Vicious Hearts: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance

My pulse roars—whether from fear, anticipation, or something between the two, I couldn’t say. But no. He keeps walking—past the huge bed, out of the bedroom itself, and back down the hall into the main area. He carries me into the kitchen, keeping me right there on his shoulder as he yanks open the fridge and rummages inside.

Then he turns, striding over to a dining area next to a wall of black-iron framed factory windows looking out across the East River to Manhattan. Oh. We’re in Brooklyn.

I shiver as he sits, pulling me off his shoulder and onto his lap. I blush as I feel his muscled thigh beneath me, where the not-that-large towel is barely covering my ass.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

I glance down at the plate of fruit, cheese, crackers, and charcuterie in front of us. My back straightens, my lips thinning defiantly.

“I eat,” I mutter.

“I didn’t ask if you consume food. I asked when the last time it was that you did. And I mean a full meal. Not tuna fish out of the can that you had to share with the cat.”

My face heats—embarrassment mixed with the terrified feeling of knowing just how closely he was watching me.

“Why the fuck do you care?”

My breath catches as his hand wraps around the nape of my neck.

“One of us has tried to stab the other, twice. Dial back the shitty attitude.”

There’s something authoritative about his voice that…does something to me.

And it’s something really not okay.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Swallow your pride and your seriously pathetic attempts at lying to me and fucking eat something.”

“No—hey!”

I shudder, gasping as Cillian abruptly yanks the towel off of me and tosses it aside, leaving me stark naked on his lap. I try to bolt, but his hand still grips the back of my neck firmly, keeping me pinned right where I am.

I turn to glare at him through the flush throbbing in my face.

“Sadist.”

“Is that your way of asking me to fuck you again? Because you’ll need to ask much more nicely than that.”

My face burns hotly as my lips purse to a line.

“Oh?” I hiss. “Didn’t seem to take much before.”

His lips curl devilishly in the corners, his green eyes turning steely.

“Careful, little girl.”

A shudder of shameful heat creeps through me.

“Stop fucking calling me that.”

“I will when you stop acting like a child and eat the goddamn food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“And a terrible liar, it would seem. Eat.”

“Get fucked—”

I moan—and I mean I fucking moan—when Cillian suddenly reaches up and roughly pinches one of my nipples.

Which also has the effect of making me open my mouth—a reaction he uses to stuff a strawberry between my lips.

Out of pure spite and defiance, I go to spit it back out. I even go so far as to turn first, so I can do it in his face. But before I can, his big hand comes up to cup my jaw, closing my mouth firmly.

“Eat.”

I glare at him. His other hand snakes around my waist. My eyes bulge as he cups my breast and then suddenly pinches that nipple, too.

I make a moaning, choking sound with my mouth held shut—instantly flushing bright red.

“Chew,” he mutters.

When I don’t immediately do as he says, he pinches and then twists my nipple again. This time, when I shiver, he does it again. Then again, pulling and pinching mercilessly on the little pink nub until a shudder of pleasure ripples through my core.

“Chew, Una.”

I glare at him. He glares right back. Then, begrudgingly, I do. And the second I bite down, the sensation is almost orgasmic. Holy shit, I haven’t had fresh fruit in months. The sweet taste of the strawberry is like pure sin on my tongue.

When I swallow it, Cillian’s brow arches. “Finished?”

I nod.

“Show me.”

I sneer, opening my mouth and sticking my tongue out.

“Happ—”

I sputter as he sticks a piece of cheese and uses his hand to close my jaw.

It’s infuriating. Infantilizing. Demeaning.

…And oddly sensual.

I don’t really know what to think or feel as I sit there naked on his lap and he feeds me. We fall into silence, and in a weird way it’s actually almost comforting.

“Do you know what your father was?”

That comfortable, sensual feeling shatters like glass. I stiffen, pulse thudding.

“I asked you a question.”

I turn and glare at him. “Just what the fuck would you like me to say?”

“I think it was a fairly straightforward question. What. Was. He?”

My teeth grind.

“A killer,” I hiss. “An abusive, manipulative monster. A psychopath.” My lips purse as I glare at him. “You know, you.”

A deadly tension hovers between us as his eyes flicker darkly. Cillian just smiles back.

“Your father did terrible—”

“Yeah, trust me, I know—ah!”

I gasp as Cillian’s hand swats my inner thigh, hard, making me squirm and shift on his lap.

“Don’t interrupt. Were you aware that fifteen years ago, your father kidnapped my niece, Neve?”

Oh my God.

There’s a lot that I know about my father—things that have kept me up or woken me from nightmares my entire life. His cruelty. His inhumaneness. The way he made it abundantly clear to both Finn and I that we were his tools of destruction before we were his children.

I knew he did bad things. I knew he killed people, and sometimes even read about it in the newspapers, even during that time we were going to see him at Coal Creek every two weeks.

