Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(138)

The dark, sweet liquid curled over my tongue. I swear I could feel it flipping every cell to the On position like an infinite row of light switches. In a couple minutes, I had the strength to push back my matted hair and open my eyes all the way.

“He seems happy,” I remarked into my cup.

“You’re surprised?” Declan said, reaching for a white-frosted scone and popping it in his mouth whole.

“No… I guess yeah. Last night he didn’t seem too thrilled with me. Not too happy I was coming,” I admitted. I cut my eyes toward Declan to gauge his reaction but he didn’t offer any new insights, just shrugged and poked through the plate of fruit until he found the blackberry he wanted.

“Jackson never gets riled up,” he replied, distracted by another pour of dark, rich coffee.

“Never?” I asked carefully.

“Nope.”

“Huh.”

I swirled another mouthful of coffee over my tongue and watched Declan’s long, heavy muscles working under his skin as he reached across the tray.

“How about you?”

“How about I what?” he teased, quirking an eyebrow at me. I searched his face for remainders of our previous conversation and found nothing. No sign.

I thought he broke up with me, I mused. Maybe not.

Maybe Amsterdam was my best idea ever.

Carefully, I got up and knee-walked across the mattress, watching his eyes following the pink triangle of silk that covered my sweet bits. I pushed him lightly with my fingers to roll him on his back and then straddled his hips, letting my hair sweep across his bare chest.

“You wanna take a shower?” he murmured in a low voice, his fingers playing in the string of my bikinis as I brushed my crotch across the bulge of his cock.

“Yeah,” I whispered, ducking my head and mouthing his nipple playfully. He still smelled like the sharp caramel of bourbon.

“OK, you go first,” he offered suavely, pushing me up and off him. I stared in surprise and then tried to cover my expression with my hair, but he was already turning away anyway.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he continued, “but if you’re fast I can still hop in before we go.”

“Yeah, OK,” I muttered, sliding off the end of the bed with my gaze carefully averted. My belly roiled with embarrassment. “I’ll be quick.”

I heard him make some kind of affirmative grunt and walked into the bath, reaching for a clip to hold my hair. My reflection in the triple mirror caught my eye and I winced at the sight of the cartoonish rings of smudged eyeliner, the yellowing bruises on my thigh and wrist, and the fading hickie on my neck.

Geez, girl, you gotta eat, I scolded myself as I stared at the too-prominent jut of my hipbones. You look like half a junkie.

I turned the shower on full steam and stepped in gingerly, setting right to work on a proper scrub of all my planes. I was leaning into a new life, new opportunities, I reminded myself. Anything could happen.

As I inhaled the fragrant, lemon and spice-flavored steam, I began to get excited all over again. A new world of people would see my work, without the prejudice of the whole LA art market working against it. I had never really felt like Bridget was entirely on my side, not that her cynicism allowed her to be on anybody’s side, really. But with Declan’s endorsement, anything could happen, right?

It was a strange way of getting to the career I dreamed of, I knew, but that wouldn’t matter for long. I had always imagined Bridget and I cracking open the critics’ opinions like soft-boiled eggs under a hard spoon. I’d make them love me. She would help. But was it really that different if the help came from Declan, and the critics’ opinions were uttered in Dutch? Probably not that different, I consoled myself as the old dream evaporated in the steam. It was still my own work, and I was eager to see what a fresh perspective could do.

The whole future was just moments away. I couldn’t wait.



***



This time, I had worn some sensible wedges with an ankle strap. As we walked to the Gulfstream, waiting with its door and stairs open and welcoming, I remembered that first trip in the private jet. The broken shoe, Jackson’s weirdly sweet paperback fetish, and Declan’s fingers on my ankle. It seemed so far away now that I could hardly believe it was real.

I could feel their eyes on my backside as I walked confidently across the tarmac, my dress drawn snug around my thighs by the breeze. Hopefully, whatever starry-eyed dork impression I had given them the first time would be obliterated by the new Margot: the non-stumbling, non-bankrupt, non-Kevin-addicted version they saw before them now. I was different. I hoped they knew it.

Still, I held tight to the railing as I climbed the stairs. No sense in tempting fate. Falling backwards, ass over ankles to lie unconscious on the concrete would just be so Margot.