped outside, giving herself a moment to stop and breathe as the sun warmed her skin.
The shorter winters were one of her favorite perks about living in Charleston, though she could do without the brutal humidity of summer.
It was a tradeoff, though, and one she happily accepted for not having to live somewhere the air hurt her face in the colder months.
The walk helped, at least with the more…
physical aspects of her current predicament.
Her mind, however, still wandered to Brody.
To the ruddy stubble on his chiseled jaw, to the way his pale eyes had bored into hers when he’d had her pressed up against that brick wall, warning her to stay far, far away from him.
To the way his breath had smelled faintly of peppermint, and how warm it had felt on her cheek as he’d issued his warning.
He was the last man on Earth she should be obsessing over. And the only man she’d never been able to get out of her mind.
She wasn’t, and never had been, boy-crazy.
When all of her friends had been drooling over a new guy seemingly every week in high school, she’d simply nodded along, though she’d never quite understood the appeal.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like men, she’d just never experienced that sudden rush of all-consuming lust and obsession, as much as she’d wanted to.
Even the two times she’d been in love had been slow, steady. Friends who’d gradually morphed into more over the years. Sweet, low drama, no angst from inception to end.
Brody O’Rourke was nothing but drama and angst. So why the hell was she so hung up on him?
That question and more plagued her the entire walk to the bookstore. But the moment she stepped inside, her worries vanished, as they often did in such spaces. Something about being surrounded by all that magic in the form of the written word calmed her soul, before she even picked up a book.
Unfortunately, it only took her about five minutes to strike this particular store from her list of potential business partners.
Their ‘Romance’ section, such as it was, consisted of exactly three shelves of books with sweet, demure-looking women on the covers, a few even sporting bonnets like she’d seen pictures of Amish women wearing.
Definitely not her people. Oh, well. She could still shop around a bit, maybe even buy something and support a local business.
“Stalking me again?”
Goddammit.
Closing her eyes, she breathed in deep before turning to face him, a bright smile plastered on her face. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re the one doing the stalking. Something I can do for you, Mr. O’Rourke?”
“Uh-huh.” His dark gaze raked over her, and despite the warmth of the day she suddenly wished her arms weren’t so bare.
Not because she had any problem with the amount of skin she was showing, but because she could feel his gaze on her like a physical caress, leaving little fires of need everywhere it touched.
“So you just happen to be visiting the bookstore across the street from where my cousin is having a meeting?”
The insult of being accused of something she wasn’t actually doing pricked at her. Not that she could necessarily blame him as she had, indeed, been caught stalking him before. But she wasn’t stalking him now, so it was very rude of him to accuse her of doing so.
She was just about to let him know exactly how she felt about his baseless accusations when his words fully registered. “Killian’s at Charleston Brews?”
As she spoke, she craned her neck to scan the buildings across the street from the bookstore. Her first thought was that it was an odd place for a mob boss to have a meeting, but on second thought, was there really a normal place for such business to be discussed?
It could be a fun little quirk for her next book. A mob boss with an affinity for fancy coffee. Maybe he could even fall in love with one of the baristas. Oh, and then he’d have to kidnap her, because of course his enemies would figure out she was important to him and then—
“Yes. Which you already knew.” The snap in Brody’s voice jerked her out of her fictional world and back to reality.
Reality, where an actual mobster, not one of her fictional heroes, was glaring at her, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he waited for her to explain herself.
Temper sparked in her chest. “I actually did not know that, thank you very much. Contrary to your beliefs, Mr. O’Rourke, my life does not revolve around you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have shopping to finish.”
The bastard had the nerve to glare at her. “Your shirt is right. The sass really is strong in this one.”
“What?” Looking down, she took in the bright pink words, accompanied by matching pink light sabers.
With a smirk on her lips, she tossed her hair—or it would have been a toss before she’d chopped it all off on a whim a few months ago—and glared right back at him.
“Aw, the big bad mob boss can’t handle a little sass?
What happened to showing me how the O’Rourkes handled naughty little girls? ”
Considering that her parting shot, she moved to step around him but before she could push past him, his hand snaked out, wrapping around her upper arm.
“You caught me on a good day. But I’m not going to warn you again, Goldie. Stay away from me and my family, or I will make you regret it.”
His words, delivered in that harsh, growling tone, only served to reignite the painful arousal between her thighs.
Apparently body-betrayal syndrome was a real thing. Good to fucking know.
Jerking her arm from his grasp, she returned his glare with a smug smile that she hoped hid the fact her heart was pounding and her panties were soaked. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, O’Rourke.”
Without giving him a chance to answer her, she spun on her heel and stormed out of the shop, her brain already swirling with ideas.
If she was going to be falsely accused of stalking, she might as well earn the allegation. And whatever consequences came with it.
Right after she went home and tried out that box of toys beside her desk.