But I didn’t know that, and my face pales when he says it.

There’s fury in his eyes and vicious anger in his voice. “She was nine.”

My face falls in horror.

“He drove her to a hunting cabin, trussed her up to a fucking crucifix, and had every intention of bleeding her out until she died.”

My stomach twists poisonously, my very soul shuddering.

“I—” I swallow, my mouth dry as I shiver. What do you say to that? “I’m sorry,” I mumble quietly. “I hated my father—”

The world explodes, and the words are choked in my mouth as Cillian suddenly grabs my jaw tightly.

“Then why the fuck were you trying to kill me?”

I’m shaking. My eyes lock with his—wide and unblinking as those lethal green orbs eviscerate me. His lips curl into a demonic snarl, and the muscles in his neck ripple as I tremble, his jugular pulsing.

And then just as suddenly as it exploded out of him, the violence evaporates. His hand drops from my jaw, his eyes cold as he turns. He plucks up another strawberry, turning back to hold it to my lips. This time, I eat it without struggling.

I take the next bite of food too, also without defiance. Finally, as the silence between us drags on, I clear my throat.

“Why am I here?”

“You’re not asking the questions yet.” He turns to me, his arm still wrapped around me—fingers splayed across my bare ribs, just under my breast.

“Where’s your brother?”

The floor drops out from under me. I try and hide it, mask it. But I know the second I see his lips curl that my face has given me away.

“You know, the twin brother you used to go visit your father with at Coal Creek.” Cillian smiles sadistically. “Believe me, there is nothing I don’t know, Una.”

The gasp chokes in my throat as Cillian wraps his powerful hand around it, squeezing slightly.

“My patience has a limit. Especially toward someone who’s tried to hurt my family.”

“I—I—!”

Air wheezes into my lungs through my constricted windpipe. My eyes bulge from my head as they lock with his even, cool, lethal ones.

“Where. Is. He.”

I should be terrified. I should be fighting as hard as I can out of fear he’ll kill me. But I’m not, and I don’t.

Maybe it’s the knowledge that if this man—of all people—wanted to kill me, he’d just do it, and probably without batting an eye.

Or maybe it’s the incredibly fucked realization that as Cillian’s hand squeezes my throat, and as I squirm on his lap, I can feel him getting hard.

Really, really hard.

But even that’s not the most fucked up part. The most fucked up part is that the harder he squeezes, and the more I writhe on the thick bulge under me, the wetter I get.

It’s a deadly combination, a heady, illicit rush and shock to my system that has every nerve screaming and every inch of my skin tingling with raw need. Cillian leans close to me, his eyes stabbing into mine as my face burns hotly.

As my pulse roars.

As my core quivers and tightens and threatens, mortifyingly, to explode at any second as he knowingly or unknowingly pushes me to the very fucking brink of my sanity.

And then suddenly—he stops.

I choke on my breath as his hand drops from my throat and he pulls back, a hard, sneering glint in his eyes as he shifts me onto his thigh.

“Maybe we should stop,” he murmurs as I sit there in shock, practically shaking on his leg. Cillian smiles sardonically. “Before you come all over my pants.”

Sweet. Fucking. Jesus.

My face turns the color of the strawberries on the plate in front of me.

“My brother… I… I don’t know.”

He eyes me with that piercing, venomous green gaze.

“I don’t, honestly. I…” I bite my lip and look away. “I haven’t seen or talked to him in almost two years.”

Cillian is silent. When I turn back, though, the malice has faded from his eyes, and I see his chin almost imperceptibly nod.

“Now,” he growls quietly. “Be a good girl and open up.”

Numbly, still shaking, I open my lips, allowing him to slip another piece of cheese onto my tongue. I chew it slowly, meekly, unable to meet his eyes.

“What do you want with me?” I finally whisper.

When he doesn’t answer, I pull my gaze to his, shivering at the venomous green that glints back at me from his darkly handsome, chiseled face.

But he still doesn’t answer. And as the seconds tick by, and the anxiety really starts to gnaw at me, I can’t stand it anymore.

“Please,” I blurt. “If you’re going to kill me, just fucking—”

“If I was going to kill you, little girl, you’d be dead already.”

I shiver at the calm, conversational way he says it—a stark reminder of the lethal psychopath that lurks beneath the darkly handsome exterior, like a monster lurking just under the surface of a still, summer lake.

“If you’re going to fuck me, just—”

“Your skills at seduction are truly awe-inspiring.”

My lips curl. “Fuck you.”

“Maybe later. The night is young.”

I lick my lips.

“Allow me to make this easier for you,” he growls. “Right now, in here, you’re safe.”

I resist the urge to bark a sarcastic laugh. Cillian catches it anyway.

“You can make a glib joke or insult me like a child all you like. It doesn’t change the reality that I know you’re smart enough to understand. Someone sent you—for whatever reason, which I will get out of you—to kill me. You’ve failed,” he says thinly. “More than once, actually. Now, if I were this person who wanted to kill me, I would probably be looking at a plan B at this point. And when you go to a plan B in matters of this nature, it’s usually best to tie up any loose ends with plan A.”

My pulse quickens.

Cillian’s eyes narrow. “Tell me I’m wrong about whoever it is who’s been putting you up to this. Tell me they won’t kill you without hesitation, after failing them so many times.”

I start to shiver.

“I’m actually offering you protection, Una,” he growls.

I swallow, slowly and nervously lifting my eyes warily to his.

“And?”

He smiles deviously. “And what?”

“What’s the catch? What do you get out of—”

“Oh, I think we both already know the answer to that…”

A horrifying, forbidden feeling coils and throbs in my core.

“I get you.”

I try to will back the heat that instantly floods my face. I could fight him. Or tell him to go fuck himself, or do what I’ve done my entire life, which is fight the tide, over and over and over again.

But I’m so. Damn. Tired of trying to swim against the tide. Because it always wins.

And he’s right. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by me how Apostle has become increasingly cold the longer this whole thing has dragged out. How his patience is clearly wearing thin.

How right Cillian might be about Apostle deciding I’m not worth the risk if I can’t get it done. What that means for Finn is too much to even think about. I can’t help him or save him if I’m dead.

There’s a chance I can if I’m not, though. And if that means staying here as Cillian’s…what, sex slave? His obedient little pet, ready and willing to let him do whatever he wants to me? Then so be it.

Yeah, as if you’re at all upset about any of that.

I blush as the thought inside my head pretty much rolls its eyes at me.

But it’s also not an incorrect thought. A morally wrong one, perhaps. But not factually incorrect. Because the idea of letting Cillian do what he wants with me is…electrifying.

Intoxicating.

Dangerously seductive.

Terrifying but alluring, like watching the edge of a knife glint in the moonlight.

“Fine,” I blurt quickly. I stand from his lap, and without blinking, even though my face is burning hot, I suddenly bend over the edge of the table. “Fine, do what you want.”

Nothing happens.

He doesn’t pounce on me. Or spank me, or bite me, or punish me.

Or fuck me.

And I hate that the feeling I’m currently experiencing because of that is “disappointment”.

I shiver when I feel his hands grip my hips—full of power and a sensual sort of hardness. Suddenly, he’s pulling me back, planting me on his lap again. Heat floods my face, my pulse thumping as he brushes my hair aside, and I gasp when his lips brush my earlobe.

“Such an eager little thing.”

I bite my lip so hard it almost bleeds to stop from whimpering.

“But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You will be mine,” he growls quietly. “But I’m not sure you understand the full extent of what I’m saying.”

His hand cups my jaw, swiveling my head as I shiver, bringing my eyes level with his.

“You’re going to be my wife.”

It’s as if reality itself is glitching out. At first, I’m sure I’m hallucinating, or that I heard him wrong. But the longer I sit there, fucking naked on his lap, his eyes piercing into mine, the clearer it becomes how real all this is.

“I—” I stare at him.

He can’t possibly be serious. But he just stares back at me, unblinking, and the knot in my stomach curls and tightens even more.

“You can’t honestly be suggesting that.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion at all, Una. It’s what’s happening.”

I blink, shuddering as something heated and fierce hooks its claws into my chest.

“I…” I shake my head. “No, it’s not.”

Cillian smiles that thin, sadistic smile of his. “You really don’t have the luxury of choice here.”

“The fuck I don’t!” I blurt, feeling my breath coming faster. “You can’t force someone to marry—!”

“Let me make this abundantly clear to you,” Cillian growls. I shiver as his hand lands heavily on my thigh and tightens. “Out there, you’re dead. Period. It might be at the hand of whoever the fuck is calling the shots with you. Or it might be at the hands of any number of your father’s enemies, once they realize who you are.”

I stare at him in horror. “Is that a threat?”

“No. That is cold, hard reality,” he snaps. “I have resources and connections such that I’m the first to have figured out who you are. But I won’t be the last.”

My face pales, my body and brain going numb.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. This is all a bad dream.

I stare at him, my breath coming ragged and fast. “I—why…” I shake my head. “I mean, what do you get out of—”

“A marriage between our families heals a divide in my organization—one that has everything to do with your father, by the by.”

I shiver as his hand cups my jaw, lifting my chin so that my eyes lock with his.

“So: you get protection. I stop a civil war. And…” He leans close, making my breath catch and my body jolt as his lips brush my ear again. “I’ll let you truly explore this darkness in you, in a way that nobody else can.”

I gasp, my pulse skipping as feel his hand on my thigh tighten possessively. As I feel his teeth suddenly nip at the tender flesh of my neck.

“Now be a good girl and spread your fucking legs.”